alt.legal: Why Is There No YouTube For Legal?

Columnist Ed Sohn of alt.legal interviews Suzanne Natbony, co-founder and CEO of LawTake.

Let’s say we were at the local bar / café / kettlebell class and I asked you any one of these questions:

How do you remove icky wallpaper from 80-year-old plaster walls?

What’s the most foolproof way to put your hair in a bun?

Have you heard of this Stack-and-Tilt method for hitting a long drive?

If your instinct was to reach for your phone and YouTube it, nice work. You’re not alone—according to Google, how-to videos are growing 70% year-on-year, with over 100 million hours viewed this year.

(If the words “my grandparent taught me” or “that is useless knowledge” were anywhere in your consciousness, you can go ahead, stop reading, and get off the internet, Ron Swanson. That tiny sharpened stick isn’t going to whittle itself.)

For today’s frazzled associates, Google or YouTube might not have all the answers to their questions. Litigators may try to turn to DeskSite or WestKM or online brief banks, or attorneys on a tighter budget can at least jump onto PACER and grab briefs from cases. For in-house counsel or transactional lawyers, maybe it’s Practical Law’s checklists and templates for transactional documents, or even EDGAR filings of complex instruments.

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These are helpful tools, for people with those products and working on those types of tasks. But sometimes, the practice of law demands reinvention, a radical return to sensibility, to intuition. Why isn’t there a library of YouTube videos for creating an LLC, filing for an H1-B visa, or registering your company’s trademark?

I’m so glad you asked. Suzanne Natbony, co-founder and CEO of LawTake, is a transactional and regulatory senior counsel at McCullough Sudan. She also has a history of working at several startups, and in 2012, she started LawTake, a website where attorneys help people solve their legal issues by posting content – particularly, videos with legal information – and being available to connect to those people.

Ed Sohn: Suzanne, tell me about LawTake. What do you all do?

Suzanne Natbony: LawTake is the answer for people who are dissatisfied with the current legal market. Unlike current legal services websites that are ineffective at resolving problems or confusing, LawTake is a marketplace for lawyers to post information that consumers can purchase, namely, informative videos on the law. LawTake aggregates videos and legal content similar to YouTube but also offers premium services for lawyers that create instructional videos on the law, along with customizable forms and accompanying materials for consumers to purchase, similar to the way Amazon sells products to consumers. This package can save consumers hundreds of dollars in legal fees and enables top marketing, alternative revenue sources and efficiencies for the lawyers’ legal services, thus creating a win-win situation. Lawyers can set up free accounts and upload their content. They can set a price for their content, of which we’ll take a fee. There’s also premium accounts, where we can help them create professional videos, some of which are LawTake branded.

ES: What kind of lawyers have signed up for LawTake?

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SN: Some from large law firms, more from smaller practices. It makes sense for transactional attorneys, especially with the forms.

ES: So there’s other sites out there like this, right? What makes you unique?

SN: Actually, I don’t think there really is any other site like this out there, where it’s only lawyers developing the content themselves and gaining a second source of income this way. LegalZoom has forms but no step-by-step instructional videos. Avvo has ratings but not forms or the ability for a lawyer to profitize the content. This is really a better spot for lawyers that want to increase their reach.

ES: LegalZoom has some well-documented issues around the unauthorized practice of law. Is this a concern for you? That these videos and forms constitute legal advice?

SN: We addressed this as a potential risk in our business plan, the unauthorized practice of law. We have disclaimers on our site, and the videos contain legal information but not advice. In fact, when we first started, we wanted to be purely instructional and educational, calling them Consumer Legal Education (as a play on “CLE”!). But we found that a lot of lawyers were really reluctant to reveal their secret sauce in the videos.

ES: How do you navigate that? How do you balance providing a worthwhile service with real benefit to users against lawyers that just want to put marketing fluff up there?

SN: We pivoted to enable lawyers to upload marketing videos, especially in areas like litigation and criminal defense, where self-representation is not such a good idea. The lawyers can provide a semblance of useful information and the rest of it can be self-marketing.

