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Ask HN: A legal career helping start ups?

13 points by dominik ↗ HN
I'm a law student interested in start ups. I have a technical background and have mostly focused on intellectual property law while in law school.

I'm looking for advice for a career path to one day end up as general counsel for a growing internet start up. Should I work at a law firm first? If so, any suggestions on good firms to apply to?

22 comments

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tjic
I think you'd be better off starting a law firm that sells services to startups. Most startups don't need a full-time lawyer. The few times I've worked at a startup with a full-time lawyer, he's been layed off as soon as things got tight.
pelle
I wrote a post about just this.

http://stakeventures.com/articles/2008/11/12/is-the-time-rig...

US lawyers are too focused on the traditional hourly model. We all need lawyers who can think and work in an agile way similar to what we do.

antiismist
I am having trouble picturing an agile legal methodology. Release early and release often is pretty much the exact opposite of what I would want in legal services...
umjames
How about sue early and sue often?

Seriously, a law firm that deals primarily with tech startups and indie developers would be excellent. I'm thinking LLC articles of organization, EULAs, and website terms of use policies would make a good starting point.

skmurphy
This was a good post: a lot of Susskind's analysis and predictions are applicable to other knowledge workers who charge by the hour as well. Legal advice is much more about balancing different business risks than right and wrong: you need to integrate legal considerations into the overall set of risks your startup faces.
swombat
Or you could turn your legal expertise into a product and build a start-up around that... how about that? Is that even possible?
omarchowdhury
Of course. We are humans and we should know the possibilities are endless. Infinite wisdom is the human mind.

For example,

He could build a legal information website that answers legal questions, actual lawyers on the website and students talking about issues - a legal network for attorneys.

Then there's the Legal Discussion site where people can contact lawyers over the Internet (webcam, phone, chat) for advice, and a registered and verified lawyer gives it to them over the phone for a fee. A lot of people may have simple legal questions they can ask, and commit to a lawyer for full services later.

What about a yellowpages targeted directly to Lawyers for advertising on the Internet? There are thousand of law offices out there scattered over an immense distance of population that can connect to them better if they advertised on the Internet. The Akron, Ohio lawyer doesn't want to rank for "lawyer" - he'd rather target his town. Charge em a fee for advertising (SEO and search engine marketing) and charge another fee for a website, and another fee for maintenance.

Business ideas come out of the thin air. Execution lies in physical movement.

Go do it.

byrneseyeview
http://www.quinnemanuel.com/media/35863/amlaw_mighty_quinn_2... if you want to work at a law firm that's often compared to a startup. On the other hand, they do all the highly exciting stuff that a startup's general counsel only gets to do if he's seriously botched things.

And tjic is right. It would be saner to work with several startups, rather than being the general counsel for one. I'm curious about why you'd want that specific outcome.

gcheong
I remember going to a start-up event a year or so ago at the ORRICK (orrick.com) building in downtown San Francisco that showcased a few start-ups. I remember they had pamphlets out promoting the services they could provide to startups. I don't have any direct experience with their services though. I also remember reading about a lawyer here that focuses mainly on start-ups but his name escapes me at the moment. I'll try and dig it up later.
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jon_dahl
There is a local boutique firm that does that where I live (New Counsel - http://newcounsel.com), and I think it's worked well for them. As an entrepreneur, I really appreciate working with good lawyers who understand small startups.
johns
Awesome, I'm in the Twin Cities. I may be in touch with these guys soon. Thanks for posting this!
ryanroberts
If you want to work with startups, you would have either do corporate/securities or IP work. Very difficult to do both, as each is a deep & separate field of law. Thus, it's unlikely that one lawyer could handle all a startup's legal needs (and thus be 'general counsel').

Of course, there is the capital resources issue of having a lawyer full-time. Even if the startup is funded, I doubt the investor(s) would be happy cash (or even the startup's equity) is going towards a full-time lawyer instead of marketing or product dev.

skmurphy
General Counsel (GC) normally has different focus than handling all of a firm's legal needs. There are a number of fields of law that a growing startup may be impacted by including contracts, employment, securities, patent, and litigation, to name a few. For a company above a certain size having a lawyer on staff to manage outside legal specialists will quickly pay for itself (you might be surprised what outside legal fees can run).

The primary challenge is to explain to the executive staff the business impact of various legal strategies (and their attendant risks) and to help reach a working consensus on the right balance between particular legal risks and other business risks and opportunities. The GC's are typically senior associates who traded the last few years on the partner track for a reasonable salary and a life.

DenisM
Whatever you do, learn to respond quickly and when you can't proactively notify your clients and offer a referral to someone good but less busy than you are. Just this thing alone will put you head and shoulders above most other lawyers out there.