Ontra / In-Cloud Counsel Forum

[Anonymous User]

Hi all - does anyone have experience with working for Ontra (fka In-Cloud Counsel)? It seems you can categorize jobs into two buckets - full time employees who work on the business side and a network of freelance attorneys who do the legal work. I've seen some former biglaw colleagues move into these non-legal full time roles like business development and sales and I also have worked across from the freelancer lawyers on high volume routine docs (i.e. sell-side NDAs).

I'm thinking of taking a sabbatical to travel around and the latter sounds enticing - having a platform to do freelance legal work on a flexible schedule and not having to find my own clients. Besides the work being mundane, any downsides here? I think pay may be kind of low, but can probably still make at-least $100/hour.

[Anonymous User]

Hi all - does anyone have experience with working for Ontra (fka In-Cloud Counsel)? It seems you can categorize jobs into two buckets - full time employees who work on the business side and a network of freelance attorneys who do the legal work. I've seen some former biglaw colleagues move into these non-legal full time roles like business development and sales and I also have worked across from the freelancer lawyers on high volume routine docs (i.e. sell-side NDAs).

I'm thinking of taking a sabbatical to travel around and the latter sounds enticing - having a platform to do freelance legal work on a flexible schedule and not having to find my own clients. Besides the work being mundane, any downsides here? I think pay may be kind of low, but can probably still make at-least $100/hour.

We use them. We expect fast turns. PE shops also use them and expect fast turns. The downside is doing a shit ton of NDAs and being expected to turn them fast. I always wonder what happened to some of these big law lawyers careers that this is where they ended up.

[Anonymous User]

Hi all - does anyone have experience with working for Ontra (fka In-Cloud Counsel)? It seems you can categorize jobs into two buckets - full time employees who work on the business side and a network of freelance attorneys who do the legal work. I've seen some former biglaw colleagues move into these non-legal full time roles like business development and sales and I also have worked across from the freelancer lawyers on high volume routine docs (i.e. sell-side NDAs).

I'm thinking of taking a sabbatical to travel around and the latter sounds enticing - having a platform to do freelance legal work on a flexible schedule and not having to find my own clients. Besides the work being mundane, any downsides here? I think pay may be kind of low, but can probably still make at-least $100/hour.

We use them. We expect fast turns. PE shops also use them and expect fast turns. The downside is doing a shit ton of NDAs and being expected to turn them fast. I always wonder what happened to some of these big law lawyers careers that this is where they ended up.

How fast do you mean? Also, do you have a relationship with them, or is it just "nameless faceless email, process this NDA within [x] hours."

[Anonymous User]

We send to a box email account. We frequently get the same person who seems to be quite good.

In terms of timing, think about who is hiring Ontra. It’s people who churn a ton of NDAs or other super simple documents. We do it in auction situations. Think about the timing pressure that is in those situations. Same day is pretty normal or 1 day. I personally couldn’t imagine just turning NDAs on tight timelines over and over again. That sounds like the 7th circle of hell. But, to each their own.

[Anonymous User]

Are there similar platforms to Ontra? Honestly, the above doesn't sound too bad if you go in with the understanding that this is supplemental income to keep you afloat. It seems they are flexible leaving the option to the attorney for how many hours they want to do. If you did 20ish hours a week, that would be around $2000-$2250. Leaving you the rest of the work week to work on your own projects or build out your own practice.

Agree that NDAs are on a tight time line but seems the model is either a 24 hour turn around or same-day (with a higher fee rate for same-day).

[Buglaw]

I think the long term future for people doing this work is bleak, though. I assume this is all going to be automated soon enough. Fine if you want to do it for a bit before that happens.

I'm honestly pretty surprised there is no industry standard NDA that everyone just accepts for auction situations. The comments are rarely critical to the deal or situation and people are spending gobs of money throughout the legal sphere each year to have someone hand mark and send back these documents. Seems real dumb.

[Anonymous User]

I think the long term future for people doing this work is bleak, though. I assume this is all going to be automated soon enough. Fine if you want to do it for a bit before that happens.

I'm honestly pretty surprised there is no industry standard NDA that everyone just accepts for auction situations. The comments are rarely critical to the deal or situation and people are spending gobs of money throughout the legal sphere each year to have someone hand mark and send back these documents. Seems real dumb.

Absolutely agree, but someone doing this isn't because they want to grow their professional career. It is a job and revenue source. Works for solos who want to build out their practice in the mean time, part-time and stay-at-home care-giver types, people coasting who are leanFIRE while they travel, etc. For these types of people, I think this is a solid deal and beats our a lot of other contract-attorney or doc review type jobs.