LawAdvisor moves HQ to London to catalyse global expansion

Global News

26
Nov
2020

Editor

Legaltech specialist LawAdvisor has relocated its headquarters from Australia to the UK in a move to catalyse its global expansion plans as it focuses on its corporate business, transforming the way law firms are appointed and legal matters are managed.

The company, now based in the heart of London’s legal sector, believes that the intelligent design and adoption of technology for legal operations can deliver significant efficiencies and opportunities for both law firms and in-house corporate counsel. Working closely with a range of multinational corporate legal departments and law firms, LawAdvisor is combining its first-hand knowledge of legal practice and software development to create a legal ‘operating system’. This system not only provides lawyers access to LawAdvisor’s proprietary products, but leverages other incumbent and modern technologies through LawAdvisor’s ‘Discovery Centre’, made possible via a suite of extensive APIs.

The move to London not only places the company at the centre of the global legaltech movement, but enables it to work more closely with key stakeholders in the international headquarters of the world’s biggest firms and corporations, rather than through local offices in the Australian market.

Founded in 2015 by lawyer and software developer Brennan Ong, who earlier in his career helped to create the digital case management system for the Supreme Court of Victoria while serving as the Senior Clerk to a Supreme Court Justice, LawAdvisor found its early success in the Australian market with a platform that helped consumers to more easily identify and pursue legal claims, and connect them directly to lawyers. That platform was followed by the development of a range of bespoke legal operations solutions. The company’s early backers include Google Maps cofounder Lars Rasmussen, who invested in the startup in just a few months after its founding launch.

Lars Rasmussen, commented: "The legal sector is one that's ripe for disruption and Covid-19 has only accelerated this. With his background in both law and software development Brennan has shown he has the knowledge and expertise to build something that solves the challenges that lawyers actually are facing, and not just those that technologists think they're facing. I'm continually impressed by his evolving vision for LawAdvisor and see lots of parallels with my own work on collaboration technologies. That's why I've backed him and am excited to see LawAdvisor realise its huge market potential."

In recent years the legal sector has seen increased focus on digital transformation, within both in-house and law firms, but much of the technology adopted is generic or poorly adapted versions of solutions originally designed for other market sectors. It fails to take account of the unique requirements of the legal sector and the complexities of multi-faceted case work.

Brennan Ong, founder and CEO of LawAdvisor, said: “Despite the attention legaltech has received in recent years, it is definitely not an industry where people are practicing what they preach: email, spreadsheets, document repositories, time recording, and invoicing tools far too often characterises the extent of ‘legal technology’. While artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and automation are seeing attention, none of these technologies have truly become part of a lawyers’ arsenal in the delivery of legal services. 

“At LawAdvisor, rather than build technologies to capitalise on ‘buzz-words’, we went back to basics and sought to understand where efficiency and productivity improvements could be exposed:  we did not want to simply digitise legacy processes, but to build solutions to real problems, based on first-hand knowledge of the legal sector.

“The way corporate counsel procure legal services today is in dire need of change. Decisions are too often made on a referral basis, without due attention paid to whether the firm is right for the brief or providing good value for money. Similarly, the management of legal matters at even the most tech-enabled global law firms is plagued by inefficiency and prevents collaboration, both within the team and with clients, meaning lawyers are spending far too much time (and wasting clients’ money) on coordination, thereby detracting from the time they can spend on substantive legal work. What we’ve built is a way to radically improve this to the benefit of all parties, and we’re incredibly excited to be bringing it to market later this year from our new headquarters in London - the global hub of the legaltech sector.”

Now primarily focused on the corporate market, LawAdvisor is working closely with FTSE100 and Fortune 500 listed companies, including some of the biggest global financial institutions and the largest international law firms, to revolutionise the way panel firms are appointed, and how matters are managed, boosting productivity and promoting greater levels of transparency, accountability, and collaboration

The company expects to announce the general availability of new solutions for this market before the end of the year, and is hiring for several open roles to bolster its UK operations.