

Lawdingo, The Startup That Lets You Talk To Lawyers Instantly, Joins YC - nirmel
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/lawdingo-y-combinator/

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tptacek
This looks neat.

Say I was starting a small dev consultancy, and what I wanted to figure out
was, "what lawyer should I use to review the master agreements I get from each
new client?"

Could I use Lawdingo to cheaply audition a bunch of different lawyers for
contract reviews? In that situation, my long-term goal would be to find 1-2
lawyers I could consistently use every time I had new paper to review. I might
want to compare the markups I get from different lawyers on the same contract.

I'm not asking for me (now that we're part of a public company we apparently
have faucets that shoot lawyers out of them) but this is a question I've
gotten from lots of friends trying to figure out how to do contract review
correctly, instead of just hoping they aren't getting screwed.

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nirmel
Great use case to think about. It is definitely suited for interviewing
multiple lawyers in a short amount of time. Our primary focus is on the
initial legal consultation, which lends itself directly identifying the one or
more lawyers you want to work with long-term.

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tptacek
I think there's probably market traction not only in capturing people who are
looking for a lawyer, but in getting people who should be consulting lawyers
more often.

Maybe there's a way to standardize the offering to get some of that usage;
instead of "chat with a lawyer", "upload a contract" or something.

I think this is a very real problem you're working on, and it has the nice
property of being a problem that is common not only to startups but to small
tech businesses of all sorts.

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nirmel
Interestingly, we see far more usage among people with family, criminal,
personal injury, landlord-tenant, and other normal-people cases than
startups/businesses. I suppose it should not be a surprise that many orders of
magnitude more people get divorced than decide to start a startup.

I do like the upload documents idea, though, and we'll explore that and get
there soon enough.

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mbesto
I'd imagine a majority of the questions being asked have to reference most
legal documents. A couple of examples I think in my own recent memory:

    
    
      1. Term sheet / Letter of Intent Review
      2. Am I supposed to pay X% in taxes this year? (need to see a tax form)
      3. Is my landlord screwing me for making me pay X amount after I've moved out? (need to provide the lease)
      4. What happens in the UK SEIS scheme if the company fails? (need to review SEIS scheme details) 
    

A majority of the law (albeit very minute) that I've encountered, the first
thing I usually have to do is fill out a questionnaire. I wonder if you could
also get lawyers to provide sample questionnaires to at least get the
background information.

As my most recent accountant visit said to me "I don't want to do the donkey
work if you can do it yourself. You shouldn't have to pay for that." This
should be no different for lawyers. The value is much more transparent then. I
suppose that's your overall goal, no?

Site looks nice...good luck!

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tatsuke95
This seems like a great concept.

Everyone needs a lawyer, at some point. And with the dearth of new Law grads
out there, there is supply. Get international!

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dirkdk
awesome! Just proofs that against all odds, traction is still the most
important metric to show success for an early stage startup

good luck Nikhil

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hnwh
this is surprisingly cool.. I need lawyers with international specialization
though.. as soon as you guys hit this, i'm on board

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asimjalis
Neat how the founder is using his status as a single-founder instead of part
of a team to get buzz in the media.

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niggler
SEC needs more lawyers -- three weeks waiting time to speak to a lawyer is far
too long.

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gamblor956
So...basically this is just an Avvo clone using Rails/Bootcamp, minus a lot of
client development features, and...more expensive?

Competition for legal services is a good thing, but all this really has going
for it right now is the name.

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A1kmm
It looks like using Avvo.com is more like StackOverflow - it is a Q & A site
that claims not to create a lawyer-client relationship between the lawyer and
someone who asks a question on the site.

LawDingo seems to let you actually become a client of a lawyer and consult
with them in private, which gives you much more legal protection, and seems to
be a completely different thing.

~~~
gamblor956
Maybe you should try using Avvo before you make that comparison?

Both Avvo and LawDingo provide initial consult meetings. The difference is
that Avvo _also_ provides general Q&A, lawyer ratings, and a referral service
(separate from the client service, targeted at lawyers seeking clients).

