There’s no denying to the fact that
technology is going to play even a more important role in our day-to-day lives
in the post-COVID era. In fact, businesses are adapting to this new normal and
focusing on digital transformation swiftly. Legal services industry, which is
considered as very critical, is no exception. Legal-tech startup Lawyered could
realise the demand for online legal services in India way before the pandemic.
Today, the company has established itself as the front-runner in the legal-tech
industry in the country. The startup believes that access to critical services
like legal should be just a click away. It is working to bring legal online,
making it cost-effective, high-quality and accessible for all.
Online legal services will help revolutionize
the legal landscape in the country. Lawyered aims to change the way people
interact with and within the legal industry. Taking into account the practical
challenges with old traditional ways of receiving and delivering services in
law, Lawyered is solving this 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. Moreover,
Lawyered is working to solve the never-ending agony of law students with
respect to their need to connect with law firms for internships, job
opportunities, networking, mentoring and learning, among others.
The startup is on a mission to help
people feel legally empowered and have the vision to create a world in which
every citizen has a legal advisor by using technology as the means.
In an exclusive interview with Startup
Terminal; Himanshu Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO of Lawyered explains more about
the venture and future roadmap.
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| Himanshu Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO of Lawyered |
Excerpts:
ST: What was the idea behind launching
Lawyered?
Himanshu Gupta: The origin of Lawyered
comes with the purpose of making legal service affordable and accessible to
every citizen of the nation.
Having spent more than a decade in the
legal industry, I realised that there is a huge gap in the legal service
ecosystem in the country. A country which is so diverse and highly divided in
terms of urban-rural gaps, many people struggle to find the right legal aid
when they have a situation. Either they have limited options or they find it
difficult to whom to select for their matter. At the same time, many talented
lawyers are not able to expand their practice due to lack of discoverability
and many other reasons.
Lawyered aims to bridge this gap between
legal advice-seekers and the legal professionals through its online legal-tech
platform.
ST: Please let us know more about
Lawyered.
Himanshu Gupta: Lawyered is a legal-tech
platform designed to change the way people interact with and within the legal
industry. Taking into account the practical challenges with old traditional
ways of receiving and delivering services in law, Lawyered is solving this 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 most common challenges of
Law Students with respect to their needs to connect with Law firms for
internships, job opportunities, networking, mentoring, learning, etc.
ST: Who are the main target audiences of
Lawyered? Where in India is your service available?
Himanshu Gupta: Everyone who is facing
or may face a challenge as stated above. These are inclusive of – practising
Legal Professionals, Small/Medium/Large Law Firms, In-house Counsels,
Corporates, Startups, SMEs, Law Students, Individuals, Institutions, etc.
Our services are available in almost
every Indian city and district starting from the Himalayan region to the down
South.
ST: How do you see Lawyered in the next
2 years from now?
Himanshu Gupta: Lawyered aspires to achieve its already set
goals to provide legal advisors to every citizen of our country and to be able
to set new goals where we can provide legal services to each person of our
country or otherwise consider the prevailing situations. We intend to give the
sense of empowerment to all those who are unable to or are in a need of legal
empowerment to act on their behalf to represent them in their legal transactions/affairs
or in specific functions where they believe that it can be delivered to them on
their behalf through us as per the mutually agreed degree. Along with it, we
also believe that we will be able to win the confidence of the litigants by making
appropriate use of the technology in making them discover young legal
professionals and all those who may have been facing/faced a challenge in their
discovery and accessibility meticulously along with the ones who have possessed
sufficient experience and serve them with the best possible resolutions
diluting the cut-throat existing competitions.
In nut-shell, we would work towards
bringing down the gap between the legal industry and the legal advice-seekers
and help in advancing the rule-of-law in the country.
ST: What is your take on the Indian
legal services market? Do you see any existing challenges for Legal service
providers?
Himanshu Gupta: Indian Market is growing
at a very fast pace and involves itself with international collaborations and
maintaining & building relations, so let’s not even limit the possibilities
by answering it. It is in itself an interdependent chain of markets that
includes access to various foreign markets in it.
The world over, the legal sector has
seen the slowest adoption of tech-based solutions. Even within the sector,
India is a couple of years behind some other nations.
This year saw the introduction of
virtual courts for the first time in the country. Though the process was
catalyzed by Covid-19, it has kick-started a very important conversation – ‘how
can the legal industry benefit from the very many pros that emerging tech
offer?’
The challenge which appears to be mostly
faced is the hesitation of acceptance among people of the fact that law can be
more than just the courtroom practice and there can be various other important
shades or elements attached. There is room to bloom for legal tech platforms
like ours to contribute and enable this industry with a user-friendly
technology-savvy experience and aid in empowering people by making them realise
that law is a tool which must be used by them in all possible sense.
We might be late to the party but given
the importance of the legal sector, the overburdened judiciary and the immense
potential that the Indian demographic offers – we will be booming with legal
tech products, startups and services very soon. After all, fintech furthered
the vision of financial inclusion – so why should legal tech not further be the
vision of legal inclusion?
