Ex-Slaughters lawyer on building a startup: ‘It quickly becomes obsessive’
Tim Follett left a successful City career to build StructureFlow, a platform designed to help lawyers structure and visualise data.
Contents
As a transactional lawyer at Slaughter and May, Tim Follett spent his days working on high-value private equity deals, reorganisations and acquisitions, and by his own account, he was happy.
Like many City lawyers, he regularly relied on something that sat quietly in the background of every deal: diagrams of deal structures.
“The work that you're doing as a lawyer is fundamentally about companies, assets, funding flows, ownership and relationships,” he says. “There's often quite complex structures.”
Those structures are not always easily understood from documents alone. Contracts describe them, but it is visual diagrams that make them tangible.
“You can look at a diagram and immediately understand the structure,” he explains. “Whereas you can't just quickly read mountains of contracts.”
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The PowerPoint problem
By the time Follett began practising law at Slaughters in 2009, the industry had settled on a standard for this type of work: PowerPoint.
“It’s just so painful to make diagrams because PowerPoint wasn't designed for it,” he says.
It’s just so painful to make diagrams because PowerPoint wasn't designed for it.
What began as a workaround had become embedded in the core of billion dollar transactions. Entire industries were relying on general purpose presentation software to model highly complex financial and legal relationships.
“In engineering or construction, you would be using computer-aided design software,” he says. “The legal industry, the accounting industry, tax advisory industry, everyone's using PowerPoint.”
Turning down the dial
Follett was, by his own account, “a happy lawyer”, but the intensity of top-tier corporate work was all-consuming.
“Slaughters was very intense, all consuming. I loved it, but I got to the point where I met my wife and thought there’s more to life than work,” he says.
He made the decision to move to Farrer & Co, a smaller City firm known for its private client and advisory work, in search of something more sustainable.
“It was sufficiently intense - I still got the buzz of doing deals. It was like turning the dial down from 10 to 7,” he says.
That intensity, it turns out, never really went away.
“It’s ironic because then I became a founder and clearly my appetite for intensity and work is just part of who I am.”
Obsessing about the problem
The idea that became StructureFlow, a platform for mapping and visualising complex deal structures, started as a side project in the margins of his legal career. His evenings and weekends were spent exploring how software might better represent structures and relationships.
It becomes quite quickly obsessive. All you can think about is this problem.
“It becomes quite quickly obsessive,” he says. “All you can think about is this problem.”
Around the same time, he began tentatively stepping into the legal tech world. His first Legal Geek event in 2015 came with a safety net: his wife, who he brought along as his “business partner” - partly, he admits, because he didn’t want to go alone.
Taking the leap
In 2015, building even a basic prototype required significant investment. Follett spent around £20,000 of his own savings developing an early version of the product and testing it with contacts across his network.
“I figured that in order for me to stand a strong chance of getting people on board and backing me doing this, I needed a prototype.”
The response was enough to prompt a leap and in November 2017, Follett left private practice.
A short demo video - recorded on his webcam and inspired by Dropbox’s early pitch - helped secure initial backing and StructureFlow was born, raising its first angel round in August 2018.
Follett initially considered finding a technical co-founder, but ultimately went it alone, a decision that came with trade-offs.
“You don’t have that other person to riff off,” he says. “But you also don’t have the risk of founders falling out.”
