About us

Sideline was founded by me, Daniel Yim.

I'm an Australian lawyer and software developer. But this isn't the tale of a disgruntled lawyer who wanted to burn the system to the ground.

I worked as a corporate/project finance lawyer for over 10 years in both private practice (Gilbert + Tobin) and in-house (seconded by Axiom in the UK to GlaxoSmithKline and GE Capital), as well as for 3 years in the internal innovation team at Gilbert + Tobin. I found the client work fulfilling, loved learning from and mentoring colleagues, won multiple individual and team awards, and was even named as the inventor on a patent for a signature collation product.

But YOLO, and in 2021, I decided it was time to try something else. I had changed careers once before, having starting out as a professional classical pianist. How hard could it be transitioning into the world of startups?

It turns out very hard. In fact, you can read about my struggles here. And after several attempts trying to launch ambitious legaltech products that would change the very nature of legal practice, I began to understand that sometimes a clear, elegant solution to a specific, recurring and meaningful problem is all that lawyers really want.

The idea for Sideline wasn't born out of thin air. It came while testing another product with lawyers and being told that what would actually be useful is a solution to the problem of how to see internal changes made to draft emails. That problem had been well known for decades. I had experienced it countless times myself. Yet nobody had solved it.

To be honest, I had no idea if a solution was even possible. But I decided to give it a shot, dived into the Microsoft API documentation, built a working prototype, and deployed it with some early customers.

I still pinch myself when I open the activity logs and see so many lawyers using Sideline every day to learn and provide feedback to their colleagues. I hope I'll have the opportunity to help your firm too.
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwlyim/

Investors

It's customary for startups to include a section about their investors. But we don't have any :-)

Sideline is 100% bootstrapped, profitable, and has never had any need for external funding.