Potemkin Demo:
https://demo.casepad.ioProblem: lawyers, judges, and clerks who work in high volume case environments (public defense, small claims, family, housing, prosecution) at the state and local level need databases to:
(1) Get access to basic information about their cases
(2) Fulfill their sometimes onerous compliance requirements
(3) Run basic analytics on their caseloads
(4) Schedule their work around court appearances, client availability, etc.
Existing tools don't deliver on these four points because: no mobile or web access, onerous amounts of time to generate simple compliance reports, a lack any sort of extensibility, no integration with basic office productivity tools, bad search/indexing, and no automation of the onerous data intake process.
Casepad: is an attempt to solve these issues. We have partnered with one of NYC's institutional defense providers to build a modern database service geared towards these needs. They've provided us with full access to their staff, introductions to other professionals, and some "seed" money to build an mvp.
About us: we're brothers. I'm a '14 college graduate who worked in NYC as a data analyst. My brother is studying CS in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where we both grew up.
Why We're Applying: two main reasons. First, we could use the money. It would be great if my brother could afford to move to NY with me and we could both tackle this full time. Second, I think we would benefit from the mentorship that YC and its network have to provide. It would be great to learn more from folks who have built great tech businesses.
Prior Work: we've been writing code and interviewing users for Casepad for about 3mo now. Over 60 attorneys, judges, and clerks were interviewed while we validated some of our assumptions about the broader legal market.
If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or interest in the project reach out. We'd love to hear from you!
- Your customers will be running a centralised practice management platform (basically a specialised CRM), you'll need to integrate with it; this isn't easy. In fact it's really hard.
- Most of the time, the fee-earner/practitioner won't do any of their own data input, they'll have their PA do it for them, consider this when you're building a backend.
- They live and die by their Outlook calendars and contacts. You'll need to integrate with that; this is easier.
- You'll have questions about how you're storing and transmitting data and what jurisdiction its being hosted in. Some of these questions will seem naive and obvious, but legal tech is a _paranoid_ market.
- This is also a CONSERVATIVE market, they fear change, they don't like change. This is a constant uphill battle.
- The flip side is that 90% of the software in this market is 5-10 years old and "cloud" solutions are novel and strange to them (cf fear about data storage)
- Focus on mobile. Ignore desktop. Seriously.
- Don't discount this only being applicable for lawyers, any professional service industry (financial planners etc) will benefit from this.
- You're right compliance, audit trails, history is EVERYTHING. Pitch it as a record keeping solution for the firm, not a productivity tool for the practitioner.
- Bake in export. Make the data as easy to get out and easy to get in.