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DIY Startup Legal Tools: Self-Diagnosis v. Self-Treatment

Image by Barbara Krawcowicz via Flickr

I have an awesome idea for a startup. Let’s call it LunaDoc. LunaDoc will be a website where you answer a series of algorithm-based questions about a health-related issue you’re dealing with, and then it will suggest to you a diagnosis. Sounds great, right? That’s probably why dozens of these exist already.

But let’s go one step further. After diagnosing you, LunaDoc will generate a prescription and send it to your pharmacy of choice, after which you can pick it up without the hassle or expense of ever having to talk with an actual physician.

If you’re half sane, you should have suddenly thought something along the lines of, “Whoa there, tiger.” Why is that? Because self-diagnosis, or educating someone enough to better understand their problem, is great. But self-treatment, or turning that new knowledge into a high-stakes action with potentially permanent consequences, without consulting a professional, can be absolutely nuts.

Sidenote: As I’ve done many times before, I’m going to leverage this healthcare example into a metaphor for the startup law context.  I truly believe there’s a lot that people in startup law can learn from the healthcare profession, so I’m going to milk this metaphor until the cows come home.

Self-Diagnosis

For years entrepreneurs have been fortunate enough to have an incredible amount of accurate, well-articulated, and free knowledge about startup law issues on the web; some in the form of blog posts and some in the form of articles. I’m a huge fan of recommending online resources to clients as a way to educate themselves without being billed hundreds of dollars an hour for it. And it makes the time that I personally spend with them more efficient (and cost-effective) because we can get right down to business without having to go through basic stuff.

Startup law blogs and articles are the legal equivalent of healthcare websites that help with self-diagnosis. Their role is simply educational, and can help a client (patient) better engage a professional in turning the diagnosis into a solution. While some doctors might complain about patients becoming “google doctors,” a more educated client base is uncontroversially a net positive.

Self-Treatment: Guided v. Unguided

Lately, however, we’re starting to see the web do what it always does: provide tools that attempt to dis-intermediate an economic relationship and let people completely handle things themselves. Self-diagnosis is evolving into self-treatment.

Major law firms have started posting standardized contracts on their websites for free.  Capography, a really cool new tool, lets entrepreneurs manage their own cap tables and even run a limited number of waterfall analyses to see how funds would flow in an exit. Docracy has emerged as an incredible source for hundreds of free contract forms for a wide variety of contexts, and they even let you execute the contract from the comfort of your own home, without ever having to go through the hassle or expense of talking with an actual lawyer (sound familiar)?

The much greater danger with these kinds of tools, much like with LunaDoc, is the issue of permanence. Education is flexible and easily correctable, but treatments are forever. Or perhaps better said, contractual and transactional mistakes are often extremely expensive to fix, if they’re fixable at all.

While everyone knows how much of a fan I am of standardization, automation, and any tool (toy) that allows attorneys to avoid repetitive, boring tasks, the fact of the matter is that tech startups are not coffee shops, and startup contracts are not wills. As I’ve mentioned before, startup law is a multi-specialty, highly contextual sport.  There are countless tax, employment law, securities law, and other state law issues that might come into play in your particular context, some of which need to be handled in the contract, and others that are completely separate from it. Signing the wrong contract, or taking the wrong legal action, isn’t that different from taking the wrong pill.  The side effects may be serious, or even lethal.

But, wait, aren’t law firms themselves putting up these standardized forms? Read the terms of service, my friend. Zero liability. Their skin isn’t in the game. Just yours. Those are marketing tools.

Attorney-Directed Self-Help

There’s a slightly different approach that a few companies are taking to allow entrepreneurs to do some things themselves and minimize their legal spend, while ensuring that a professional who understands the context is guiding the process. Brightleaf has a brilliant concept called a Leaflet. After speaking with a client and understanding what they’re trying to do, an attorney can easily turn a form into a self-help, automated tool. For example, you can turn the Company’s board-approved Option Grant form into a leaflet that allows the client to input the name, date, etc., and auto-generate option grant forms without bothering his law firm. Of course, every time you generate a form, the attorney sees it. Self-help, but with an experienced and invested professional making sure you don’t blow something up.

VCExpert’s Private Company Analysis Tool (PCAT) allows a law firm to input and update a Company’s capitalization info, and a client can then run any number of reports using that data without having to consult the attorney. Again, someone’s there making sure the inputs are correct and that things don’t go awry, but the client doesn’t have to ask his attorney to generate a different report (often hours of work) every time he wants to see the vesting status of options or the funds flow of a potential exit.

