How this legal tech startup helping lawyers enhance their practice

How strong India's legal system is?

Indian legal system is very comprehensive and one of the most efficient systems among its global counterparts to cater to Indian citizens. A system that is serving more than a billion population is challenged by frivolous litigations and delayed matters as a strategy to keep the pendency high in the courts. General awareness about legal matters is very low in India and it is the other reason for the slower processing of cases. We need a strong pre-consultation mechanism for individuals and businesses to enhance their awareness.

What would be your advice for the youngsters who want to be a part of India's legal system?

Be honest in your advisory and have an eye for detail. Every legal professional should help their client in making an informed decision and should maintain the highest professional ethics. Bet big on technology to automate manual and repetitive tasks so that you can focus on your core legal strengths.

Tell us about your venture

Legalkart is a technology company that develops technology solutions for legal professionals and businesses. With nearly no adoption of any technology to support the legal practice, Legalkart wants to build and improve the practice management experience for all legal professionals. Legalkart's technology helps all kinds of businesses in the country to manage their legal matters and bring down their cost and time for managing legal matters. Legalkart assures transparency throughout the case life-cycle for corporate and business-related legal matters.

At LegalKart the objective is to create access to a lawyer and legal services for every citizen. Legally aware and enlightened citizens are the creators of a mature society. At LegalKart our endeavour is to build technologies to reach a billion populations and enable them to access and avail legal support and services conveniently.

LegalKart's tech research and development head office is in Kolkata and it is led by Partha Sen, who is the Chief Technology Officer of the company. With a team of 15 members, LegalKart software is an in-house development. We are using the most advanced technology for innovative product development and the safest servers in the world to protect the system to scale it to the next level. LegalKart is video call enabled and customers can choose to consult a lawyer over a video call or audio call. We have a consumer mobile app for the same which can be downloaded from app store and play store.

How did you get the idea about starting a business like LegalKart? What loopholes who want to address through your venture?

Every challenge that we face is a hidden opportunity. In 12 years of my professional experience with various corporations, I experienced serious challenges due to the unavailability of legal professionals in different parts of the country and sometimes at international destinations too. That feeling when you can see that the problem is obvious but there is no solution available inspired me to explore possible solutions. I was able to visualize the challenge as a third person and identified the key bottlenecks with the help of my founding partner and LegalKart CTO Partha Sen by using appropriate technology solutions. The only objective we had in our minds was to create access to a reliable legal professional on-demand and this led to the concept of LegalKart. After gaining years of experience in the industry, I wanted to revolutionize the industry and make it more efficient and connected. My keen interest in law and technology made me come up with the groundbreaking concept of legal practice management in the form of a mobile app wherein lawyers can build, manage and grow their legal practice.

The absence of an affordable and convenient way to access Legal Advice and Support was the fundamental idea behind Legalkart. With less than 2 per cent of Lawyers using technology and 0.1 per cent taking online legal support; India is currently at the bottom of the Legal Tech Tally of Global Players. The Corona pandemic catalyzed the growth of technology adoption across the globe and the Legal sector was the biggest beneficiary of it.

At LegalKart our aim is to democratize legal access and make it convenient and affordable without any compromise on quality. We visualize a future wherein LegalKart will be a destination technology platform for anything legal for any individual or a lawyer in India.

What is your USPs that makes you different from other players operating in the same sector?

While the other domestic players provide only piecemeal solutions to the legal professionals, Legalkart aspires to provide a comprehensive one-stop solution for all the needs that legal professionals may have. Having said that, Legalkart, unlike other players, is the first technology platform that believes in creating an ecosystem where all the stakeholders (i.e. lawyers, individuals, and corporates) will be able to interact with each other in order to facilitate a better and smoother experience for everyone involved in the process.

How has been the business so far?

Legalkart's platform is gaining strong traction due to its innovative tech-enabled, affordable and neutral legal advice which is available 24X7. With a strong 25 per cent MoM growth we are hopeful to double our customer base every quarter. Based on the customer requirements we create product offerings like instant legal advice; document review, property due diligence, and startup compliances. We've served more than 1.5 lakh customers through advisory and documentation. Operational breakeven is achieved and hoping to be financially profitable by the year-end of 2022.

Throw light on the recent developments in the organization in terms of operations, R&D, hiring, etc.

We have recently launched video consultation and document review features on our website Legalkart.com for customers who are seeking any legal advice. Earlier the service was only limited to audio-based consultation. But, due to a large number of people interested in video-based consultation, LegalKart has launched a video call feature. The startup has built the video call technology in-house, which ensures superior quality and provides a smooth user experience to the clients.

In addition to this, we have also launched an instant legal document review feature parallel to the video calls functionality. For the first time in the legal industry, customers can get complex legal documents reviewed from an expert lawyer even if it's just as single page. Clients can discuss any legal document be it a single page or multiple paged documents on a video call with an experienced lawyer who can help them navigate the document and enable them in pursuing a further course of action.

We have recently raised Rs 4 crore pre-Series A from Mumbai Angels, IIM Udaipur Incubation Center. Through this funding, we aim to develop new tech products for customers with AI, and ML capabilities, to create instant access to legal support while also creating awareness about the platform. Thus, our aim is to strengthen the legal tech landscape of the country by democratizing it using new-age technologies.

What are the key priorities of LegalKart for the next 12-14 months?

Our objective is to provide convenient access to any legal support at an affordable price. In the next few months, we would like to build a strong ecosystem of legal support services wherein users and service providers shall be able to interact seamlessly across geographical boundaries. We would like to become the Amazon of Legal.