I was guessing that they wanted to solve one vertical with automation tools, and then move into other verticals with automation. Mine is just a guess since their lead engineer is part of this community

Who?

It was @Chris Zehner who you pared with for me with for the 1-on-1

Ah, cool. (I believe that 1-on-1 pairing is automatic. I've never really seen how it works or tried it. I guess I should sometime.)

I’ve been to several Atrium events and think highly of Justin, but it never made sense to us to switch to Atrium for our startup’s legal needs at the consistent-but-high price point for their full legal monthly retainer, although it would have to use it for expensive, scoped engagements like a fundraise, so my wild speculation is that it’s a simple business numbers decision on profitability of general legal vs. specialized legal, and that their software helps differentiate a lot more with the latter than the former. I wouldn’t guess that this has many implications for automation of business processes through software.

I was at a university reunion a few years back, and i saying i was building a prototype for a commercial real estate product similar to MLS but not for residential, but commercial property. The guy next to me said that he was in a startup that failed doing exactly that, and they where the second failure. He said the reason it can't work is that the sales people who hold the listing refuse to put the properties into a computer. The commissions on commercial property are nearer 10%... anyway legal startups will have always have a difficult time, because the law industry has very little interest in reforming or streamlining itself. Small service companies like DocketBird can make a modest living, but to head on try to change law is quite a difficult project. You are talking about taking food out of a lot of people's mouths, and unlike the tech business which thrives on disruptive changes, the legal industry is extremely conservative and will resist mightily any significant changes. Here in california, the minimum wage for a lawyer is around $350 per hour (in terms of court-ordered legal services). That's 700k/year full time. The field does need reform, but Atrium is feeling first hand the cost of keeping all those lawyers on full salary, while their billable hours were obviously insufficient to cover it. The advantage of the existing system, is a lawyer can dream about your case and bill you, while a service like Atrium with its flat fee model was not able to take advantage of that.