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A comment on Atrium shuts down, laying off 100. Parent comment

Re:Atrium shuts down, laying off 100 by paultopia on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @08:53PM (#22480537)
The other thing about the original vision is that it isn't even remotely clear what the hell they're doing. Are we really talk about having ML models understand caselaw? (In which case, thompson reuters is going to be way ahead anyway always, and they suck, see, e.g., the horror that is the latest version of westlaw.) Or are they talking about building a bunch of efficiency tools?

I feel like the latter model could have worked as a law firm doing the latter. Like, an actual, ordinary, perfectly milquetoast, law firm, hourly billing and all, except with an R&D division that tries to build workflow efficiencies and uses them to compete on hourly rate. Which, come to think of it, isn't that just what Dentons is doing? So maybe it's just American lawyers that are hopelessly hidebound.

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Re:Atrium shuts down, laying off 100 by TheOtherHobbes on Wednesday March 04, 2020 @03:19AM (#22482029)
It sounds as it wasn't remotely clear to them what the hell they were doing. "Disrupt all the law things!" was always a very vague pitch.

I suspect this was really a tribal play. The real plan wasn't automation, it was to pitch the company as a specialised law firm for techpreneurs that had recognisable tribal tech features - less of the "them" that tech people feel around lawyers, and more of the "us."

The problem with law is that you need the "them" parts to be at least competitive with the rest of the industry, on its own terms.

Not only did that not happen, but the "us" parts made no real difference.

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