

New Series Seed legal forms now in Markdown on Github - cfield
https://github.com/seriesseed/equity

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twakefield
Awesome. I was just commenting to our lawyers the other day how badly the
legal industry needs better version control for documents.

The existing paradigm is to pay associates $300/hr to pass redlined word
documents back and forth or markup docs by hand during phone calls / meetings
and then give the hand marked up docs to legal assistants to input changes.

Inevitably things get lost in translation and it's difficult to figure out why
things changed versions ago. It's also very expensive.

The resistance to change is driven by the fact that the majority of lawyers
make a lot of money being inefficient.

I'm guessing github is not the preferred interface for lawyers but it could
very well be the engine behind a more "lawyer friendly" interface.

Great to see the seeds of change being sewn, anyways.

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rayiner
The idea that lawyers do things inefficiently on purpose to inflate bills
ignores basic Econ 101 principles. Corporate law is a field with dozens of
producers and fairly fungible products. If a piece of technology really saved
a lot of attorney time, firms would have huge incentive to move to it capture
market share against the other producers. What they lost in billable hours on
any one matter would be more than offset by additional business gained by
offering lower costs at the same billing rate. Moreover, more use of
technology increases associate utilization, increase leverage, and helps keep
headcount down, which, especially in the last several years, is a key factor
in maintaining partner profits. Finally, many of the top firms regularly turn
down business because they don't have the capacity--these firms have a lot of
incentive to do more with each associate. For things that are truly
productivity boosters, like say electronic document review platforms, firms
have quickly abandoned old methods and moved to new ones.

Lawyers don't use Github for documents for the same reason nobody else uses
Github for documents. Corporate America's workflow is based on Word/Excel/etc.
There's no good Github-like service for Word/Excel/etc that's appreciably
better than passing redlined documents back and forth. There is a business
opportunity here for an enterprising engineer... And while you're at it, how
about something that's better for marking up documents than a print out and a
red pen?

~~~
twakefield
"The resistance to change is driven by the fact that the majority of lawyers
make a lot of money being inefficient."

Your comments refuting this are well taken and in hindsight my comment above
was cynical and lazy...probably somewhat due to recently paying an enormous
legal bill.

~~~
rayiner
Totally understandable... Legal technology is a fairly interesting sub-field
that has implications for corporate administrative technology more generally
(at least in larger companies). The document management problem is far from
solved, for example. There has been a push towards a more diverse set of legal
service offerings. Not every deal needs to be scrutinized in the same way as a
mega-merger. But that's something clients have to be on board with--accept
more risk for lower cost and faster turn-around. Boutiques are popping up that
are offering such services.

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jpdoctor
Would also like to see NDAs, Employment Agreements (and handbooks).

It is time that the legal profession joined the 21st century and automates
that which can be automated.

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breck
This is really great.

One question. I understand that the set of items in these documents is
carefully chosen based on many years of experience and thousands of data
points. A lawyer could probably take a look at this and understand it in 10
minutes.

But for a non lawyer, it seems like too much too soon. I have to figure most
companies will need very few of these provisions.

Is there a way to structure this type of document so that the most important
thing(s) only could be included, perhaps on one page?

And then structure it in such a way that every few months, or few years, you
add a "plugin" for your particular company needs?

My problem with these types of documents is that for 2 guys in a garage they
seem to be overkill, and it would be nicer if there were a simpler option that
starts with a tiny core that you can then add on as you go.

~~~
jwb119
Thanks for the compliments on the docs, breck. I helped get these up on GitHub
and I think the existing document that would come closest to what you're
looking for is the term sheet. That's essentially a one page summary of the
key terms that are laid out in the other documents.

Regarding the "plug in" process you mention, that's actually a good analogy
for what happens between these docs, which are used in a seed round, and the
larger set of docs that are used in a next round like a Series A. Believe it
or not, these Series Seed docs are significantly stripped down from what
Series A docs look like.

Not sure if that entirely answers your question or not, but let me know if
there's anything I can help out with.

~~~
breck
Thanks for the response Jason, and for the docs.

That does answer my question. I guess for me, I see these documents and I am
overwhelmed. But that's just probably because it's so foreign to me.

I actually was going to say, is there anyway to make these documents more
concise like underscore.js? Then I opened up underscore.js in Textmate, hit
print, and realized it would be 30 pages printed.

I guess I didn't realize how much the perceived length of something depends on
the background of the reader. For me, underscore.js is small and concise, for
a non programmer it probably looks like a tome. When I saw the Seed docs to me
it was a tome, but to you it's probably a quick read.

I do wish legal docs were smaller. But I also wish code were smaller. And I
don't really have an answer to how to make that so!

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tawgx
If only we could get to a point where we can use these for series A as well.
Having to pay $50K for you (and your VC's) legal expenses for an SPA which is
95% boilerplate, is painful and something I pray can get standardized.

~~~
wist105
Agreed. But you gotta start somewhere right?

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gojomo
Git & Markdown for legal and government documents could get very interesting.

Markdown extensions for inline change-indications may be part of the puzzle as
well:

<http://criticmarkup.com/users-guide.php>

~~~
chimeracoder
For what it's worth, you may be interested in taking a look at Docracy
(<http://www.docracy.com/>), which is doing what you describe.

