

Can Paperless Docs Reduce Startup Legal Costs? - bproper
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/05/paperless-financing-docs.html

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russellallen
We already do documents for clients in electronic form where possible. The
limitation usually is outside bodies such as banks who insist on 'wet ink'
signatures.

It does reduce fussing, for example when signing a multiparty contract, but it
doesn't fundamentally change or services.

Standard contracts were always available and any decent lawyer has their own
precedents, but part of what the client is paying for is how to use those
precedents.

Just like standard open source software is available, but people still pay
developers and sys admins...

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wccrawford
I don't see how. The legal costs aren't the paper, but the work that goes into
making the paper. Making bits instead of paper is going to be just as costly
because that's how lawyers make their money.

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wisty
No, the point is that the contracts are standardized.

There's a github for legal docs mentioned. So you can just pull off a standard
"NDA", and not worry so much about writing your own boilerplate, or searching
for landmines in your opponent's terms.

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iwwr
I wonder why law firms don't just sell ready-made and digitally signed boiler
plate like that.

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avichal
Law firms are being disrupted like many other industries because of the
Internet. They are set up with lots of overhead, expensive service based
employees, and have a lot of mouths to feed. And since it's service based they
have an incentive to bill for the maximum allowable hours that they can bill.
Depending on where you set the fee cap for your round you can bet that most
law firms will (magically) end up within 10% of that cap.

