{"id":1251,"date":"2017-04-20T18:31:31","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T22:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/?p=460607"},"modified":"2017-04-20T18:31:31","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T22:31:31","slug":"alt-alt-legal-innovation-awards-winner-5-questions-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2017\/04\/20\/alt-alt-legal-innovation-awards-winner-5-questions-with\/","title":{"rendered":"ATL alt.legal Innovation Awards Winner: 5 Questions With Jake Heller"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"alt.legal-Winner-300x572\"Above The Law launched the alt.legal ATL Innovation Awards<\/a> last fall to recognize emerging companies that are addressing legal technology. Fifteen finalists pitched their startups at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Judges were Joe Borstein (Thomson Reuters and\u00a0ATL alt.legal columnist), Mary Juetten (CEO and Founder of Traklight), Nicole \u201cNiki\u201d Black (Legal Technology Evangelist at MyCase), and Monica Bay (journalist and ATL columnist).<\/p>\n

Following up on\u00a0the event, ATL has been posing five questions to the winners. Our goal: To show you a quick look at the startups — and the people behind the tech!<\/p>\n

Jake Heller <\/a>is the CEO and founder of Casetext, which recently moved to San Francisco and closed a $12 million funding round<\/a>.\u00a0 Heller served as an associate at Ropes & Gray in Boston from 2011 to 2013. He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2010, and his B.A. in Economics & Politics from Pitzer College in 2007.<\/p>\n

The company launched in 2013, and has 20 employees. Laura Safdie<\/a>, who previously was a litigation associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, is the chief operating office and general counsel.\u00a0Pablo Arredondo<\/a> — a former litigator at Quinn Emanuel and Kirkland & Ellis, and a (Stanford) CodeX Fellow — is the vice president of legal research.<\/p>\n

Casetext investment rounds include a Series B, led by Canvas Ventures in 2017 (whose partners previously invested in Siri and Evernote), and a Series A, led by Union Square Ventures in 2015 (the same investors behind Twitter, Etsy, tumblr, and Zynga). Casetext was also backed by Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley startup incubator, and raised a $1.8 million seed round from various investors, including many attorneys and industry experts.<\/p>\n

1. What problem does your startup address, and how?<\/strong><\/p>\n

CARA (which stands for Case Analysis Research Assistant) is a legal research tool that can find on-point cases that were missed in the document it is reading. Users drag-and-drop a brief, memo, or even a substantive email into CARA, and it will find cases that are not cited in a matter of seconds. When you\u2019ve found the cases you want to read, you can research them on Casetext\u2019s annotated research system.<\/p>\n

At its core, CARA is designed to address three critical problems with legal research. First, legal research is time-consuming \u2014 the average associate spends one-third of their time on legal research. Second, it is expensive \u2014 most firms write off (i.e., don\u2019t bill for) somewhere between 50 percent to 100 percent of time spent on legal research. And third, it\u2019s uncertain \u2014 there\u2019s no real way of knowing with certainty whether you\u2019ve missed a key case or that you\u2019ve finished your research. CARA helps you get to the right answer faster, making the activity of research more efficient, less expensive, and less uncertain.<\/p>\n

2. What is your biggest challenge in attorney adoption of your startup?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a relative newcomer to the legal research industry, we do not have as much brand-name recognition or visibility. So to the extent that we\u2019re facing challenges with adoption, it\u2019s mostly been getting the word out.<\/p>\n

3. Has your startup changed significantly since the very beginning?\u00a0 How?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The one thing that\u2019s stayed the same since our earliest days working in my living room is our commitment to never put the law behind a paywall. You will always find the full text of the cases, statutes and regulations available in our database for free. (Unfortunately, we cannot disclose the source of our database\u2014we’re under an NDA.)<\/p>\n

Other than that, almost everything has changed over the past few years. We\u2019ve built up\u00a0 our team, moved into an office in San Francisco, transformed CARA from an idea into a real product, and started making sales to some of the country\u2019s largest firms as well as solo and small-firm attorneys.<\/p>\n

\"Casetext

Casetext founder Jake Heller and COO Laura Safdie<\/p><\/div>\n

4. What do you wish you knew five years ago?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wish I had truly understood from the beginning how valuable user feedback can be. As a company of lawyers, we sometimes assumed that we knew what lawyers wanted. We were on the right track with a lot of decisions. But since releasing CARA, we\u2019ve discovered again and again to listen to what the users want \u2014 and balance that against our own assumptions and experiences practicing law. Most of the biggest improvements to CARA (including jurisdiction filters and the ability to search within CARA results)\u00a0 were suggestions from users. If I had fully understood that five years ago, it would have been a more straightforward path to where we are today.<\/p>\n

5. Name one technology commonly used by lawyers today that will be obsolete in 10 years\u2014and one we will be using in 10 years that they don’t have today.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 10 years, Microsoft Word will be obsolete within the legal field. Lawyers will still use it (many still use WordPerfect!), but savvy lawyers will start writing briefs, contracts, and other legal documents in word processors designed specifically for lawyers, not the masses.<\/p>\n

On the flip side, in 10 years, artificial intelligence will have a real impact on the profession. Not this nonsense about lawyers being completely replaced by computers\u2014anyone who\u2019s deep in the technology today can tell you how far away that is. But it is very likely that, soon, computer systems will be fed documents of the matters you\u2019re working on\u2014and will work proactively connecting you with the research and information that you need, the people within your firm you should talk to, and even potential clients you should pitch. That\u2019s the future we\u2019re helping build now, and we\u2019re excited to be a part of it.<\/p>\n

\n

\"monica-bay\"Monica Bay<\/a>\u00a0is a Fellow at CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics and a freelance writer for\u00a0Above The Law<\/a>and other media. She co-hosts\u00a0Law Technology Now\u00a0<\/a>(Legal Talk Network) and is a member of the California Bar. Monica can frequently be found at Yankee Stadium. Email:\u00a0monicabay1@gmail.com<\/a>. Twitter:\u00a0@MonicaBay<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Casetext seeks to make legal research faster, less expensive, and more certain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4610,"featured_media":457813,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1110,11],"tags":[20,1105,1251,327,1106,177,493,328,392,689,182,1294,6,394,315,316,317,7,1328,107],"class_list":["post-1251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contests","category-technology","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-atl-alt-legal-innovation-awards","tag-canvas-ventures","tag-casetext","tag-contests","tag-future-of-law","tag-innovation","tag-jake-heller","tag-laura-safdie","tag-legal-research","tag-legal-tech","tag-microsoft-word","tag-monica-bay","tag-pablo-arredondo","tag-start-up-companies","tag-start-ups","tag-startups","tag-technology","tag-union-square-ventures","tag-y-combinator"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nATL alt.legal Innovation Awards Winner: 5 Questions With Jake Heller - 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