LawPivot: Crowdsourced Legal Advice Trend Or Game Changer?
Union Square venture capitalist Fred Wilson received a whopping $17,000 bill for what he called a “standard set of legal documents” for one of the startups his company was funding. Wilson believed the firm that put the documents together, and handled the transaction had earned their money, so he willingly paid for the services rendered. However, Wilson believed these fees were too costly for the average startup company and subsequently challenged the legal community to find a more affordable solution.
LawPivot believes they have the solution. Partially funded by Google Ventures, LawPivot connects startups directly with lawyers who can answer their questions. In a market where the average cost of legal services can be upwards of $500 an hour, a new company can burn through startup funds pretty darn quickly.
LawPivot is lead and developed by real world lawyers who worked at top national firms like cofounder Nitin Gupta, and cofounder Jay Mandel a former lead mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Apple. LawPivot is set up to help startups navigate the expensive, cumbersome, and confusing legal sphere in an easy to use utility, for a fraction of the cost. The process is pretty simple.
- Register your company on the site.
- Submit your confidential question.
- Tag it with relevant topics
- System gives you a list of 10 lawyers to choose from
- Next, choose all, some or none of the lawyers and submit your question.
Tagging is important so that when the system searches its database it provides users with the right kind of lawyers. It’s pretty important to know that only those lawyers you choose will see your question. Users can also read profiles and detailed information about the attorneys that appear in their search results. The search isn’t just a shot in the dark. LawPivot uses a specially designed algorithm to give users the best results.
What’s in it for the lawyers on the site? The most obvious answer to that question is business development. It helps individual attorneys or firms builds recognition in the startup community. They improve the reputation of their firm with the positive testimonials from users. No to mention they now have access to a larger client base.
Founders of the site go to great lengths to protect the integrity of the sites: lawyers are vetted and individually approved before they are allowed to respond to questions. This means that they make sure they are qualified to answer questions based on their laws of their state.
GOING FORWARD
Currently, there is a trial period, where there is no charge for startups to ask up to 3 questions per month in California. Lawyers in California who apply to respond to questions are not being charged to join the service either. LawPivot will eventually charge its users and lawyers for access to the utility. LawPivot could very well be changing the face of legal services as we understand them today by providing access to experts at a fraction of yesterday’s costs.
