The Priori Digest #202: Are Law Firm Profits Set to Plunge? Plus: Judge Wilkinson is a Romantic & More Female-Founded Unicorns

Welcome to the Priori Digest, a curated roundup of legal and technology news from Priori, the technology platform transforming the way companies find and engage with outside counsel.

The Priori Digest has been publishing as an email newsletter for 202 editions, and we're so glad you're joining us for LinkedIn edition no. 1! You can also get us in your inbox by subscribing to our email here.

In this edition, we look at why such aggressive growth in law firm profits may not be sustainable, an appellate judge-turned-romantic-author, and the growing number of female-founded companies reaching unicorn status.

Warmly,

Basha Rubin - CEO & Co-Founder

Priori News

• Join us for a webinar at 12pm ET on Tuesday, March 29. “Negotiating with Goliath: How Startup GCs Can Navigate Power Differentials in Contracting” will feature leading start-up general counsel to discuss how they’ve successfully navigated power gaps to achieve great outcomes with large enterprise customers. Register here.
• The Priori team will be at CLOC’s Global Legal Operations Institute in May, and we’re already setting up meetings! Get in touch here to connect with us at CLOC.
• Know someone looking for a new legal tech job in the new year? We’d love to meet them; Priori’s hiring across all functions. All of our open roles, from engineering to marketing to product, are posted on our AngelList page.

Legal

• The SEC’s new climate disclosure rule would require companies to reveal emissions and is ripe for a court challenge.
• What goes up must come down: are law firm profits the new example of this?
• A judge ordered new DNA tests in Adnan Syed’s murder case, of “Serial” podcast fame
• Data visual on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s path to the Supreme Court
• Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson spoke to David Lat about his latest work: a romance novel.

Tech

• Cities are calling on tech to help vanquish vermin with IoT rat traps that transmit data about rodent population numbers and conditions.
• Female-founded unicorn companies are growing in number.
• Walmart’s little-known history of trying to be a tech company

Legal Trivia (answers at the end)

1. How many of President Biden’s judicial nominees has the Senate Judiciary confirmed as of March 2022?
2. What insurance company is Warren Buffet buying for $11.6 billion?
3. Amazon recently won a victory when an antitrust complaint concerning third-party sellers was thrown out in which court?

Legal quote of the week

“Contrary to the conventional wisdom, lawyers are not particularly unhappy. Indeed, they suffer rates of mental illness much lower than the general population. Lawyer mental health is not significantly different than the mental health of similarly-educated professionals, such as doctors and dentists.”

Yair Listokin & Ray Noonan in “Measuring Lawyer Well-Being Systematically: Evidence from the National Health Interview Survey”

By the numbers

$23.2 billion

Global venture funding for climate tech hit $23.2 billion in 2021, more than double the 2020 total.

39%

Edmunds reported that interest in battery vehicles and hybrids spiked 39% in the week ending March 13 and was 84% higher than in mid-February due to rising gas prices.

Trivia Answers

1. 46
2. Alleghany
3. The Superior Court for the District of Columbia

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