Meet Clive Rich, Founder and Chairman at Digital Legal Service Platform: Lawbite

LawBite is a digital legal service platform that is improving the way in which entrepreneurs, startups and SMEs can access legal advice.

Through our web platform and app, we’re streamlining engagement with lawyers and creating significant savings for our customers.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

 
LawBite was created out of a necessity to provide legal services to what has always been an underserved market.

Traditional law firms don’t see small or micro businesses as attractive clientele as the profits they create can be low and their cost to serve high. In contrast, these businesses feel intimidated by lawyers and think that the cost of legal advice is incredibly unpredictable.

What we’re trying to do is change this relationship. Through automation and machine learning, we’re able to make efficiencies in the lawyer-client experience, creating both faster and less administration-heavy processes. With the lawyers on our platform solely focused on client work, we’re making significant cost savings that we can then pass on to our customers, through fixed-price quotes and bundled packages of legal work.

Technology aside, with a potential economic downturn looming, the biggest challenge small businesses are now facing is cash flow. Through subscription plans our customers can switch the service on and off or choose the package that is relevant to their volume of work, to get the most value. This represents a whole new way of doing the law – more like an insurance policy. With legal support available in the background when your business needs it, costs are lower and much more predictable.
 

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

 
Despite being a tough time for businesses, COVID helped us validate the business model as customers wanted to access services digitally. Lawyers’ needs shifted too, with many considering alternatives with less travel and less emphasis on winning new business.

In many ways, our platform was the answer. Although we have our own law firm that is regulated by the SRA and fully insured, our lawyers are all consultants and can take on the amount of work which suits their lifestyle. This model is much more scalable from a business perspective, as we can bring on more lawyers as the work increases and allow the technology to take the operational strain.

Using existing client data, we’re also starting to develop predictive law; being able to provide our customers with the right service at the right time based on the lifecycle stage and nature of their business. This is particularly valuable for our target customers, who are just starting out in business and looking for guidance.
 

What can we hope to see from LawBite in the future?

 
Collaboration has been the key to our growth. Many of our strategic partners in the professional and digital services space have turned to LawBite as they previously haven’t been able to find law firms or legal service providers that can properly serve their customers or integrate with their workflows.

We’re already working with businesses such as Stripe, Hiscox and Tide, providing their SME customer base with legal services, and we’ll soon be partnering with a number of other providers in the market.

Outside of this, we’re looking to expand our reach in the commercial property sector. The platform can improve the legal experience for developers, fund managers and brokers, creating an all-one solution that allows costs to be monitored without any sacrifice on the quality of legal work.