Business is booming

• Author: Jason Tashea
• Pages: 31-33

MAY 2019 ABA JOURNAL || 31

Business of Law

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SARA WADFORD/SHUTTERSTOCK

As Jake Heller, CEO of Casetex t , waited

his turn to int erview at Silicon Valley’s pres-

tigious accelerator, Y Combinat or, he wit-

nessed quite a scene. Some of the founder s

were leaving the notoriously st ressful inter-

view in tear s.

“It was havoc and chaos,” he reca lls.

At that moment in 2013, Casetex t wasn’t even Casetext—it

was Law Commons. It was a pro of of concept without a sin-

gle customer. He describes the applic ation as a “total long

shot.”

In the allotted 10 minute s, he and his co-founder

answered rapid-fi re questions from YC’s partners on why

they should receive the money, support and network t hat

comes with joining one of the ac celerator’s two annual

classes.

A little later on, as he boa rded an airplane headed to

Chicago, he got the cal l: They’d been accepted. As he remem-

bers, he leaped out of his seat , attracting the attention of the

fl ight attenda nts, who asked him to fasten his s eat belt.

Five years later, Heller says he thin ks about his YC experi-

ence almost every d ay. It taug ht him how to run a business,

be a manager, and it helped the company ra ise capital. “It

was a really for mative experience.”

Casetext i s one of 19 legal tech organizations th at have

been accepted t o YC, according to original an alysis by the

BUSINESS IS BOOMING

Technology

EDITED BY VICTOR LI / VICTOR.LI@AMERICANBAR.ORG

The legal tech market is soaring, and nowhere is this more apparent than Y Combinator,

a highly sought-after seed accelerator that invested heavily in the sector in 2018 By Jason Tashea