Empowering clients and unlocking information from artificial silos is awesome. Pretending that technology can completely replace professional judgment and contextual understanding when it simply can’t… not so much.

Yes, I understand that self-help tools are really about the under/un-served.

Of course, downloading a free contract form drafted by someone who at least knew what they were doing is light-years better than issuing stock with a 3-line contract written on a napkin.  And that’s why I’m not going to say that un-guided self-help tools aren’t a benefit to the startup ecosystem.

Much like how cheap, mass-market contract websites have made wills and basic corporate forms available to people who would never have contacted an attorney to begin with, I get that there’s an underserved market here that needs these tools.  Just keep in mind that how much effort and expense you’re willing to incur in protecting your startup is, in many ways, a reflection of how seriously you take its prospects.  If you’re sitting on a dud, who cares if your employment forms aren’t enforceable in your state, or if you didn’t fill out your stock issuance forms correctly? But if you think it’s a home run (and why would you waste your time on something that you think isn’t?)… well, you get the idea. Investors will too.

Why experienced entrepreneurs hire better lawyers.

There are goods and services for which quality is apparent to the consumer from the beginning, and then there are those where what you actually got for your money can take years to figure out.  Transactional lawyering is decidedly in the latter category, although it often takes a client some personal seasoning (or good advice) to figure that out.

Fundamentally, there are two “jobs” that a client will typically hire outside corporate counsel for in a transaction. The first is getting the transaction done. This is the job that all clients are aware of, no matter how much experience is under their belt.  As long as the client gets his/her desired economic terms, papers get signed, and wires get initiated, all seems to have gone as planned.

But the more experienced entrepreneurs (and unfortunately that experience often isn’t pleasant) know that good legal counsel will serve a second function. While not as simple to define as the first, let’s call it transactional insurance. Some illustrations would be helpful here.

Formation. You have a great startup idea, got together with some co-founders, and want to make it official. You incorporate, issue some founder stock, perhaps authorize an equity plan, and you’re good to go. Put the papers away and forget about them. No worries here, right?

  • What if one of the founders later claims that some of the Company’s IP is his/hers and not the Company’s?
  • What if some of that founder’s work was done on a prior employer’s time/hardware, and that employer now claims ownership of the IP?
  • What if one of the founders dies? Where does their stock go?
  • What if one of the founders gets divorced. Where does their stock go?
  • What if a founder decides to leave the Company after  a year? Where does their stock go?
  • What if someone sues the Company and you personally?
  • What if the IRS comes back 4 years from now and says you owe them a bunch of $ on your vested stock?
  • What if it turns out that a founder had a non-compete agreement with a prior employer with deep pockets, and working at your Company violates it?
  • Insert 3 dozen other scenarios here.

VC/Angel Financing: Everyone signed the papers and sent you checks. Awesome. No worries, right?

  • What happens if we decide to sell the Company early?
  • What happens if we want to raise a new financing, but not all of our current investors are on board?
  • What if an investor decides 5 years from now that he wants his money back?
  • What happens if the IRS claims 3 years from now that we issued stock at too cheap of a price and tax is owed?
  • What happens if an angel investor sues the Company claiming that we fraudulently withheld information from them?
  • What happens if the SEC claims that we sold stock illegally to unqualified investors? Wait, what does college football have to do with this?
  • Insert 3 dozen other scenarios here as well.

The quality of the process and legal drafting that took place in the above scenarios will determine whether a resolution could be as simple as (i) pulling up a document, (ii) pointing to Section 2.3(a)(i), and (iii) getting back to work, or something that could destroy years of hard work in an instant.

From the perspective of a lean entrepreneur who just wants Minimum Viable Lawyering, signing some papers provided for free or a few hundred bucks felt like success.  But experienced entrepreneurs typically have a better sense of the nightmare they may be inheriting by going with the attorney or firm who claims to do the exact same thing as the “overpriced” guys, but at a substantial discount.

Granted, there is a lot to be said for Job #1, and there’s no shortage of movement in the legal industry toward getting the transaction done quickly and cost-effectively.  That topic is the subject of perhaps 80% of my blog posts.  But something is only truly cost-effective when it efficiently accomplishes all of the tasks that you hired it for – not when it provides the trappings of a job-well-done, but kicks any number of disasters down the road.  

