I caught up with Rachi and Shimmy Messing after my failed attempt to reach ILTACON to hear about their new venture ALTorney.com, a cloud marketplace to connect document reviewers with clients. This is the first of many rescheduled briefing reports. I hope that you enjoy the expanded content and quotes created through the KnowNow meeting features.

So what is ALTorney?

Rachi and Shimmy Messing are well known eDiscovery industry veterans and brothers. They started developing their doc reviewer marketplace platform in January of this year and launched it in June. ALTorney already has registered 2,000+ reviewers for corporations, law firms, and providers to match with their remote document review requirements. I describe ALTorney as a specialized gig matching platform like Upwork for doc reviewers. The plaform is on course to be profitable by end of year, which is a remarkable accomplishment in the eDiscovery market.

ALTorney.com Client Project Dashboard

What differentiates ALTorney from other gig work platforms?

ALTorney is purpose built for bidirectional transparency for the unique legal review marketplace by technologists who have real time in the litigation trenches. They described ALTorney as a ‘GlassDoor for contract reviewers’. They already have attorney reviewers practicing in most states with the expected concentration in NY, FL and TX. 100% of their engagements have been for remote review and 10% of their reviewers are multilingual. Their pricing model benefits reviewers and clients by dramatically reducing the traditional staffing agency fees and eliminating the issues that can arise from staffing ‘middlemen’ misinterpreting your matter requirements. Shimmy is passionate about the need for better fit between the unique matter factors (tech, content, legal issues) and the reviewer experience/skills.

What is next for ALTorney?

ALTorney.com Reviewer Enrollment

A full set of features to support corporate legal delegation and reviewer management requirements should be released by the end of the year. This will better fit corporate legal’s usage cases to allow prioritization of reviewers with prior experience in company matters to build a long term bank of expertise that retained counsel can leverage in matters. ALTorney will be expanding coverage into regional English-speaking countries like Canada, Australia, UK, and others. Rachi and Shimmy were excited about direct integrations to leading review platforms to leverage metrics such as review rate, overturns and more to support client decision-making with dashboards and reports. They reported clients wanting insight into anonymized regional/docket market rates and review metrics for project forecasting and budgets.

I asked whether they planned to expand the platform to adjacent legal services such as forensic collection or project managers.

“…when we started this, we thought it could go to every vertical. People have come out of the woodworks to suggest things to us that we hadn’t even considered. They’re like, Oh, you’re doing a platform for attorneys. Can I get an attorney that does XYZ? For example, someone came to us asking for attorneys that do transcription of prison calls. I didn’t know that was a thing, but it makes sense. That is a thing and it has to be attorneys. Yes, I could find people to do that. Not today but down the road. We built the platform to be adapted to any niche segment or even nonlegal contract work. The key is that ALTorney’s a purpose built system to find people that you need and qualifies them for that purpose.”

ALTorney.com Reviewer Dashboard

If you are looking to staff a review, Altorney is running an End of Summer Special with discounted markup rates on your first project. Best of luck to the Messing brothers and their new platform.

Greg Buckles wants your feedback, questions or project inquiries at Greg@eDJGroupInc.com. Contact him directly for a free 15 minute ‘Good Karma’ call. He solves problems and creates eDiscovery solutions for enterprise and law firm clients.

Greg’s blog perspectives are personal opinions and should not be interpreted as a professional judgment or advice. Greg is no longer a journalist and all perspectives are based on best public information. Blog content is neither approved nor reviewed by any providers prior to being published. Do you want to share your own perspective? Greg is looking for practical, professional informative perspectives free of marketing fluff, hidden agendas or personal/product bias. Outside blogs will clearly indicate the author, company and any relevant affiliations. 

See Greg’s latest pic on Instagram.