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Addleshaw Goddard | £52,000 | £56,000 | £100,000 |
| Akin | £60,000 | £65,000 | £174,418 |
| A&O Shearman | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Ashurst | £57,000 | £62,000 | £140,000 |
| Baker McKenzie | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| Bird & Bird | £48,500 | £53,500 | £102,000 |
| Bristows | £48,000 | £52,000 | £95,000 |
| Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner | £55,000 | £58,000 | £125,000 |
| Burges Salmon | £49,500 | £51,500 | £76,000 |
| Charles Russell Speechlys | £52,000 | £55,000 | £93,000 |
| Cleary Gottlieb | £62,500 | £67,500 | £164,500 |
| Clifford Chance | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Clyde & Co | £48,500 | £51,000 | £85,000 |
| CMS | £50,000 | £55,000 | £120,000 |
| Cooley | £55,000 | £60,000 | £157,000 |
| Davis Polk | £65,000 | £70,000 | £180,000 |
| Debevoise | £55,000 | £60,000 | £173,000 |
| Dechert | £55,000 | £61,000 | £165,000 |
| Dentons | £52,000 | £56,000 | £104,000 |
| DLA Piper | £52,000 | £57,000 | £130,000 |
| Eversheds Sutherland | £50,000 | £55,000 | £110,000 |
| Farrer & Co | £48,500 | £51,000 | £89,000 |
| Fieldfisher | £48,500 | £52,000 | £100,000 |
| Freshfields | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Fried Frank | £55,000 | £60,000 | £175,000 |
| Gibson Dunn | £60,000 | £65,000 | £180,000 |
| Goodwin Procter | £55,000 | £60,000 | £175,000 |
| Gowling WLG | £48,500 | £53,500 | £105,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| HFW | £52,000 | £56,000 | £103,500 |
| Hill Dickinson | £44,000 | £45,000 | £80,000 |
| Hogan Lovells | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Irwin Mitchell | £43,500 | £45,500 | £78,000 |
| Jones Day | £60,000 | £68,000 | £165,000 |
| K&L Gates | £50,000 | £55,000 | £115,000 |
| Kennedys | £43,000 | £46,000 | £85,000 |
| King & Spalding | £62,000 | £67,000 | £175,000 |
| Kirkland & Ellis | £60,000 | £65,000 | £174,418 |
| Latham & Watkins | £60,000 | £65,000 | £174,418 |
| Linklaters | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Macfarlanes | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Mayer Brown | £55,000 | £60,000 | £150,000 |
| McDermott Will & Schulte | £65,000 | £70,000 | £174,418 |
| Milbank | £65,000 | £70,000 | £174,418 |
| Mills & Reeve | £46,800 | £47,000 | £84,000 |
| Mishcon de Reya | £50,000 | £55,000 | £100,000 |
| Norton Rose Fulbright | £56,000 | £61,000 | £135,000 |
| Orrick | £60,000 | £65,000 | £160,000 |
| Osborne Clarke | £55,500 | £57,500 | £97,000 |
| Paul Hastings | £60,000 | £68,000 | £173,000 |
| Paul Weiss | £60,000 | £65,000 | £180,000 |
| Penningtons Manches Cooper | £48,000 | £50,000 | £83,000 |
| Pinsent Masons | £52,000 | £57,000 | £105,000 |
| Quinn Emanuel | n/a | n/a | £180,000 |
| Reed Smith | £53,000 | £58,000 | £125,000 |
| Ropes & Gray | £62,000 | £67,000 | £170,000 |
| RPC | £48,000 | £52,000 | £95,000 |
| Shoosmiths | £45,000 | £47,000 | £105,000 |
| Sidley Austin | £60,000 | £65,000 | £175,000 |
| Simmons & Simmons | £54,000 | £59,000 | £120,000 |
| Simpson Thacher | n/a | n/a | £178,000 |
| Skadden | £58,000 | £63,000 | £177,000 |
| Slaughter and May | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Squire Patton Boggs | £50,000 | £55,000 | £110,000 |
| Stephenson Harwood | £50,000 | £55,000 | £105,000 |
| Sullivan & Cromwell | £65,000 | £70,000 | £174,418 |
| Taylor Wessing | £52,000 | £57,000 | £115,000 |
| TLT | £44,000 | £47,500 | £85,000 |
| Travers Smith | £55,000 | £60,000 | £130,000 |
| Trowers & Hamlins | £47,000 | £51,000 | £85,000 |
| Vinson & Elkins | £60,000 | £65,000 | £173,077 |
| Watson Farley & Williams | £51,500 | £56,000 | £107,000 |
| Weightmans | £36,000 | £38,000 | £70,000 |
| Weil | £60,000 | £65,000 | £170,000 |
| White & Case | £62,000 | £67,000 | £175,000 |
| Willkie Farr & Gallagher | £60,000 | £65,000 | £180,000 |
| Withers | £47,000 | £52,000 | £95,000 |
| Womble Bond Dickinson | £43,000 | £45,000 | £83,000 |
Rank | Law Firm | Revenue | Profit per Equity Partner (PEP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DLA Piper* | £3,130,000,000 | £2,500,000 |
| 2 | A&O Shearman | £2,900,000,000 | £2,000,000 |
| 3 | Clifford Chance | £2,400,000,000 | £2,100,000 |
| 4 | Hogan Lovells | £2,320,000,000 | £2,400,000 |
| 5 | Linklaters | £2,320,000,000 | £2,200,000 |