I can’t tell you how much time we spend cleaning up the work of bad lawyers who looked, at the time, like a bargain. Experienced entrepreneurs hire efficient lawyers. Inexperienced entrepreneurs hire cheap ones.

The Economic Deflation of Startup Law

News.  Two big issues have been floating around the startup law space lately. First, Yokum Taku introduced “convertible equity” in an attempt to address the potential downsides (for entrepreneurs) of convertible debt, which set off a debate that Antone Johnson spectacularly Storified. More interesting to me, however, was AngelList’s announcement that seed rounds can now be closed, soup-to-nuts, on their platform.  The real news there, for lawyers at least, is that Wilson Sonsini will close those rounds for free.  Yes, as in nothing.

Startup Law – Deflation Accelerating

Much has been written about the “deflationary economics” concerning startups and the web, with Mark Suster’s post probably being one of the best articulations that come to mind.  Not as much has been written about the indirect effects that industries experiencing economic deflation can have on other sectors they interact with.  Wilson Sonsini’s AngelList pronouncement is, in my opinion, the clearest sign that the portion of the legal sector working with technology startups is itself experiencing rapid deflation — and not because lawyers have suddenly shed their luddite tendencies and read ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ (though they should).

What’s happened, essentially, is that with literally every other service used by their clients becoming radically cheaper, and the resulting downsizing of investment rounds, startup lawyers simply couldn’t maintain their usual fees and keep a straight face.  This deflation started out with what you might call Stage 1 deflation, with standardized docs emerging, fixed fee packages, etc.  Startup Law was just efficient at this stage, especially compared to other areas of the law.  But with free, dynamically generated documents from high-end firms available online, and now with one of the best firms in the country saying they will close seed rounds for free, I’d say its reached Stage 2, where commoditized is the more appropriate adjective.  And I’d argue that this has some serious implications going forward.

How We Got Here

First, it’s worth reflecting on the different steps that startup law firms have been (or should be) taking in order to compete in this deflationary environment.  I’d break those steps into 3 categories: contractual, technological, and operational.  These steps could also serve as a model for other parts of the legal field that, while not as aggressively deflationary as startup law, will likely eventually follow a similar path.

Contractual. 

  • Standard Firm Docs – In order to make contract drafting more efficient, firms started modularizing the language of their own documents.  If an investor gets a 1x participating liquidation preference with a 3x cap as opposed to the 1x non-participating currently in the document, ‘drafting’ involves mostly cutting and pasting bracketed language, with minimal tinkering.  While this cut down on internal drafting, it still left room for bickering about language with the other side of the deal.
  • Universal Standard Docs – Going one step further, standardized investor docs like the Series AA and the NVCA Model docs emerged, allowing for parties on both sides to have a common language framework to work from.

Technological.

The contractual efficiencies developed in startup law still required the usual process of opening a word document, filling in blanks, moving around language in a very straight-line fashion, and then proofing to make sure everything is coherent.  Closing required creating signature packets, then tracking signatures and assembling them back into fully executed copies.  But then technology emerged to streamline a lot of this process.

  • Proofing Software – A significant amount of time on a transaction used to be spent by junior attorneys flipping through pages to make sure names are properly spelled, commas are in the right place, and defined terms are properly in place.  Software like Deal Proof emerged that can scan a document and generate a proofing list for an attorney, cutting down on that proofing time by anywhere from (my estimate) 50-75%.
  • Document Automation – Companies like Brightleaf have emerged to turn the cut-paste-and-proof process of working with form docs into one of simply clicking certain options in a form.  Want that 1x participating LP w/ 3X Cap? Just click the right box in your template, and the language will get filled-in automatically, and every other area of the document that is impacted will also be modified. No need to proof.
  • Electronic Closing.  –  With multiple parties often signing dozens of documents, the usual closing process involved creating “signature packets” where you PDF’ed the signature pages of each contract, and created single files containing all the pages that each individual party had to sign.  Without doing this, mistakes would be inevitable.  With electronic signature software like Docusign, this process is largely removed.  Put the ‘Sign Here’ tabs for each person in the appropriate places, and Docusign will (1) guide them to where they need to sign, and (2) generate fully executed documents.

Operational.

One obvious end-result of the contractual and technological developments has been that drafting simply takes a lot less time, which naturally means less money billed.  But what they’ve also done is made the drafting and closing process a lot simpler.  To modify a vesting schedule or a liquidation preference, you don’t really need to understand the actual mechanics of the language. Just click the box.  And to get a deal signed up, you don’t need to create complicated signature packets and coordinate signatures.  Just drop the Docusign tags in the right place, and it’ll do the rest.

