Services such as Uber and Lyft have given people the opportunity to work when they want to, and for as long as they wish. That got Ben Levi thinking that he could find attorneys who did not want to live the lifestyle that comes with large-firm employment to do tasks that are often expensive and repetitive for corporations, and on behalf of other firms.

After meeting with his co-founders, Troy Pospisil and Lane Lillquist, and bringing the legal, business and technology together, Levi formed InCloudCounsel several years ago. The company allows lawyers to work as contractors and to do quality work for clients without the stress of billing for a large law firm, an increasingly popular virtual and freelance legal business model that includes competitors such as UpCounsel. 

Corporate Counsel spoke with Levi, co-founder and chief operating officer, on Thursday about his past, the start of InCloudCounsel and the future of alternative legal services. Here are excerpts from that conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.

Corporate Counsel: What were you doing before the creation of InCloudCounsel?

Ben Levi: I went to Harvard for law school, and then right after Harvard I joined Kirkland & Ellis. I was there for almost five years and I loved the people. The people were the best part of being at Kirkland. They are all super-smart and super-driven and were also, generally speaking, really friendly and willing to help out. Ultimately, it wasn't compatible with my desires for my own life.

How did InCloudCounsel come about?

I came at it from the legal and law firm side. Troy, who is my co-founder and CEO, came at it from the business side and then Lane, who is our third co-founder and CTO, came at it from the tech side. We all had different perspectives on how to solve similar problems. I was connected to Troy through a mutual connection, and Troy and Lane knew each other from being out in San Francisco.

I actually came at it from a “let's talk about attorneys perspective.” Big law firms generally weren't really compatible with me and what I wanted for my life. I looked around and realized that I wasn't alone. There are a bunch of people who loved it and that got them jazzed. I was really jealous of them. I didn't see other great options to keep practicing law at a high level like we were at Kirkland. My feeling was that we should use the internet to find another path to find people for whom this big law lifestyle wasn't a compatible career choice.

I then met with Troy and he was at a private equity company and he was doing a bunch of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) himself. While doing them he had two options: He could send that money to a large law firm and pay way too much money for it, or he could, as a nonlawyer, do it himself and it wasn't going to be a high level of quality. He said there should be another way here.

Were you met with skepticism when pitching this to law firms and clients?

I think we had expected far more resistance to our model than we got. The really good law firms realized those repetitive contracts weren't where their work should be getting done.

On the client side, I think we were lucky as much as anything to be doing it when we were doing it. We came about it at a time when that person, who we were in a meeting with, had probably taken Uber to work and had probably ordered dinner online and had their documents in the cloud. They had been accustomed to the notion that traditional services could be delivered in nontraditional ways and the outcome could be better. So we didn't have to do that bit of education. All we had to do was say, 'Here's our solution to a problem we know you have and here's how we do it.' They understood that there could be a better way.

Do you think in the coming years that the alternative legal service industry is going to continue to grow?

What I think maybe even more than that, is that there will be compartmentalization. Like, here is who you should go to for this type of work rather than going to one law firm for everything from simple documents to intellectual property work. I think there will be a realization that there will be better ways to do things at certain places.

There is also no shame in saying I don't want to work at Kirkland or a large law firm. For some people this is great. If alternative legal services is done correctly, it should allow those working at large law firms to enjoy their lives more and continue to practice at a really high level.