| 6 | Freshfields | £2,250,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 7 | CMS** | £1,800,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 8 | Norton Rose Fulbright* | £1,800,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 9 | HSF Kramer | £1,360,000,000 | £1,400,000 |
| 10 | Ashurst | £1,030,000,000 | £1,390,000 |
| 11 | Clyde & Co | £854,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 12 | Eversheds Sutherland | £769,000,000 | £1,400,000 |
| 13 | Pinsent Masons | £680,000,000 | £790,000 |
| 14 | Slaughter and May*** | £650,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 15 | BCLP* | £640,000,000 | £790,000 |
| 16 | Simmons & Simmons | £615,000,000 | £1,120,000 |
| 17 | Bird & Bird** | £580,000,000 | £720,000 |
| 18 | Addleshaw Goddard | £550,000,000 | £1,000,000 |
| 19 | Taylor Wessing | £526,000,000 | £1,100,000 |
| 20 | Osborne Clarke** | £476,000,000 | £800,000 |
| 21 | DWF | £466,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 22 | Womble Bond Dickinson | £450,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 23 | Kennedys | £428,000,000 | Not disclosed |
| 24 | Fieldfisher | £385,000,000 | £1,000,000 |
| 25 | Macfarlanes | £371,000,000 | £3,100,000 |
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A London legal tech moment
Follett’s journey coincided with a broader shift in legal tech. Starting around 2015, a wave of lawyers began leaving practice to build tools based on firsthand frustrations.
“There’s a whole load of us that were kind of part of that cohort,” he says. “Lawyers who had experienced pain deciding to quit their jobs and to do something about it.”
London became a particular hub for this activity, supported by early communities like Legal Geek and accelerator programmes from firms such as Allen and Overy, now A&O Shearman.
“London started to emerge as an entrepreneurial space,” he says.
Finding the right backers
Follett went through Founders Factory’s accelerator in 2020, which helped him connect with investors including Venrex, a VC firm that became StructureFlow’s seed institutional investor.
At a Miami event hosted by The LegalTech Fund in 2023, Follett met Chris Haley, a partner at Fintop Capital who ended up leading the company’s Series A in 2024.
It's a numbers game. You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince or princess.
“It's a numbers game. You're out in the market, you're trying to meet as many potential investors as possible to maximise your chances of getting a successful investment. You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince or princess.
I knew sitting down with Chris within seconds that this was going to be a very different conversation because he just immediately got what we do.”
More than it seems
At first glance, StructureFlow appears to be a better way to create diagrams, but Follett says this misses the point.
“Diagramming is the means to an end, it's not the end itself,” he says.
The real problem is complexity. Lawyers are extracting data from vast volumes of unstructured material and trying to impose order on it.
A traditional diagram is static. StructureFlow adds a data layer, turning each element into something meaningful.
“A box is not just a box,” Follett explains. “A box is a legal entity, it's an asset. The software has a semantic understanding of what that thing is.”
This shift allows users not just to visualise structures, but to model them, test scenarios and ultimately make decisions. Follett describes this as a “map, model, move” workflow.
Designing before drafting
One of the platform’s key use cases sits at the very start of a transaction. Before documents are drafted, parties need a shared understanding of the deal.
“If someone finds out three months down the line into documentation that actually there was a significant misunderstanding around the deal structure, all the documents are going to need to be redone,” he says. “It's an absolute nightmare.”
By making it easier to build and adjust structures early, StructureFlow enables more design thinking upfront. Lawyers can explore options collaboratively, rather than locking into documentation too soon.
The tool is now used across law firms, particularly in areas such as M&A, private equity, tax and corporate banking, and is also used by in-house teams at private equity firms and hedge funds.