And that marketing is actually part of the appeal. Lawyers that can be seen on video can connect with clients in a way that demonstrates they aren’t weird or awkward, and that’s valuable for our users.

ES: But how do you monitor the quality of those videos?

SN: First, lawyers that want to join the site have to confirm that they are members of the state bar and that they have malpractice insurance. Then they have to certify that their video is instructional or useful in hiring them. Finally, we have a ratings system, and like YouTube and other sites, when there’s a very low rating or a negative comment, there’s an alert system that notifies us that there’s a potential risk with a video. If we investigate and discover that it’s really not a good video, we can take the videos down.

But when someone has poor quality lighting or not the best sound, but the information is still good, we’ve found that users are still happy. They are more interested in hearing something that’s useful than being critical about other things.

ES: It sounds like the videos are really at the heart of this. What makes videos so unique for LawTake?

SN: I just always believed that a lot of the legal information people need comes down to giving them a template and letting them watch a video on how to fill out the template. Videos make a big difference. We’ve structured our videos in a particular way, so that we’re not just talking heads or lecturers. For the branded videos we produce, our lawyers are in a conference room setting, in a format where they are talking to a mock client. We write a script and utilize an actor as the client, who has a legal problem. The lawyers and the actor interact similar to the way an initial consult would occur, with a realistic conversation, utilizing a Q&A back and forth. We add humor and show the viewer that the lawyers are approachable.

ES: I think there’s something really there. What’s the near term objective for LawTake?

SN: For now, our objective is to get 500 videos and 500 documents, however long it takes. The operating costs of the company are pretty low, so we’ll keep going until we get to that point. In terms of revenue, I’d have to defer to our CFO.

ES: What’s the long-term objective? Is getting acquired lurking in the background?

SN: Yeah, definitely! Selling your company, doing an IPO, these are really huge successes for any entrepreneur. For now, though, it feels really good that people are using the site and it’s making people happy. I have no complaints.

ES: Let’s talk about your story as an entrepreneur in this legal technology startup space. How did you get started? How did you form your team?

SN: I had worked for two startups and worked at two law firms, and I still practice law today. One of my friends said that I should I come up with videos to help students study for the bar, but based on my experiences, it would be better to make videos for potential clients.

I made other contacts, some of whom are now on our team, and realized that I had a network of people who could help. One of my family friends makes legal websites. Another was able to help put together videos. With this network that was right here, I couldn’t believe that someone else hadn’t already done something like this. I got seed funding from family and friends and we started to pull it together.

In terms of my team, having mentors – and having your own mentees – is really important for me, even as an attorney. But you have to make your own decisions. You can’t be a perfectionist sometimes, you have to get something that works, and things have to get done.

ES: What about the risk that is required to do something like this?

SN: I’m a prudent risk-taker. With your own startup, you have to be really optimistic, which is different than when I counsel clients as an attorney. With clients you have to advise them on their risks and let them make their own decisions. But with your own business, you have to believe in it. You can also keep your costs low, just like you would in legal practice. That’s why it’s prudent risk-taking.

ES: Any final words of advice?

SN: In doing a startup, it takes a lot longer than you think, and you need more money than you think. So if it’s possible, it’s worth trying to keep your day job and do something like this on the side.

Oh, and also, any entrepreneur should not only read The Art of the Start and The Lean Startup, but also Angel Investing, written by the founder of Gust, where startups get connected with investors. The book discusses what angel investors are looking for, how they evaluate profitability, and why only the top 25% of ventures even get considered and 75% should never be funded, while only 2.5% actually get funding. It’s a good book to get perspective on what investors are looking for and how to get investment into your company.


Ed Sohn is a Global Director at Thomson Reuters’ award-winning legal outsourcing company, Pangea3, which employs approximately 1,000 full-time attorneys globally. After five and a half years as a Biglaw litigation associate, Ed spent over two years in New Delhi, India, managing hundreds of Indian attorneys and professionals in delivering high-value managed legal services. He now focuses on developing integrated technology and outsourced legal solutions. You can contact Ed about e-discovery, managed legal services, theology, chess, Star Trek The Next Generation, or the Chicago Bulls at edward.sohn@thomsonreuters.com.

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