UpCounsel

[Note: This is the second of an exclusive two-part series on lawyer marketplace UpCounsel, which – 16 months after new owners rescued it from shutting down – is now launching a crowdfunding campaign. In part one, I wrote about UpCounsel came back from the brink of closing down and rebuilt its business.] …

[Note: This is the first of an exclusive two-part series on lawyer marketplace UpCounsel, which – 16 months after new owners rescued it from shutting down – is now launching a crowdfunding campaign. The campaign opens to the public July 28, but readers of this blog can access the private friends and family campaign,…

Lawyer marketplace UpCounsel is shutting down.

The San Francisco based company, which has raised a total of $26 million, including a $12 million Series B in April 2018, notified customers by email this morning that it will shut down permanently on March 4.

The company served corporations by providing freelance lawyers for anything from a…

In the legal-startups category of “here today, gone tomorrow,” lawyer-bidding sites rank right at the top. Just last year, in a single post here, I wrote about the demise of one such site, Shpoonkle, which had launched in 2011 to much fanfare, and the debut of another such site, Lawtendr. A year later,…

Shpoonkle came in with a bang but went out with a whimper. When the reverse-auction site for legal services launched in March 2011, its aggressive PR campaign positioned it as the next-new thing, and many in the media bought in to Shpoonkle’s hype. The Wall Street Journal called it “eBay for lawyers.” VentureBeat…