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Legaltech PocketLaw pockets £1.2M funding to deliver in-house digital lawyer for British SMEs

The digital transformation of legacy businesses and sectors was greatly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Law and legal firms are no exceptions and the legal-tech startup PocketLaw is banking on this increased need for digital services. It reported revenue increase by a notable 500%, since the beginning of this year, and it has now announced raising £1.2M in its latest seed funding round. 

UK-focus to scale up

The latest funding round for the Nordic firm was led by some notable investors. The list includes Christoffer Norman (former Investment Manager at VC firm Northzone, and founding member at eCommerce unicorn Avito),  Ludvig Thureson (founding member at Avito), and investor Adrian Brummer. The startups’ existing investors Cristina Stenbeck (former Executive Chairman at Kinnevik), Susanna Campbell (Director at Kinnevik) and Johan Andersson (CEO of Mellby Gård) also backed the funding. 

In a conversation with UKTN, the Swedish company’s co-founder and CEO Kira Unger sheds more light on how the latest funding will be utilised. The startup will focus on scaling up further in the UK, where it commenced its operations in June this year. Additionally, it aims to expand its services in more markets worldwide while adding new members to its senior team. 

“The British legal sector is ripe for disruption, and our solution is already really resonating with businesses across the country. This seed funding will help us to ramp up our UK efforts, so that we can serve even more businesses and enable them to solve legal challenges affordably and efficiently through automation,” Unger notes.  

“PocketLaw’s growth over the past year has been extremely strong, and the team is constantly hitting new milestones,” comments former Northzone investment manager Christoffer Norman. “Kira and Olga are inspiring leaders who identified a real pain point that almost all businesses face – expensive, distracting, and time-consuming legal issues, and their traction in the UK shows exactly how crucial their solution is.”

An in-house digital lawyer

It is no surprise that tackling legal challenges can be time consuming and expensive. PocketLaw intends to change that with its “all-in-one” digital solution. This offering is touted to enable companies to solve their legal challenges such as creating contracts, receiving guidance, or managing legal documents, quickly and that too, at an affordable fixed price. 

Revealing more of the startups’ inner workings, Olga Beck-Friis, the COO and co-founder of PocketLaw says,” Currently, businesses waste significant amounts of time on standardised and repetitive legal tasks, or they pay unreasonable fees that damage their bottom line. We are the antidote to this, helping businesses work smarter with legal issues so that they can save both time and money, and focus on what is really important – growing their company.”

The company’s offering takes care of almost everything and ranges from employment to corporate law and commercial agreements. It also provides a smart contract management system that is backed by offering direct access to real-life lawyers on-demand. 

How it all began and how it’s going

PocketLaw was founded by Olga and Kira in Stockholm. “Olga, my fellow co-founder, and I have been best friends since the ages of 7 and 10! We have an incredibly strong relationship, and while we’re so often on the same page we are never afraid to challenge each other or tell one another when we disagree with something. That is crucial to the way we operate,” Kira says. 

While Kira was working at Mannheimer Swartling, a leading Nordic business law firm when she realised the difficulties faced by small businesses to access legal services. “I was amazed to discover that there wasn’t an affordable tech-driven solution, and so I knew straight away that the idea for PocketLaw was going to be a winner,” She adds. 

During this time, Olga worked as a management consultant at McKinsey. She advised companies on how technology could improve processes and efficiency. Kira realised that their complementary legal and strategic skill sets would be a great match for the startup and hence, the idea was set into motion. 

Currently, the startup does not face any direct competition and claims to be the only legal tech solution that enables companies to handle their legal needs at one place. As for what’s in store for the future of legal tech, the digital transformation is slowly but surely making its way through the sector. 

“We’re helping democratise the sector, where knowledge isn’t typically shared. Our bank of content, templates, and information allows anyone to feel empowered to handle legal matters, without needing to turn to an expensive lawyer. We are on our way to becoming the market-defining tech-oriented player,“ Kira concludes, commenting on how PocketLaw is transforming the legal tech scene.  

The post Legaltech PocketLaw pockets £1.2M funding to deliver in-house digital lawyer for British SMEs appeared first on UKTN (UK Tech News).

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