An Essay by Seth C. Oranburg
Architects
of the Void
The Entrepreneurial Lawyer as Sub-Creator
“the earth was without form, and void”
Startup formation is the highest form of justice, and the entrepreneurial lawyer is the architect of that ultimate justice.
The essay reads firm formation through two traditions at once. Maimonides ranks the gift that ends a person's dependence above every lesser charity, and the firm is the institution that does exactly that. Tolkien calls the maker of a secondary world a sub-creator, and the lawyer who drafts the charter, the bylaws, and the deal is building a world that has to hold together under its own laws. Put side by side, they make a claim about what entrepreneurial lawyering is for, and why artificial intelligence cannot do it.