The first legal-tech startups have begun sprouting in Asia. It’s only a matter of time before they really begin to branch out across the industry
Inherently a traditional industry, legal hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with technology. While the old-fashioned image of crusty lawyers poring over musty books is probably no longer valid, the legal sector remains one of the slowest when it comes to moving with the times, but that is changing. The startup scene that spawned some of the technology giants of today may not be synonymous with legal-related services, but the West has already seen the growth of legal technology firms like LegalZoom and Recommind. And the first seeds of legal tech are now being sown in Asia with the emergence of startups like LawCanvas and Dragon Law.
Both firms aim to offer customised legal document templates to SMEs, thus reducing the time and cost spent, not to mention the confusion experienced by small, first-time users of legal services. As Daniel Leong, co-founder of the Singapore-based LawCanvas, points out: “The market rate for a website’s terms of service to be prepared by a lawyer is about S$3,000 [$2200]. If you’re starting out with S$10,000 for your new business, it doesn’t quite make sense to be spending 30 percent of that on something that doesn’t bring in revenue.”
These costs, combined with a lack of familiarity, as well as poor understanding of when and how to access legal resources, leads SMEs to use limited formal legal support, explains Emmanuel V. Pitsilis, cofounder of Dragon Law. “As a result, many remain exposed to legal risk and their owners and managers spend a disproportionate amount of time on legal and contract issues about which they have little formal training.”
But it’s not just the lower costs and time saved that are the major draws; the fact that clients have access to actual lawyers as well should make these services attractive. LawCanvas’s legal document templates are drafted by local lawyers, while Dragon Law, which has a presence in Hong Kong and Singapore, says it works with “several topnotch law firms” to ensure clients “can get access to timely advice when they need it.”
In that way, these companies aim to fill a gap in the legal-services sector instead of competing with traditional legal-service providers. “Dragon Law does not and does not intend to provide legal advice,” says Pitsilis. “Our end-to-end service puts us at the center of an ecosystem of firms providing different types of services to clients.” That’s not to say that all law firms are receptive to the idea. “‘Old school’ factions think that we’re ‘trying to practice law online’ or even take business away from them – it really depends on their level of receptivity towards new ways of doing things,” says Leong.
That level of receptivity is going to be key over the next few years because there are a lot of areas within the legal-services sector that require better solutions than what are currently available, and there could be more companies looking to fill those gaps. If the U.S. is taken as an example, aside from affordable legal documents, we could see technology startups looking to offer lawyer networks (connecting lawyers to potential clients in the vein of Uber), discovery and litigation analytics, contract analysis and management and law firm automation. With its massive market of potential clients (not to mention the sheer number of lawyers), Asia might be set to lead the way in legal technology.