Startup Circle: How is Lawyered making lawyers accessible to Corporates and SMEs in India?

Great Businesses need great lawyers. With that philosophy, Lawyered helps corporates and SMEs have access to verified lawyers. It helps companies to list their requirements and provide proposals from corporate lawyers. The legal-tech company aims to help people get ‘Legally empowered’. In conversation with CiOL, Mr Himashu Gupta, Founder and CEO, Lawyered lays down the company's idea map.

What is Lawyered about? Tell us about the team.

We are a legal-tech platform that aims to change the way people interact with and within the legal industry. Lawyered is solving the age-old challenges as highlighted above by creating an ecosystem where legal professionals make themselves discoverable & accessible to legal advice seekers; thereby bridging the unfathomable gap. In addition to this, Lawyered provides a platform for legal professionals to connect and interact with in-house counsels, solving their need for legal representation. Lawyered is also working to solve the never-ending agony of law students concerning their need to connect with law firms for internships, job opportunities, networking, mentoring, learning, etc.

Since its inception - Lawyered has reached over 100K monthly hits on its platform and has catered to 50K+ startups, 10K+ corporate, and 100K+ individuals and helped them get easy access to legal advisors. With a vision of creating a legally empowered world, Lawyered works on a zero-commission model, has 24*7 availability, provides access to verified legal professionals and law firms, sponsors 30 minutes of a free consultation, and follow-ups and feedback throughout the process.

The team is a mixbag of lawyers, techies and sales and marketing specialists. We are a fun bunch of like-minded people who are motivated to bring about a change in the way people interact with and within the legal industry.

How did you come up with the idea?

In the legal industry too like the others, there are two sides, demand and supply. On the demand side, India generates 3 Bn+ legal interventions per year. On the supply side, India has 2.3 Mn+ registered legal professionals out of which roughly 80% are actively practising. The industry adds roughly 100K lawyers every year.

Despite these towering figures, the conversion rate is extremely poor. On the demand side, the consumers are not aware of basics like when, where, how and why - so they tend to avoid reaching out for help. Moreover, there is a social stigma associated with legal issues in the country which also discourages them. Further, on the supply side, the lawyers are better equipped to manage and provide legal services. Customer acquisition is not their forte. We realized this huge gap in the market and in 2017 we set out to organize this unorganized sector.

How are consumers adjusting to the challenges of going to lawyers via tech?

It is not the consumers who need to adjust to the challenges of approaching a certain industry or professional via tech. They are already doing it for their food, entertainment, retail needs for a long time and now even medical needs. But the lawyers need to adjust with approaches to them via tech.

What is your business/market growth? Who are your consumers?

Our consumer base is 1.3 Bn+ people, which is the entire population of the country. Further, we strongly believe that our country’s long term growth hinges on the success of more and more startups. For students of mathematics and economics - small successes on an individual level, when integrated, allow the country as a whole to succeed exponentially. It's basic maths. If through our efforts, we can contribute to bringing down the startup mortality rate significantly, we will accomplish our mission.

What has 2020 changed for you? How are things now?

Covid-19 was no different for us than it was for everyone else. Humanity suffered perhaps one of its worst crises. Our prayers go out to the families of the souls that left us. We have the biggest cheers for the front-line workers and the administration which worked round the clock to bring us all out of the misery.

We are thankful to our clients, supporters and well-wishers because of whom we were not just able to stay afloat but also bag the award for the legal-tech leaders by BW Legal World for the year which otherwise had us all on our knees. Our strategy moving forward is to get back to the pre-covid momentum. We are also looking to achieve projections as if there was no Covid. It’s an uphill task, but the team is spirited and excited.

What are your plans for 2021?

We have set certain internal targets for the year 2021. Most of these relate to proof-of-concept for products we are looking to launch soon as part of our vision Lawyered 2.0. Here we will gradually structure the demand from reactive to proactive. Instead of letting the consumers (i.e. legal advice seekers) wait and marinate till they run into problems - we will work towards empowering them in a way such that they don't run into problems. As stated earlier, we are creating customized focussed solutions for consumers to live the 'prevention is better than cure' principle.

But in the longer run - Lawyered will be synonymous with a one-stop-shop platform for the legal ecosystem connecting entities with and within the legal industry. To attain this goal, it is very necessary to make every single individual in the country legally aware. Thus, we aim to provide a trustworthy platform acting as their legal representative.