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by zaius 2844 days ago
> “One of the things big law partners say when they talk about Atrium is that we get people who wouldn’t make partner,” says Kan. “And I say, they’re the people who are doing the work for you anyway, but they transition out because they hate the lifestyle.”

I had some paperwork come back from a fundraise that was riddled with errors. I lost a lot of faith in my lawyers and I had to double check all their work. Not what you expect when you're paying $600/hr.

Underneath every partner is the army of associates who actually do the work. I got on the phone with the associate who had handled the paperwork. He was trying to make partner; he was clearly overworked, underslept, and stressed out.

I switched to another associate with less experience but who wasn't yet feeling the pressure of making partner. The quality of work massively improved.

If Atrium can give work-life balance to lawyers, and give me paperwork that I don't have to double check, then I'm all for it.

5 comments

A lot of the errors you'll see in lawyer work product is not just from being overworked, but also comes from poor quality control mechanisms and insufficient use of technology in law firms.

On the litigation side we regularly see significant typos, misquotes, and even misspellings of the judge's name - and those are just the more basic types of errors we see.

By building the technology they're using Atrium will be able to not just drive efficiency but also improvements in the quality of the legal work product they sell.

It's a very exciting company.

+1. I feel you. The only upside - it made me read everything more carefully. Significant deal points can be missing, or subtle giveaways that negate the actual deal term two paragraphs up. And the best part - they charge you by the hour for correcting their damn mistakes! Yeah I'm not buying what that partner's selling.
Pay for the partner, get the paralegal. Oldest trick in the book.
I had a friend who was trying to make partner. Working 9am-3am and sleeping at the office wasnt uncommon. So not surprised if this is whats expected then the quality of work would drop.
> I had some paperwork come back from a fundraise that was riddled with errors. I lost a lot of faith in my lawyers and I had to double check all their work. Not what you expect when you're paying $600/hr.

To be clear, was this with Atrium or a different law firm?

Since the rest of his comment talks about the pressure of people making partner - it sounds like it's a different law firm.