What Legal Tech Products Do Lawyers Hate?

This is the moment ATLers have been wait for -- get ready to unleash your hate.

Last week, a post on Medium voiced some biting criticism of popular tech site Product Hunt, a place where makers can submit their products and techies can go to learn about them and upvote the best products. For example, here’s where I launched ReplyAll on Product Hunt (feel free to upvote the sh*t out of it). Since launching, Product Hunt has been very well received, particularly with Silicon Valley insiders, and this post on Medium was the first critique that seemed to gain any traction. It even set off a hateful comment-a-thon on popular tech forum HackerNews. I have some strong feelings about Product Hunt myself (more positive than negative), but reading through some of the vitriol on HackerNews, it was as if these people had been balling up their feelings just waiting for the opportunity to lash out.

Now, you might think that all this hate is a bad thing, but I drew a different conclusion. But before I bias you with my position, try the following experiment at home: close your eyes and think of the technology that you and others you know hate and complain about most. Chances are you’re thinking of well known, wide spread products made by successful companies (Btw, this experiment works with law firms too, which explains why I keep visualizing Skadden).

Of course, it’s better to elicit feelings of love, but hate comes in a pretty close second. And while Product Hunt CEO Ryan Hoover says that Product Hunt team is internalizing the feedback in order to improve their platform, I hope they don’t overreact to hate. Remember all the people who hated Twitter or complained about the glitches on Skype? Can you imagine if the folks at Twitter had overreacted and changed the 140 character limit?

Startups shouldn’t worry about being hated, they should worry about being irrelevant. Hate means you’re relevant.

When I worked as a legal intern for ESPN on-air personality Max Kellerman, he taught me that success came from being hated or loved. If you wanted to be successful, the one thing you couldn’t be was lukewarm. Howard Stern understood this, Donald Trump gets it as well.

Early on, when I started publishing ReplyAll conversations here on ATL, we got lots of positive feedback, but we were also on the receiving end of some well-placed hatred in the comments section. Others on our team were concerned, nay, embarrassed by the hate, but I loved it. I would have been much more concerned if no one had taken the time to comment.

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Which brings me (in an admittedly roundabout way) to #legaltech. I tried this experiment with legal tech and I honestly couldn’t think of anything I or other lawyers I know really hated. Sure, I hate Lexis and Westlaw, but that’s because I associate them with staying up all night doing research projects for Saul, the chemically imbalanced partner at F&D (wink, wink).

So ATL readers, I need your help. Hit me up on Twitter, in the comments section below or, if you’re shy, shoot me an email. I want to know what technology lawyers hate and why? My guess — and it’s just a guess — is that these hated products are, like Product Hunt, either very successful already or well on their way.


Zach Abramowitz is a former Biglaw associate and currently CEO and co-founder ofReplyAll. You can follow Zach on Twitter (@zachabramowitz) or reach him by email at zach@replyall.me.

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