Fueled with $75 million in venture capital, Atrium was a high-profile effort to apply the lessons of Silicon Valley to the legal industry. Then serial tech entrepreneur Justin Kan pulled the plug. Nearly a year later, he revisited some of his missteps. Want to weigh in? Email me here. Want this dispatch in your inbox every Thursday? Sign up here. 
What Went Wrong at Atrium?
I spent part of my holiday break reading Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley. It’s a terrific book, particularly for those curious about the tech industry’s desire to muscle in on other established sectors of the economy, from retail to transportation to medicine to the law. The deftness with which Wiener punctures the hubris of the 20-something startup founders who believe they’ve found a better way to do, well, pretty much everything, made me self-conscious about the title of this briefing. (But I haven’t talked to anyone about changing it.)
