[1]Khosla: clients have difficulty finding the right lawyer for their legal issue
A new ‘find a lawyer’ service just launched in America has designs on coming to the UK next year, Legal Futures can reveal.
The long-term goal of LawVisors [2] is to be a “legal ecosystem” where clients connect with lawyers, lawyers connect with each other, and clients and lawyers can access legal documents and other resources.
The site is currently in its beta testing phase. It was founded by Vikas Khosla, a one-time software engineer who practised corporate law in New York at leading firms Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Vinson & Elkins.
Mr Khosla said there are solid plans to expand internationally from next year, with the UK top of the list given its status as “the leader of legal innovation”.
“We believe a core problem around the procurement of legal services is that clients have difficulty finding the right lawyer for their legal issue,” Mr Khosla explained. “This is because the legal industry is fragmented into numerous groups based on practice area, size of business served, business versus personal lawyers, experience level required, industry specialisation, technical specialisation (in the case of intellectual property) and, especially in the US, jurisdiction.
“As a result, clients often do not choose the right lawyer for their issue, pay for a higher level of service than they require, or do not get the level of expertise they need.”
He said LawVisors’ goal is to solve this problem by providing detailed qualitative and quantitative information on lawyers in an easy-to-use search interface. This would be self-reported information and data that the company “mines” itself.
The site will also allow users to seek quotes from multiple lawyers.
“We are currently in a free public beta and are seeking to sign up accomplished lawyers in the US, with a focus on small and medium-sized law firms. We expect to complete the beta in six months, but will not charge for the service until we are creating real value for lawyers and their clients.”