The long slog to partnership is not for everyone, but the legaltech boom is offering some disillusioned but entrepreneurial associates an escape route.

Many of the legaltech companies that have sprung up in the last five years have been founded by former associates at top firms, and for these lawyers-turned-founders, the growth of legaltech has built a bridge from corporate law into entrepreneurship.

"In a law firm, it's a very strict single track," says Anthony Seale, a former Clifford Chance associate in London and now CEO of deal management platform Legatics. "As a lawyer, I thought I'd be in a position where I could have lots of different clients in lots of different industries, but I found that in reality you're very far away from the commercial side."

"I remember coming home after finishing work at 3am and thinking – do I want to be doing this for the rest of my life?"

On the other side of the world, Daniel Porus, a solicitor at top New Zealand firm Russell McVeagh, was running into similar frustrations: "One of the first deals I worked on was a global demerger. On some days, I was working 16 hours a day inputting data. I thought if I stuck it out then I wouldn't have to do as much administrative work as a senior lawyer, but I increasingly became aware that even though there's more client engagement as a senior lawyer, a lot of the day is still largely administrative.