Firms have taken advantage of this simplicity by pushing work down to junior attorneys and even paralegals, who bill a lot less per hour.  Where it might have previously required an experienced attorney to draft and close a seed financing, an innovative firm might have a paralegal do 95% of the work, with zero drop in quality.  A partner or senior attorney might spend a few minutes discussing very high-level issues with the client, but that’s it.

The Next Step: Deal Platforms

I have zero doubt that Wilson Sonsini is taking advantage of all three of the above categories.  But the key to really get the kind of deflation reflected in the free AngelList closings is the next step of legal technology: Deal Platforms.  Rather than just the initial drafting of docs being automated, with negotiation over terms and language to follow, the automation becomes bilateral.  If the investor wants a better liquidation preference, he simply fills in a field or checks a different box, and if the Company disagrees, they uncheck that box.

Contract language becomes completely secondary – commoditized – on a deal platform.  One can easily envision a time in which the negotiation of a full venture deal, not just a convertible note financing, involves nothing more than checking boxes and filling in a few fields, with full documents automatically generated and then electronically signed.  The chances of closing such a deal for free are practically zero, but all that automation could make a ~$10K legal bill for a full institutional venture capital financing a reality, which would be about a 50-80% cut on current rates.

Takehome: Nobody should be myopic enough to expect AngelList-like automation to stop at the seed deal stage.  Again, The Innovator’s Dilemma, legal version.  See below from AngelList’s Q&A.

Does Docs support Series A rounds?

No. Docs only supports seed rounds right now. (emphasis added)

Implications: Freemium Startup Law

There are a number of ways that this rapid deflation has and likely will impact the structure of startup law practices.  One result of the already-occurring deflation has been the growth of boutique firms competing with BigLaw by offering similar, albeit more limited, services at lower billable rates.  I wrote about this previously: ‘In Startup Law, Big Can Be Beautiful.‘

The economic advantage of a boutique practice is that firms can avoid the high billable rates necessary to sustain the breadth and overhead of large law firms, while still offering their experienced attorneys comfortable salaries.  That works well in an environment where the demand is for cheaper seed financings and venture deals. But what happens when free or practically free becomes the dominant expectation?

Cross-subsidize.  As Wilson Sonsini’s move has made absolutely clear, large firms have their own economic advantage with respect to legal fees: cross-subsidizing low-end work with profits from larger deals.  Large firms don’t just handle formations, seed financings, and venture deals, they also handle cash cow M&A and IPO transactions that are not experiencing anywhere near the kind of deflation going on at the low end.  Those deep pockets make offering free startup work a lot easier, provided enough of the loss-leaders generate big deals down the pipeline.

This model of offering a lot of stuff for free and profiting off of the high-end users should look very familiar to techies: it’s the freemium model, applied to law.  And it distinctly favors large, brand-name firms.  Boutique firms lack the institutional capacity to handle the large transactions that a larger firm can use to cross-subsidize free work.  Without more radical change, their only hope is to make up for deflation with volume.  But [insert large number] * free doesn’t pay the bills.  Commoditized deal work favors the cross-subsidization of large firms over the lower labor costs of boutique practices.

Conclusion: Move Fast, Move Up, or Move Out

At this point (when deal platforms become ubiquitous), I see smaller startup law practices having to either (A) get used to operating at much lower margins, or (B) find a way to move up-market and take a piece of the larger deals.  I wrote previously about the possibility of boutiques using technology to scale for large transactions here: The Ad-hoc Law Firm? Granted, I don’t have much visibility into how boutique practices are doing, though I’d love to hear from other attorneys or knowledgeable people on how they see the future panning out.

As for large firms operating in this space, the choice is much more straight-forward: either become radically efficient with your commoditized startup work in order to keep the pipeline flowing, or get out.  I’ve seen firms here in Austin completely exit startup work for exactly this reason.  Thankfully, we’re going with the other option.

Post-script (years later): AngelList’s experiment failed, and no “deal platforms” have emerged. Why? Flexibility and coordination. The diversity of options for even early-stage rounds, and their different appropriateness depending on context, makes full standardization and automation an impossibility. And the subjective preferences of various investors (and companies) also serves as significant resistance. Automation and flexibility are fundamental tradeoffs, and the market has chosen flexibility for high-stakes deals.