Long considered remote, law is a verdant opportunity for entrepreneurs.
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A Call for
Legal Entrepreneurship
by Ronald H. Gruner


"Today there is widespread belief that critical elements of our civil litigation system are badly flawed. Over the years many amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have been adopted intended to curb discovery abuse...Yet there is a growing realization that incremental rule changes have largely been ineffective."

"Is self-regulation effective? In our opinion, it is not and will not be without true checks and balances within the system. Our system of civil law needs more judicial involvement, neutral fact finding and more effective competition to provide those checks and balances. These are major changes and will come slowly and only with great effort. And as is so often the case, much of that change will come from the outside."

"The legal industry is a major, new opportunity for entrepreneurs. Big Law is a $100 billion industry in need of change. As discussed in this and many other papers much of law as practiced today is inefficient, opaque and largely independent of traditional market forces. Dissatisfaction both among clients and within the profession is high resulting in widespread, pent-up demand for better approaches."

"But the task is not for the faint-hearted. There are enormous barriers to entry. Industry practices are deeply entrenched based on traditions going back centuries. Law is conservative and precedent-based, so unlike technology and consumer markets, there are few early adopters in the legal industry."

"Entrepreneurship, innovation, start-ups, killer applications, paradigm shifts, venture capital are all terms not normally associated with the practice of law. But entrepreneurship is the distinguishing characteristic of American business. One of our nation's greatest strengths should be applied to what many consider one of our greatest weaknesses, our expensive and adversarial legal system."

"So, if you are a young law associate hesitant to follow the traditional path, or an entrepreneur looking for truly fresh opportunities or a partner tired of working for a system badly in need of change, what's holding you back?"

Mission

The Vallex Fund is focused exclusively on the legal services market. In particular, Vallex makes early-round investments in management teams with vision, passion, execution and people skills whose businesses capitalize on opportunities related to those discussed in our white paper, A Call for Legal Entrepreneurship.

Background

Vallex started as a book - a book written from the client's perspective on our nation's civil litigation system. While conducting research we were astonished at the extent and highly critical nature of the existing literature documenting issues within our civil law system. Written by Supreme Court justices, judges, legal scholars, practicing attorneys, recent law school graduates and others inside the profession, they were thoughtful, heartfelt and for a layperson reading the law profession's unvarnished view of itself, highly troubling.

Clearly, the issues on which we were writing had been long-standing and resistant to change. More writing would not help. A fresh approach was needed, and we came to believe that bringing more entrepreneurship to law - what we call legal entrepreneurship - could play an important role.

We believe that there is strong pent-up demand within the legal services market for more accountability, transparency, productivity, and innovative competition. Our motivation, of course, is to capitalize on that demand, but to do so by helping our civil litigation system become more efficient, less expensive and more broadly available when needed.

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Ron Gruner discusses
why The Vallex Fund was formed.

The firm was founded by Ronald Gruner in late 2007. Ron has been an entrepreneur nearly his entire career. His former company, Shareholder.com, an early advocate for better shareholder communications, was acquired by The Nasdaq Stock Market in January, 2006.

Over the last thirty years, Ron has had the mixed experience of participating in a number of lawsuits variously as a witness, expert, plaintiff and defendant. It is from these perspectives, rather than those of the Bar or the Bench, that Ron and Vallex have formed their opinions of our country's civil law system.



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