In April we reported that Justin.tv founder and Y Combinator alum Justin Kan had assembled a team to “disrupt the legal industry” and was raising $10 million to do so. This week Kan confirmed that the company has completed its fundraising process, raising $10.5 million in what ended up being one of the biggest “party rounds” I’ve ever seen.
Earlier this week I met with Kan to discuss Atrium LTS — the “LTS” stands for “Legal Technology Services” — and the company’s plans. And while Kan is still loathe to go into all the details, citing some regulatory issues still being ironed out, he could provide some high-level perspective into where he believes Atrium can apply technology to the legal industry.
As a “power user” of legal services over a decade in the startup industry, through the foundation and fundraising of startups like Justin.tv as well as the work he’s done as an investor and advisor to companies through Y Combinator, Kan says he was frustrated by how little technology was being used in the process of interacting with various law firms.
“Why don’t law firms use project management software to track where they are in the process of completing a deal and let customers see that?” Kan asked. But more important than the way in which law firms interact with customers, Kan sees an opportunity to streamline the work that is done in-house to make it more manageable for lawyers and those who work at law firms.
“If you think about corporate legal work that’s done today, some part of it is art and then some of it is repeatable processes,” Kan told me. It’s those repeatable processes that the Atrium team believes it can innovate on to make things more efficient.
Now onto the funding… As we reported, the round was led by General Catalyst, but what…