Alumnus streamlines verification process for lawyers
MLS alumnus Saul Wakerman is the co-founder of Atticus, a legal tech startup that provides law firms with a platform to complete document disclosure verifications.
Like many commercial lawyers, MLS alumnus Saul Wakerman (BA/LLB 2010, MC-ED 2014) knows how time consuming completing the verification of disclosure documents can be.
“I was a corporate lawyer who had the experience of… the painstaking and critical process that is performed to ensure that every single statement in the prospectus is true, and not misleading.”
“Like many lawyers before me, I thought there has got to be a better way of doing this,” Saul says.
He decided to team up with his brother Misha and friend Mitchell, both software engineers, to design and test a platform that streamlines the verification process.
Their solution, Atticus, is a cloud-based platform that gives corporate lawyers a way to more efficiently verify investor disclosure documents. For Saul, the platform is about empowering lawyers to focus on the legal issues by automating away the “busy work”.
“We’re passionate about building technology that allows lawyers to spend more of their day doing problem solving work, the kind of work that attracts students into law in the first place,” he says.
In June of this year, Atticus was accepted into the 2018 Melbourne Accelerator Program (MAP), a University of Melbourne program that funds startups and works with them to grow their businesses.
“We were recommended to MAP by a few friends who had been involved with past portfolio companies, and it seemed like the perfect fit for our company’s stage of development,” Saul says.
“The support and mentorship have been exactly what we’ve needed.”
In the early stages of a startup no two days in the office are the same. For Saul, this one of the highlights of his job.
“Beautifully, there is no typical day,” he says.
“We’re learning to build a business which has many moving parts.
“Our days are spent meeting with new firms seeking to use Atticus, listening to lawyers currently using the platform to better prioritise the features that we develop, and generally planning the next six-months for the company.”
Saul’s diverse career has set him up well for the varied demands of working in a startup. After completing his LLB, he was accepted into the Teach For Australia program. He worked in education for a number of years before pursuing a career in commercial law.
Adaptability is a quality that Saul intends bring to Atticus.
“There is no doubt that Atticus will adapt as our relationships with firms develop,” he says.
“We’ve already had firms using Atticus query us about our next idea.”