The average billable rate for lawyers in the United States was $300 per hour in January 2021. In New York, it was $485 per hour (Clio, 2021 Legal Trends Report). On LegalZoom, you can create an LLC for $79. You can create a basic will for $89. These differences are so dramatic because on LegalZoom you're buying software that has almost zero marginal cost, not a chunk of someone's time.
The problem is, LegalZoom isn't a law firm. Their products can't provide legal advice, only legal information. A subtle but important distinction; this is the reason why you'll probably hire a law firm to help with your eviction case.
What if law firms had the technical capabilities of LegalZoom? What if lawyers could transform their expensive expertise into affordable software products?
Afterpattern allows legal professionals to transform their expertise into software, what we call legal apps. When it was acquired in November 2021, thousands of law firms, courts, and legal aids used Afterpattern to build game-changing, and occasionally award-winning, legal apps.
The journey from insight to acquisition was long.
Afterpattern grew out of Community.lawyer, the product my cofounders and I built as Fellows in the 2016 cohort of the Blue Ridge Labs social impact technology incubator (read that case study for more details).
Community.lawyer made it easier for low-income clients to find affordable legal help. Afterpattern made it possible for lawyers to transform their services into affordable products. The transition from the first solution to the second took around 18 months.
Afterpattern ultimately grew beyond the no-code app builder to include document automation, databases, an app marketplace, and a portal for packaging multiple apps together.
One of our biggest challenges was that Afterpattern was a new category of product. We couldn't approach law firms and say "you know that thing you do all the time? We help you do it faster/cheaper/easier." Our customers had never built legal apps before. Before we could train them how to do it (with our Afterpattern University, which I poured countless hours into), we had to convince them why they should do it.
Afterpattern's acquisition was a life-changing event. I'm tremendously thankful for my cofounders and our early-adopters. This was the best job I've ever had.
