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Pluto Mail: Law Students Launch an Email Startup

By William Peacock, Esq. on April 02, 2014 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Looks like someone took my advice.

Just kidding. They probably never read the post. But we do applaud the two law students' ingenuity and time management skills. When we were in law school, there wouldn't have been enough time to revolutionize email in between classes and cocktails studying.

Revolutionize email? It seems so, if Pluto Mail can deliver. The law student-created startup promises to have unsending, editing (after sending), and auto-expiring features, all of which sound enticing to anyone who has ever accidently sent an email with an unfortunate typo or accidental recipient.

The Duo

Meet Harvard Law students Lindsay Lin and David S. Gobaud, the impressive duo behind Pluto Mail. As you might expect, these aren't your ordinary law students.

According to the Harvard Crimson, Gobaud has an undergraduate degree in computer science from Stanford, worked for Google, and launched a software automation team at the White House before heading to law school. Lin has a degree from the University of Virginia in mathematics, created websites in grade school, and worked in investment banking before coming to Cambridge.

They've got Lin for the business and financing aspects, Gobaud for the programming, and both for any legal disputes that may arise. That's quite the team.

The Product

Beyond the universally appealing feature set, the product is a genius idea for another reason: you don't have to change email providers. Gobaud told the Crimson that Pluto "lets you keep using your same email address, your same email client, and the receivers do not have to be using the service."

That's an impressive premise, if the software delivers. We just joined the waitlist to find out for ourselves.

The Times

As we alluded to earlier, desperation breeds innovation. While these two were likely set for life anyway (it's Harvard), we've seen calls for law-related startups at ReinventLaw, and highlighted a few in last year's post on legal startups as an alternate career path.

For many seeking a lucrative career post-graduation, BigLaw might not be the only choice, if it was even an option to begin with. Instead of chasing a six-figure associateship, a better option might be to take your non-legal skillset and combine it with what you've learned in law school to pursue an alternative legal career.

And if you think you've got the next big legal startup, give us a tweet. We're always interested in "disruptive" (ugh) ideas.

Update, April 2, 2014: Pluto Mail was kind enough to answer the author's request for a line jump in the new accounts waitlist. This graciousness extends to you, dear readers. Try it out here.

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