FWIW, I am currently running an EA org, and legal help would be generally valuable to me both in the past and in the present. My impression is that scaling an EA law firm would involve a few people at the top being EAs and the rest being perfectly fine as normal, non-aligned lawyers; this would gain a bunch of the benefits of an EA law firm (primarily, I think, a general understanding of what EA’s goals are and a “cost-benefit analysis” type thinking that tries to avoid being overly conservative and is perfectly fine advising its clients to do, e.g., things that are legally grey area but not enforced)
So I’d say my answer is that this seems, at least to me personally, like a very potentially high-impact thing that would be incredibly helpful to me and other people starting small- and medium-sized organizations who need legal advice and support. This being said, I am probably not in the best position to answer that question (not having a birds’-eye view of the EA ecosystem like some others do) and so I’m very interested in other perspectives on this.
Thanks, Devansh. Scaling a traditional law firm definitely requires that ‘pyramid’ approach—but it isn’t unusual for boutique firms (both in law, and in other professional services areas) to be mostly comprised of reasonably experienced folk. I’m reluctant to think about scaling up too much (although have of course given it some consideration) as my focus is on seeing whether the idea has merit at a more modest scale, but the composition of a more scaled up org providing legal services (and/or other professional services) might be determined by the interest EA lawyers had in doing that work—I’m speculating that if there are lots of people in the intersection of those three sets I described above, you might see more within-community growth versus hiring outside. But all of this is just a guess—focus at first would be on testing the merits with one or a small number of people.
FWIW, I am currently running an EA org, and legal help would be generally valuable to me both in the past and in the present. My impression is that scaling an EA law firm would involve a few people at the top being EAs and the rest being perfectly fine as normal, non-aligned lawyers; this would gain a bunch of the benefits of an EA law firm (primarily, I think, a general understanding of what EA’s goals are and a “cost-benefit analysis” type thinking that tries to avoid being overly conservative and is perfectly fine advising its clients to do, e.g., things that are legally grey area but not enforced)
So I’d say my answer is that this seems, at least to me personally, like a very potentially high-impact thing that would be incredibly helpful to me and other people starting small- and medium-sized organizations who need legal advice and support. This being said, I am probably not in the best position to answer that question (not having a birds’-eye view of the EA ecosystem like some others do) and so I’m very interested in other perspectives on this.
Thanks, Devansh. Scaling a traditional law firm definitely requires that ‘pyramid’ approach—but it isn’t unusual for boutique firms (both in law, and in other professional services areas) to be mostly comprised of reasonably experienced folk. I’m reluctant to think about scaling up too much (although have of course given it some consideration) as my focus is on seeing whether the idea has merit at a more modest scale, but the composition of a more scaled up org providing legal services (and/or other professional services) might be determined by the interest EA lawyers had in doing that work—I’m speculating that if there are lots of people in the intersection of those three sets I described above, you might see more within-community growth versus hiring outside. But all of this is just a guess—focus at first would be on testing the merits with one or a small number of people.