Law firm clients include Slaughters, Norton Rose Fulbright, Linklaters and Baker McKenzie.
| Firm | London office since | Known for in London |
|---|---|---|
| Akin | 1997 | Restructuring, funds |
| Baker McKenzie | 1961 | Finance, capital markets, TMT |
| Davis Polk | 1972 | Leveraged finance, corporate/M&A |
| Gibson Dunn | 1979 | Private equity, arbitration, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Goodwin | 2008 | Private equity, funds, life sciences |
| Kirkland & Ellis | 1994 | Private equity, funds, restructuring |
| Latham & Watkins | 1990 | Finance, private equity, capital markets |
| McDermott Will & Schulte | 1998 | Finance, funds, healthcare |
| Milbank | 1979 | Finance, capital markets, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Paul Hastings | 1997 | Leveraged finance, structured finance, infrastructure |
| Paul Weiss | 2001 | Private equity, leveraged finance |
| Quinn Emanuel | 2008 | Litigation |
| Sidley Austin | 1974 | Leveraged finance, capital markets, corporate/M&A |
| Simpson Thacher | 1978 | Leveraged finance, private equity, funds |
| Skadden | 1988 | Finance, corporate/M&A, arbitration |
| Sullivan & Cromwell | 1972 | Corporate/M&A, restructuring, capital markets |
| Weil | 1996 | Restructuring, private equity, leverage finance |
| White & Case | 1971 | Capital markets, arbitration, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Law firm | Type | First-year salary |
|---|---|---|
| White & Case | US firm | £32,000 |
| Stephenson Harwood | International | £30,000 |
| A&O Shearman | Magic Circle | £28,000 |
| Charles Russell Speechlys | International | £28,000 |
| Freshfields | Magic Circle | £28,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills | Silver Circle | £28,000 |
| Hogan Lovells | International | £28,000 |
| Linklaters | Magic Circle | £28,000 |
| Mishcon de Reya | International | £28,000 |
| Norton Rose Fulbright | International | £28,000 |
Making AI useful
Like much of legal tech, StructureFlow is being impacted by AI. But Follett sees its role differently from general purpose tools.
“We're not Harvey, we're not Legora,” he says. “We are a tool for working with complex corporate structures and transactions.”
The opportunity lies in combining structured visual data with AI’s ability to process large datasets. When information is organised into entities and relationships, both humans and machines can navigate it more effectively.
There’s this kind of magic that happens when you're able to show the structure of something to an AI.
“You really need an AI platform to understand the information architecture of what it is working on,” he says.
This is where StructureFlow comes into play. By creating a structured representation of a deal, it can act as a bridge between raw documents and AI analysis.
“There’s this kind of magic that happens when you're able to show the structure of something to an AI,” he says.
He points to an emerging idea in the industry: information architecture before artificial intelligence. In other words, structuring data is a prerequisite for making AI useful.
A different kind of build
In the law firm structure, he says: “You’re not really building. You are serving the people at the top. Everything you do is for the people at the top.”
While there’s a build element to building your expertise, personal profile or team, he argues that in a startup, it’s on another dimension.
“You're building something which is continually incremental. It’s always improving and growing,” he says. “Something that you can step back from and look at and say this wouldn't exist if I hadn't made it.”
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A&O Shearman | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Clifford Chance | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Linklaters | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Slaughter and May | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A&O Shearman | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Clifford Chance | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Linklaters | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
| Slaughter and May | £56,000 | £61,000 | £150,000 |
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashurst | £57,000 | £62,000 | £140,000 |
| Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner | £55,000 | £58,000 | £125,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| Macfarlanes | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Travers Smith | £55,000 | £60,000 | £130,000 |
| Firm | Merger year | Known for in London |
|---|---|---|
| BCLP | 2018 | Real estate, corporate/M&A, litigation |
| DLA Piper | 2005 | Corporate/M&A, real estate, energy, resources and infrastructure |
| Eversheds Sutherland | 2017 | Corporate/M&A, finance |
| Hogan Lovells | 2011 | Litigation, regulation, finance |
| Mayer Brown | 2002 | Finance, capital markets, real estate |
| Norton Rose Fulbright | 2013 | Energy, resources and infrastructure, insurance, finance |
| Reed Smith | 2007 | Shipping, finance, TMT |
| Squire Patton Boggs | 2011 | Corporate/M&A, pensions, TMT |
Law Firm | Trainee First Year | Trainee Second Year | Newly Qualified (NQ) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashurst | £57,000 | £62,000 | £140,000 |
| Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner | £55,000 | £58,000 | £125,000 |
| Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer | £56,000 | £61,000 | £145,000 |
| Macfarlanes | £56,000 | £61,000 | £140,000 |
| Travers Smith | £55,000 | £60,000 | £130,000 |
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