Technology

alt.legal: Who Makes Partner at Atrium?

A conversation with the newest partners.

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Ed, Hans, Jon, and Joe, celebrating Atrium

Atrium LLP, the innovative law firm with a parallel technology company Atrium LTS, announced the promotion of two of their lawyers to partner. One forgets, in the midst of all the innovation, that their law firm still makes partners.

“One of the things Justin and I bonded on immediately was our shared belief that the future of legal requires a new standard of excellence in legal management,” wrote Augie Rakow, co-founder of Atrium, on the Atrium blog. “The law firm of the future needs senior attorneys who are excellent legal and cross-functional managers.”

The two attorneys are Hans Kim, currently general manager of the corporate general counsel practice, and Jon O’Connell, the general manager of the financing business unit. Their promotion to partnership comes with an expansion of management responsibilities. Hans will handle finance and business modeling firm-wide, while Jon will contribute to professional development and culture.

Joe and I happened to be in San Francisco this week visiting clients for our day jobs at Thomson Reuters, so we made a last-minute drop-in yesterday at the Atrium office in the trendy 4th and King neighborhood. Like most offices in the Bay, we checked ourselves in at an unmanned iPad kiosk, then sat in the waiting area located directly next to the open concept work area.

From the minute you walk in, you can tell that Atrium is a startup. Outside of the Bay we talk about Atrium like an archetype, referring to it as symbolic or experimental. But at the heart of Atrium is a Bay-area startup, with a grip of software engineers on one side of the floor and a grip of lawyers on the other. Standing desks, a bike rack area, telephone booth-style call spaces, the whole nine.

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As Joe and I sat in that waiting area, I overheard someone saying something to his peers: “we have to find a way to use technology to prevent repeatable and common errors!” And there was much nodding.

A few minutes later, Stephanie Yang appeared and took us on a tour of the office space. Stephanie pointed vaguely in different sections of the floor–marketing, recruiting, engineers. Over here, the desk is where Justin usually sits. Over there are lawyers and paralegals in their respective practice groups: finance, general counsel, blockchain. Oh yes, these posters exemplify the values of the company. Yes, yes, that IS Chef Curry with the Pot. Here, take a sticker.

“We are absolutely in search of new office space, as you can see we’re already outgrowing it and we’re about to open a bunch of new reqs,” Stephanie apologized. Unnecessary. Because for Joe and I, as Biglaw alums who still spend a lot of time in various Biglaw offices, we loved the different vibe on the floor.

A company’s office exudes its identity, and what we saw sounds almost rustic or possibly immature, but it wasn’t. It felt like the beginning of something really special. No stuffy glass and concrete with modern lines and giant conference rooms; just your ragtag, Valley-startup, fast-growing team chasing a transformative vision for how law is practiced. And unlike many of the other startups we cover, Atrium is a law firm.

Office tour complete, Stephanie informed us that Augie was traveling and we had just missed Justin, but we could get some time with Hans Kim and Jon O’Connell, the aforementioned newly-minted partners at Atrium.

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Fifteen minutes later, we were huddled with Hans and Jon in a crowded local bar down the street. Both were really friendly, very approachable guys. They both have long histories at multiple large law firms, and while chatting with them there was a similar vibe as the office visit–familiar but also doing things differently.

I didn’t take great notes on our conversation, but some bits of it went something like this:

“What do your friends think of what you’re doing?” I asked.

They looked at each other and laughed. “People know that this is going to happen,” said Hans. “What we’re doing has to happen, that someone has to do it. The industry is not going to stay the same forever. And we’re giving it a real try.”

“Do you think there’s a difference in the firm’s culture?”

“Everyone is mission-oriented,” Jon said. “Everyone gets what we’re trying to do and feels empowered to do it. Also, I think we give a lot more of our team a chance to contribute.” He went on to describe the well-known, misplaced view at some law firms that paralegals are primarily administrative. “But we know they are capable of a lot more, and we view them as equal members of our team. It’s part of how we think about things differently.”

Hans added, “We are also recruiting the best talent, and we don’t skimp on compensation or anything. But people know this is a different place.”

As a product person, I couldn’t help but ask: “What’s it like, working side by side with the technology teams? Was it what you expected?”

Not at all. “I thought we’d get in a room with coders, explain what we want, and then they’d bang it out in like a couple of days,” Hans remembered.  “I had no idea how much time and effort goes into building a good product. We’re focused on a handful of tools, some really interesting things that we’d use internally to help us gain efficiencies in new ways. But it definitely takes a lot of hard work.”

“And what does the growth plan look like for Atrium? You two have been promoted as partners; does that come with all of the trappings of revenue generation, like at other law firms?”

Jon noted, “We’re really trying to grow the revenue base, serve more clients. It may have started with a lot of Justin’s personal connections in the Valley, but it’s not that so much anymore. We have a sales team, we have real marketing. We have a funnel, with MQLs and SQLs” — for those of you unfamiliar with any CRM or B2B marketing, see here — “and a real business development operation.”

(Atrium does not mess around when it comes to modern marketing, from the ground up. Augie cites, in the blog post announcement, the high NPS scores resulting from Hans and Jon’s leadership: “They are also world-class lawyers managing hundreds of Silicon Valley’s most valuable high-growth startups with NPS and client satisfaction scores that demolish legal industry benchmarks (legal industry average NPS in 2017 was 17; Atrium’s NPS is well over 50 and rising quickly).” Pretty real stuff.)

So back to what it’s like making partner at a place like this. “As for making partner, Hans and I have been general managers of our business units since the beginning, so making partner at Atrium isn’t like what it is at other firms. We’ve been owners of our business lines from the outset. We will continue to lead our teams and contribute to growing the firm.”

There was a lot more, and a better journalist may have yielded more impressive nuggets, but I did leave them with a little bit of perspective: “Everyone is watching you guys. I don’t know if you knew this, but there’s totally an arena of legal innovation and technology, nationally and globally, we’re all talking to each other all the time. And everyone is watching Atrium. The concept is impressive, the people, the investment, it’s all there, and we’re all rooting for you to show how things can be done differently.”

Brief silence.

“No pressure, though, or anything!”

Congratulations, Hans and Jon, and to the entire Atrium team!

Ed Sohn is VP, Product Management and Partnerships, for Thomson Reuters Legal Managed Services. After more than five years as a Biglaw litigation associate, Ed spent two years in New Delhi, India, overseeing and innovating legal process outsourcing services in litigation. Ed now focuses on delivering new e-discovery solutions with technology managed services. You can contact Ed about ediscovery, legal managed services, expat living in India, theology, chess, ST:TNG, or the Chicago Bulls at edward.sohn@thomsonreuters.com or via Twitter (@edsohn80). (The views expressed in his columns are his own and do not reflect those of his employer, Thomson Reuters.)

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