LawBasket is, well, bringing law to the basket of what can be purchased online in Zimbabwe and across Africa. The startup was just founded in December of 2018 by a team of entrepreneurs that includes two lawyers. In what was supposed to be a huge thrill for the startup, it secured signups from legal professionals from more than 25 African countries on this launch.
The Law Startup Business Model Is Simple
The startup believes you can shop all legal services online the way you shop for clothing and other wares. The startup calls itself an online legal services marketplace for small businesses and startups, which bring together hundreds of lawyers in over 200 practice areas to deliver quality and affordable legal services online. The startup also offers client relationship management technology and payment processing services for lawyers.
The startup exists for both lawyers and clients.
- The client can get to hire lawyers for their job from a wide range of lawyers on the platform, with expertise in various areas. They can either post a job and let lawyers bid based on expertise and client’s budget, or they can simply search for services, find lawyers and invite them to do their cases.
- The startup is also giving legal clients the power to manage jobs from anywhere in the world, using their dashboard. With an integrated mailbox on the dashboard, the client can send emails to their lawyers quickly and follow up on their cases. They can also monitor proposal for posted jobs or manage their payments to lawyers for work done. Lawyers are only paid when the job is done. Through LawBasket Payments, the startup also simplifies the process of creating and managing bills for lawyers and provides a simple portal to process multi-jurisdictional payments for legal services.
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- For lawyers, they can search for cases that tickle their fancy, and send proposals to clients based on their expertise that suits the case, and at the same time search jobs at any time.
- The startup is also giving lawyers a dashboard and a mailbox to manage their work from anywhere in the world.
According to the startup’s co-founder and head of marketing Nyasha Makamba in a recent interview, the platform presented a credible alternative to traditional law firms, providing a cost-certain solution to getting legal help for small businesses across Africa.
“In terms of the competition, and although the company is not a law firm, the firm broadly competes with traditional law firms, as well as other consultancy companies that provide technology-driven legal solutions. LawBasket is different from traditional law firms both in size and reach, as well as its approach to pricing legal services,” said Makamba.
How Law Basket Expects To Make Its Profit
Although LawBasket has been funded by its founders, Makamba said it had a “clear path to revenue generation and profitability in 12 months”, with revenue expected from commissions on LawBasket jobs, premium membership, and payment processing fees through LawBasket Payments.
Already, the startup has gained traction with over 153 lawyers from more than 25 African countries registering on its platform.
“It is almost 10 times bigger than the largest law firm in Zimbabwe, and is less than 40 lawyers away from surpassing the largest law firm by lawyer number in South Africa and Nigeria,” Makamba said.
Law Basket is also getting a hit from potential clients from more than 15 countries. Its client base is already over 106, ranging from small businesses and startups.
“With these demographics, this means that the legal services payment processing aspect of the business is operative in 25 countries in Africa, including South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Zambia, Botswana, Senegal amongst other countries,” Makamba said.
“We plan to increase user numbers both on the client side and the lawyer side in the current markets, with plans to introduce more lawyers from the Francophone and Lusophone markets within 12 months.”
Globally, the legal technology industry is still growing, but the industry has quietly built up a number of emerging categories over the last few years. As of 2017, legal tech companies raised just $739M in aggregate funding since 2011. However, there is still a lot of opportunities to improve processes within the legal industry still attached to manual and paper-based processes.
The least popular areas in legal tech in 2018 are e-Billing and intellectual property, where machine learning is widely used. These areas are represented by three companies on each side. In 2018, only one of them has raised investments, a company which is developing an IP-solution.
On the other hand, e-Discovery is one of the most popular destinations in the whole legal tech industry. e-Discovery, mostly used in common law countries is an electronic service for finding relevant information about lawsuits and investigations. In common law countries, e-Discovery does provide great help to lawyers, saving them time and improving the accuracy of finding suitable court cases.
In 2016, $224 million was invested in the industry; in 2017, $233 million was invested. Investors were eyeing a fairly young business area and refrained from large transactions.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
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