Atrium
Atrium is a new kind of law firm that serves the start-up community powered by proprietary technology in ways our client want to be done. We are organized like a modern business.
It is a consulting services company that helps advise, implement, and optimize artificial intelligence and analytics solutions.
At Atrium, we incentivize our team’s creativity and productivity through good management, not the billable hour. We build software to drive efficiency and transparency in our work.
We achieve these differences through a technology and operations platform called Atrium LTS.
And also, we co-founded with leading serial entrepreneurs and software developers who share our vision to fix the corporate legal practice.
We combine industry expertise, leading cloud platforms, and data science to deliver trans-formative outcomes.
Atrium helps our customers maximize the power of their data to solve their most critical challenges.
Atrium, a $ 75 million company that promises to “revolutionize” legislation, is shutting down
- On January 12th, this blog broke the news that Atrium, a company that said it would “revolutionize legal services” with its dual legal entity model of a law firm.
- It is a technology company that is laying off some of its legal staff and changing places. “Creation of a network of professional services for founders.”
- Founder Justin Kahn said today that he shut down the rest of the company and laid off all 100 remaining employees.
- According to Techcrunch, a separate law firm, Atrium, which now consists of several lawyers, serves existing clients.
- It follows the January layoffs, that will continue to operate.
- “I am very grateful to the clients and team members who came with our investors and me,” Kang told TechCrunch.
- “Unfortunately, this is not the result we want, but we are grateful to everyone who went with us on the journey.”
Kahn launched Atrium with great enthusiasm
- Kahn, who previously founded Twitch and sold it to Amazon for $ 970 million, launched Atrium with great enthusiasm in 2017.
- He claimed that he would “revolutionize” legal consulting with his model of two divisions: a law firm and a separate but affiliated company.
- A year later, the company raised a whopping $ 65 million in a round involving some of the largest venture capital firms..
- General Catalyst, YC Continuity Fund, and Sound Ventures have invested together.
- Last April, just weeks after interviewing him on my LawNext podcast, Ogi Rakov, co-founder and managing partner of Atrium, former Orrick partner Herrington & Sutcliffe left the company.
- After firing most of his lawyers in January, Kahn said the company would change direction.
- “In the next phase of growth, we will continue to expand beyond legal advice as trusted consultants to start-ups.
- And also, we will build a professional services network for start-ups.”
- But Kahn told TechCrunch that it would be difficult to leave after this lap.
- The idea behind Atrium was to provide corporate clients with an attractive alternative to traditional large corporations.
- Atrium lawyers focus solely on legal practice, and Atrium LTS, a law firm, provides everything for the company.
- Do companies, including marketing, develop and operate software to optimize the company’s work processes?
The Bet That Did Not Work
- Atrium started with in-house lawyers with intelligent software to assist them initially. In time, the lawyers were to be automated, and margins would improve.
- Back in January, Atrium began to lay off lawyers on the staff and convert them to freelancers.
- They would create a network of legal service providers.
- And also, pay them a fraction of the amount compared to paying legal experts full time.
This bet didn’t pan out exactly as planned
- The service experience for customers was not as good. Many clients are left with a legal expert rather than relying on a firm providing more software and less legal expertise.
- To make matters worse, many clients of Atrium didn’t precisely know who their legal representatives were.
- Many start-ups are willing to make a bet because they can run full-stack operations like a traditional company.
- It also adds software and AI to make it more efficient.
- It turns out full-stack companies are better serves by start-ups when offered software playing only on some stack level.
- And also, it helps them maximize their efficiencies internally.
- AI software is not a panacea for any legacy sector that can make it all efficient and create bountiful opportunities for the entrepreneur.
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