I deal with as little paper as possible, but as everyone knows, the “paperless office” is still a far-off land. However, I am making the most of my waste paper. It gives me tremendous satisfaction to turn verbose or contentious legal documents into … compost.
Yes, after shredding documents, I feed them to goodcounsel’s cracker-jack squad of red worms — several thousand of them at this point — who inhabit my vertical worm composter (giving new meaning to “digesting” legal documents). Come spring, these former legal documents will be returned to nature as nutrient-dense organic fertilizer, serving a higher purpose in my garden.
The Circle of Life — lawyer style. Cue the Lion King soundtrack!
I loved the piece in Inc. entitled “5 Ways to Stop Legal-Fee Madness” by Howard Tullman, a legendary Chicago entrepreneur who recently became the CEO of 1871, one of the premiere startup incubators in the area. I agree with just about everything Howard says. Stop for a moment, go read it, and come back and click “more” below to see my thoughts.
I know that it’s hard to imagine “feeling sorry” for venture capitalists. We think of them as very savvy, sometimes sharp-elbowed people, who typically make a good deal of money.
But read Bessemer Venture Partners’ amazing page, detailing their “anti-portfolio” — companies that were presented to them for investment and that they passed on. Companies that, had they invested, they “might not still be working.”
It’s incredible to think of the opportunities passed on — Google. Apple. PayPal. Intel. FedEx. eBay. Read the rest of this entry »
Lawyer marketing frequently emphasizes — what else? — the importance of hiring lawyers. As someone who has himself stood in the shoes of the cash-conserving entrepreneur, however, I understand the reluctance to use precious startup capital on legal fees. It is possible to significantly overspend on legal services — either by buying too many services or buying the services from a firm whose pricing is too high for your company’s stage of life. The real question is, what are the issues that truly require legal attention early on — and what is a cost-effective way to address them?
Let me provide a couple of examples, illustrating how getting legal advice up front might have prevented loss and heartache, or just saved some time and effort. Read the rest of this entry »
We do a lot of convertible notes at goodcounsel, so we try to keep with the state of the art.
A year or so ago, some West Coast incubators teamed up with the Wilson Sonsini law firm to create a type of convertible equity for seed, financings intended to replace convertible debt. Convertible debt minus the debt. (TechCrunch story here.)
In an earlier post, I described the major points of the proposed crowdfunding rules issued by the SEC (known as “Regulation Crowdfunding”) pursuant to the JOBS Act. Now, I’d like to offer my reactions.
My basic reaction is this: you have got to be kidding me.
At last, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed “Regulation Crowdfunding” (the rules implementing Title III of the JOBS Act). I apologize for my delay in posting about this, but in my defense, the release containing the proposed rules is 585 pages long. (The length alone gives one pause about how workable this regulatory scheme, which is intended to be used by small companies with limited resources, will turn out to be.)
To briefly review: Title III the JOBS Act creates a new exemption to the general registration requirements of the 1933 Securities Act, permitting early-stage companies to raise financing of up to $1 million in a 12-month period by aggregating small investments from a broad base of investors. The most important provision of Title III is the ability to accept small amounts of money from investors who would not qualify as “accredited” under current law (i.e., individuals without consistent annual income above $200,000 or net worth in excess of $1 million).
Below are the (by no means comprehensive) highlights of the proposed rules. I will offer some personal opinions about the rules in my next post. Read the rest of this entry »
Anybody who knows me knows that I will launch me into a diatribe on the sorry state of public transportation in this country in general, and of the Chicago Transit Authority in particular, at any opportunity. It’s all out of love and a desire to see things get better. I am a regular transit rider, and I believe that having better public transportation in this country would improve our quality of life by so many different measures. Read the rest of this entry »
Max Wessel, writing in the Harvard Business Review blog, looks at technology entrepreneurship across the country and states that “ if you start a technology business somewhere other than the San Francisco Bay area, New York, or Boston” — what Wessel terms the “superhubs” — “you’re stacking the deck against yourself.”
What does Wessel mean by “stacking the deck against yourself?”
Anyone who is interested in the future of the legal profession should read this article from the New Republic. Of course, it’s not news that the legal profession is in a state of crisis to some degree. There is severe overcapacity, clients are spending less and those lawyers who have jobs at the larger firms are terribly unhappy. The article focuses on Chicago’s own Mayer Brown as a case study, and it’s dark reading.
Of course, capitalism is all about “creative destruction,” in the phrase made famous by Joseph Schumpeter. Some smaller practices, like goodcounsel, are trying to creatively reimagine what a successful law practice looks like in the 21st century.
