Y Combinator's Newest Legal Tech Startup Is Taking On Immigration

Y Combinator is very interested in the legal market.

Zach ImmigrationDo you ever get requests from friends — or RFIs from colleagues for that matter — asking for a reasonably priced immigration lawyer? Well, there may be an app for that, and at $249, it’s a much better price than a lawyer.

Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley fund of choice for emerging tech entrepreneurs, likes to invest in world changing companies. Part of that mission has included investing in several “legal start-ups” including CaseText, SimpleLegal, Willing and ROSS Intelligence just to name a few. YC President Sam Altman confirmed to me that the continued investment is not accidental, and that legal is an area that YC really likes.

So it is easy to understand why YC recently invested in SimpleCitizen, a company that is taking one of, if not the, single biggest issues in our country right now: immigration. The company is launching what they are referring to as TurboTax for immigration, i.e. immigration sans lawyer. And, apparently, even text book cases of immigration can get expensive. Founder Sam Stoddard learned that when his wife, EunJoon Yoon, had to go through the immigration process, which they learned would cost them $2,500 in legal fees; other cases can run as high as $18,000.

SimpleCitizen is aiming to streamline the entire process so that average people can navigate immigration without the use of a lawyer. Since the company is early stage, they are doing more than a few things that don’t scale. So, for instance, they are currently partnering with Jacob Sapochnick, an immigration lawyer who is reviewing all necessary documents. My assumption is that they’re trying to get to a point where they have taught their system how to review the forms and applications, but training a system to read and review documents takes time and a lot of good developers.

And SimpleCitizen is making the case that the addressable market is not only the number of people accepted into the United States, but the number of people who apply, which they estimate at 3 million annually. Plus, they point out that, despite heavy investment from the United States Government, the online process is a nightmare. To be honest, I haven’t checked it out but only because the mere thought of looking at a .gov site will have me in the fetal position, weeping deeply in no time.

I thought it would be fun to get Sam Stoddard, SimpleCitizen’s founder  plus the aforementioned immigration lawyer Jacob Sapochnick on ATL for a little talk and find out more about what all this means for immigration and immigration lawyers. And, a note to all lawyers who might be sitting on any good ideas for legal start-ups: Y Combinator’s next application opens up at the end of the summer.

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

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