{Startup Watch: Legalkart} Affordable access to legal services through technology

This legal tech startup is solving the problem of affordable access to legal services by aiming to assist in ushering in a transition from traditional to digital lawyers.

It takes time to get your day in court. India has almost four crore pending cases spanning the Supreme Court, various High Courts, and the numerous district and subordinate courts. As of 2020, there are 3.65 crore unresolved litigations in India.

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The Indian judicial system has been afflicted with backlogs, wherein approximately 24 million court hearings are conducted every month pan India, serving almost 48 million individuals. The litigation process in India is a highly document-intensive task that involves a great amount of time and money.

Digitization of the legal industry today offers a solution to address or at least change the problem of access to justice by reforming our conventional legal system.

LegalKart, an Indian legal advisory app, is trying to streamline the system. With the help of cutting-edge technology, the startup is democratizing legal access by making it affordable and accessible to the masses.

The Tech Panda spoke to Dr. Arvind Singhatiya, Co-founder and CEO of LegalKart, who explains the need to digitize the legal industry in India.

Digital court records and millions of judgements shall be the biggest data-resource for analytics to build useful tools for faster disposal of cases and faster delivery of justice

“With 45 million pending case in all the courts of the country, digitization is the need of the hour to ensure easy access and reach of legal services to the end consumer citizen. Digitization will standardize legal processes and promote innovative technologies to create affordable products for masses. Digital court records and millions of judgements shall be the biggest data-resource for analytics to build useful tools for faster disposal of cases and faster delivery of justice,” he says.

He further informs that India´s legal tech has a long way to go in comparison to global levels.

“Globally more than 45% of the legal technology is used in documentation, 25% is used for legal research. With more than 90% of the digitized legal data, global legal tech companies are building comprehensive legal products with the use of AI and Machine Learning,” says the National Law University alumnus.

“In India, maximum legal tech is used only in legal research, and tech adoption among professionals is pretty low. The bright side of this scenario is that India is now slated to grow big, and technology companies are now harping on the huge potential of legal technology in India,” he adds.

What They Do

Founded in December 2018, LegalKart is India’s first practice management mobile app for legal professionals. Singhatiya informs that in India, more than 95% of legal professionals across all forums manage their practice manually. As such, LegalKart became a key technology intervention for all legal professionals. On it, lawyers can build, manage, and grow their legal practice and automate all their manual processes to be more efficient and updated.

Legalkart is a Made in India and Made for India company building the first preventive legal care ecosystem right here in India, which is empowering to save huge time and money on uncertain litigations and delivering authentic advice 24X7 with affordable documentation for all kinds of needs

“With the right legal advice and right documentation, anyone can prevent the chances of costly and time-consuming litigation by more than 50%, and LegalKart, with its technology, is empowering citizens to access the right legal advice 24X7 with the right document products,” he says.

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“Legalkart is a Made in India and Made for India company building the first preventive legal care ecosystem right here in India, which is empowering to save huge time and money on uncertain litigations and delivering authentic advice 24X7 with affordable documentation for all kinds of needs. With enhanced accessibility and affordability there will be an exponential rise in the consumers adopting legal and compliant ways to conduct themselves personally and professionally,” he adds.

The platform sports an easy-to-use desktop dashboard and mobile app for MSMEs, startups, and corporates and is helping them in cutting their legal costs by 25% and bringing about transparency in legal transactions.

Tech Features

LegalKart strives to bring a paradigm shift in the legal domain by leveraging cloud computing technology.

“We realized that most consumers don’t have previous experience of talking to a lawyer, and they also don’t have access to a lawyer for instant consultation matters. We built a technology backbone powered with LegalKart’s proprietary software to connect calls of individuals with the most appropriate lawyers available,” explains Singhatiya.

We built a technology backbone powered with LegalKart’s proprietary software to connect calls of individuals with the most appropriate lawyers available

The call is routed with smart match technology, uses the customer’s geographical location, concerned area for consultation, and other key aspects. The calls are confidential and secure, and a consumer can talk to a lawyer in eight different Indian Languages.

Inspiration and Origin

In his 12 years of professional experience with various corporations, Singhatiya experienced serious challenges due to 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

“Every challenge that we face is a hidden opportunity. 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,” Singhatiya reminisces.

Growth Story

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% MoM growth, they hope to double their customer base every quarter.

Based on customer requirements, they are creating product offerings like Just Consult and Review and Consult, which offers document reviews and discussions. It’s a cost-effective way to get any legal document verified from an experienced professional. The startup has served more than 60K customers till now through advisory and documentation.

We are striving to be a better organization tomorrow than what we were yesterday

“LegalKart aspires to be the world’s biggest legal care company. Our vision and approach are the edge that we have and of course the technology that we are building for billions of citizens of this country. At this point of time, we are a growing company and competing with ourselves. We are striving to be a better organization tomorrow than what we were yesterday,” Singhatiya says.

With more than 200,000 consultation minutes sold in the last eight months, they are witnessing a promising growth and high repeat rate of callers. Currently, 30% of their calls originate from NRIs living all over the world, who seek instant consultation about their legal queries concerning them or their families in India.