NextEraLegal

Rethinking legal representation and offering our clients models that fit their business.

Most tweets by NEL founding partner @MonahanLegal.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@MikeHallHere It's almost like the SEC should pick one conference champion that is deserving to advance. What a concept.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

This is my favorite letter I've sent.

A half page response to an 8 page demand letter that definitely cost his client $5000+.

The first response should always be short.

Never heard from them again.

[Tom Kratman @TKratman]

The most enjoyable letter I ever wrote as a lawyer was in response to a demand letter from a non lawyer, a local realtor, actually. Seems a dumb kid (yes, I am aware of the redundancy), a Virginia Tech student, had signed a BLANK lease for a five bedroom apartment for himself and four friends. The agreement among the friends fell through and he was stuck with the lease and owed nine months' rent, which is not small change for a Va Tech student, typically. This was in - and this is important - the year 2000.

I first told the kid, "In this county, you being a student, you're screwed...ah, hell with it, I have a little time; show me the letter."

It was pretty iron clad. No loop holes. He was responsible for nine months' rent on a five bedroom apartment. And then I got to the end of the lease and started to laugh. See, the date his money was due was "19 August, 19__," except that instead of crossing out the second 19 and writing in 20, the dumbass realtor had simply put "00" in the blank, underlined space.

My response went something like this:

Dear Sir:

I am in receipt of your letter to my client, Mr. XX YYY, demanding the sum of $14,600 (I think it was), rents owed to you under your lease of (whenever the hell it was).

I have contacted the Virginia Tech Physics Department (I actually did, just so I could be honest and snide at the same time). They inform me that, sadly, there is not now nor is there likely to be anytime before the statute of limitations runs, a time machine. Therefore, again, sadly, my client shall not be able to pay you the money you demand on August 19th, of the year of our Lord, 1900. He regrets this deeply, as do I.

Looking forward to seeing you in court.

Very Truly Yours,

moi

They folded immediately, of course. I enjoyed it so much I didn't even charge the kid.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@ryanraysr @writeclimbrun @amerine1000 We're a basketball and hockey school 〽️ 🏀🏆🏒🥅

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@FabianSani8 Yes because it can be a great filter for which clients are serious or not.

It can also filter out good clients if it's not market standard to charge consultation fees, like the business law we practice.

But for immigration, divorce, criminal law, consultation fees make sense.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@ryanmckeen You have to wonder who attends those CLEs expecting them to solve the problem......

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@DeadlyLaw The 500 words thing is the key. Be concise and cut the fluff. It matters in practice.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@joshualowenthal We're so bad. :( 〽️

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@ForemanTaxLaw Why would sellers win every dispute

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@mikewavsz "Just look it over" might be the most common misconception about what we do....or that we are willing to do it.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@realEstateTrent @grok what percent of new restaurant and retail businesses get help from SBA funding?

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@drone_jock Huge mistake to do away with conference title games. This will become the norm lots of places.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

Never understood founders binding themselves to templates with a bunch of stuff they dont understand & wont follow through on.

Case in point: long ass bylaws clauses on meeting notices, proxies, committees, tax accounting. You're a 3 person company bro. You dont need all that.

[Alpaca Capital @Alpaca_Capital]

It is becoming incredibly clear to me that VC and AI people fundamentally do not understand the legal industry or what lawyers do. Like, not even a little.

Here’s a basic hint: people don’t pay lawyers for their precedent library, and running with a template document that you don’t understand is akin to buying a $5,000 suit that isn’t tailored to you.

I used to assist startups relatively pro bono about a decade ago when these “buy your LLC docs” were incredibly popular, and there are just so many examples of how these things go incredibly wrong.

You pay a lawyer for their legal counsel, which is wisdom from experience. You aren’t paying them to regurgitate their precedent library unless you really just want a legal opinion attached to the docs.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@UTDealAttorney Last week AI research on the California Insurance Code prohibition on referral fees (client does asbestos remediation) cited a Business & Professions Code section permitting referrals in healing arts as a reason referral fees are ok.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@UTDealAttorney Thats a good one lol

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

THIS. Your AI drafts arent helpful because our humans have to synthesize them from scratch.

DO: give us max 1 page of AI bullet points of the important stuff

DONT: think the clankers' full drafts make it easier

[Daniel Levine @daniellevine]

It is remarkable how little people seem to understand about how lawyers work, where their fees come from and where their value lies.

The reason a lawyer uses his or her 79 page financing precedent over the one that is AI generated or that you bring them from LegalZoom or even from your last financing isn’t because they want to bill you drafting their own docs. They aren’t doing that.

The reason actually saves you money. It’s that they know their own documents inside and out. They know every definition, every reference, and they know every typical point of contention already.

So this idea that you’re going to generate your complex transactional documents in AI and just have a lawyer “look it over” is nonsensical and will cost you more, because the lawyer now has to scrutinize every word, every definition, every clause and every reference for the first time.

This is harder and takes more time.

To be sure, the practice of law and the consumption of legal services is going to change. But it won’t be in this direction of AI does 90% of the work and you’ll just get it checked over to save on fees. You can already do that today without AI and every lawyer will tell you it’s cheaper if they just do it themselves. This is the same reason so many lawyers don’t like giving ILA.

The idea of putting up with “a little lower quality” makes no sense either, especially in the context of mid and large cap transactional documents where a missing comma can be a $5 million mistake (see Oakhurst Dairy). Legal is one of very few functions where what you are paying for is precisely the opposite of “a little lower quality.” You are paying for extreme scrutiny and attention to detail so that when a dispute arises 5 years later, you are in as strong of a position as possible. Lawyers earn their money in that hardest and last 10% of the work. It has very little to with the present-day transaction. Most of that is dealt with in the term sheet or LOI. So accepting “a little lower quality” is more like saying “I’ll accept all the risk if there’s a dispute over this transaction sometime in the future.” You can have the same outcome with no lawyer at all, save all your legal fees and just pay for it later. You’ll have to account for that somewhere with present-day dollars.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@BigJohn043 Correct. The clankers have no idea what business context matters in the deal. Not to mention the complete lack of risk tolerance.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@jonashertner I agree on the cognitive atrophy. Writing from scratch without assistance will feel like having the ingredients and knowing the recipe but no idea how to cook. You have the apron on but how the hell do you make it taste good.

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@nashvegas__ @AiwithAbbas Correct. But if you're somewhere between beta and launch and you're bootstrapping, maybe wait a month depending on the sunk costs in your state.

Also, if this applies, just form in your home state rather than Delaware. But if investors are lined up, go for it.

[Dallin Drescher @UTDealAttorney]

BigLaw M&A lawyers adding redlines they know are only accepted in 4% of deals

[NextEraLegal @NextEraLegal]

@anamika__x Yeah probably a good business move not to bill for responses this short and easy.