Lawyer On Call

When Shant Berwal decided to call it quits after 16 years in the field of engineering, he wanted to start something in healthcare. While conducting a market survey for the same, he required legal assistance and soon realised what a cumbersome process it was. That's what directed the budding entrepreneur to change his area of focus. The result is Legal Resolved, an online platform for individuals and corporates to hire legal advisors.

For its individual clients the start-up facilitates consultations with experienced lawyers in the vicinity. One can also have a lawyer review documents or avail free advice on queries posted. Corporate clients are offered an entire gamut of services including drafting and reviewing contracts and term sheets. The individual clients seeking to connect to lawyers are charged a consultation fee starting at Rs.500, whereas for corporates it is around Rs.3,500.

With around 5,000 experienced lawyers on board, Legal Resolved has catered to around 1,800 customers so far, the majority of which have been individual clients. “In certain cases, when the lawyer has a different way of evaluating particular cases, the fee varies,” clarifies Berwal. “But we ensure that the customers get lawyers with good experience and domain knowledge,” he adds. According to him, the average ticket size is Rs.1,000 for individual clients and Rs.4,000 for corporates. With a monthly traffic of around 300 customers, the start-up generates revenue of around Rs.3 lakh every month. He further informs that some lawyers don't charge a consultation fee unless it converts into a case for them directly. Others however do pocket a 50% of the fee paid by a client to Legal Resolved. Another variant of the app functions as a professional network for lawyers registered with it.

Berwal started the online legal services aggregator with an initial investment of Rs.45 lakh and now targets a revenue of around Rs.50 lakh by March 2018. “We are looking at bringing in more customers and particularly, more corporate clients with big ticket sizes,” he says. The 15-member team has offices in NCR and Bengaluru and plans to launch an app to help customers with contract lifecycle management this month. It plans to expand to markets such as Singapore, Australia and Canada next. Quite a winning detour from Berwal's original plan this turned out to be — a handy solution for all your legal troubles.