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?
