Theorem founder Joshua Maley references a scene from “The Godfather” to describe his software company. “We aim to be the consiglieri for legal professionals everywhere, and bring together the five families of legal industry – law firms, in-house legal departments, ALSPs, consulting firms and technology vendors – to solve the biggest problems facing the industry,” said Maley.
“For the professional who says, ‘I’m already subscribed to too many tools and not sure what would work best for my practice. My tools don’t talk to each other. I need them to be integrated into my workflow.’ Theorem streamlines legal technology adoption by helping firms buy, track and connect their firm’s software in a single platform,” said Maley. Theorem works with firms and corporate legal departments of all sizes, from a handful of lawyers up to AM Law 100 Firms in the United States, Europe and Asia.
“We help teams identify new tools in our marketplace, track all their software subscriptions through our platform, and get those tools talking to each other to increase utilization.”
The problem is a growing decentralization of cloud-software spend – compounding integration issues and increasing silos.
Theorem promotes and integrates software tools for legal practice management, contract automation and review, intellectual property, transaction management, electronic court filing and a suite of litigation specific software tools. Usage may be spread across offices, practice areas and even languages.
We Can Save You 15%
“We go to law firms and tell them we can save them an average of 15 percent of their SaaS spend in the first year by discovering unused licenses and helping them procure new tools more efficiently. Their legal team’s new Theorem portal will help them identify gaps and overlap in their software stack,” said Maley.
Maley said he has a client with $27 million in subscriptions, over 400 tools, and “they have no idea who subscribed to or is using which tools, they have no clue what utilization looks like. People at these firms often have no idea that their firm already subscribes to some of the tools.”
‘I Saw An Opportunity’
As is the case with most entrepreneurs, Maley’s career path was not a straight line. He started his career in finance with stints at Morgan Stanley as a wealth manager and institutional consultant at Merrill Lynch.
“I owe my life to sports and great people. A client who owned a soccer team that I played for down in Texas opened up a venture capital firm and I became a partner there – that’s when I first caught the entrepreneurship bug,” explained Maley.
The next stop was Wake Forest School of Law. He helped pay his tuition by consulting with startups based on his venture capital experience. “I saw an opportunity when I realized the difficulties the profession faced in adopting modern technology, and the lack of a true platform,” recalled Maley. “Lawyers had no idea about all the options and services available to them. There was no platform doing a good job at presenting tools in context and aggregating all these solutions specifically for the legal space.”
Maley and co-founder, Albert De Guzman, spent two years developing Theorem with help from investors and industry vets from major law firms, technology vendors and in-house legal departments.
Theorem was officially launched in 2020 in Poughkeepsie, New York, on the eve of the pandemic. Maley has set up shop to work remotely from Winston-Salem.
The Future
“I’m excited about the future for the company, we’re moving quickly to rollout services to a global network of buyers and sellers, including major legal associations. The enterprise software procurement and delivery experience are broken. We’re going to fix them and move across every vertical that touches legal.
“If we can help teams shed unnecessary expense, we can help them dedicate resources to growth and innovation,” Maley added.
