
In an unusual move for a top New York law firm partner, Esther Chiang, who most recently was at Paul Hastings and also spent time at Kirkland & Ellis, has launched SmartEsq, a startup designed to massively reduce legal costs for private equity (PE) fund formation.
Chiang explained that creating a new PE fund of around $1 billion can involve 2,000 hours of work, with fees of over $2m. With her startup, which is focused on multiple key workflows, this can be reduced to 400 hours – or an 80% drop – and give a 75% drop in legal costs to around $500,000.
Now, there will still be a lot of work to do, especially on the high-value side of things, but plenty of the process work will be absorbed. (See below).

The company is co-founded with CTO, Kristen Gandhi, an experienced engineer. The startup also has another former BigLaw partner, Paul Patrow, as its CLO – he has also worked at Kirkland & Ellis.
Chiang told this site she had studied electronics and English before moving into the law, and then focused on big ticket PE fund formation work. She explained that at an IBA event in London the subject of using AI to do complex legal work came up and she was inspired to create the new company.
There are multiple workflows that they are attacking, with each one providing significant improvements on traditional methods.

‘We have developed multiple products that help you through the whole process. This could change the paradigm [for PE fund formation],’ she said.

She added that they have some pre-seed cash to get going, but one can imagine that if this takes off – and the same solution could be used in the VC and family office worlds – then they will not be short of investors, who will benefit twice-over.
At present it’s a small team of about six people, with some beta testers in the market already.
You can find more info here.
Is this a big deal?
Yes. Very few BigLaw partners create legal tech companies, (although in Harvey’s case a couple did join near the start). Moreover, they don’t usually create a business that will decimate (or more) the legal fees earned by their former law firms.
Secondly, it’s a sign that the elite world of New York law firms is starting to get a bit more disrupted. We have seen the launch of ALSP ClearyX, coming out of Cleary Gottlieb, while AO Shearman (albeit UK + NY) now has a legal tech incubator base in San Francisco.
Is this an avalanche of change? Not yet, but it’s a sign perhaps that the mood music among those top firms that serve Wall Street is changing somewhat. Not a big enough change to really shift things across the board….but, nevertheless a few steps toward moderate disruption of traditional ways of working.
And finally, will this startup encourage other top lawyers to follow the same path? Why not? As people expect more from life than a single career now, perhaps more senior lawyers will decide they’d like to launch a legal tech startup as well? One thing they’ll have in their favour is plenty of client relationships!
Will be fascinating to see where this goes. Good luck to them!