There are many different lawtech and legaltech tools on the market that are designed to make legal advice accessible for business owners. Most of them do a great job and you need to find the ones that do the job for you that you need. The Business Legal Lifecycle Risk Assessment is designed to identify your legal risks to allow you to work with your lawyer to reduce those legal risks.
From our research the main factors that people look for in a tool like this are:
- Simple and easy to use interface
- Comprehensive advice on legal risks through all stages of a business
- Explanation for the business owner so that they can understand why they need to take steps
- Documented plan for the future success of the business
- Plain English/easy to understand
- Document generation
- Document management.
- Cost effective.
In this article we will discuss what generally business owners should expect from each of the tools that exist in the market today. The table below sets out the comparison of the features of the different tools (and existing law firms). Remember, that when you are considering this list and the considerations below, you need to keep in mind what you are trying to achieve. Each tool will use a different system to assist you so pick the one that best aligns with what you want.
Simple and easy to use interface
Any tool that you find on the internet needs to be easy to use otherwise it can be too hard to achieve the result that you are looking for. The interface and instructions on what you need to do need to be complete and in plain English. For the lawtech tools featured in the comparison that is an entry level requirement, they must have a simple interface or they weren’t even considered for our list.
The comparison to a law firm undertaking the check is simple that law firms that offer this service on the internet use this as a reason for you to have a meeting with them to conduct the assessment. This is often not a simple process as law firms generally do not have a systemised process to these questions and require an in-person meeting that will cost you a lot of money and time.
Comprehensive advice on legal risks through all stages of a business
There are so many different variables that you need to be across for the legal risks of your business. No report can cover every single aspect and the only way to get specific advice for your business is to meet with a lawyer to do the check or work with a service like legalvision to connect you with one. The comprehensive nature of the Business Legal Lifecycle report, does go through the reasons why you need to take legal advice and considers the main legal risks that we see in businesses. It explains why you need to consider those items and what you need to do once you have considered those risks.
The other lawtech tools considered in this report do not provide advice on why you need to take legal steps to reduce certain risks in your business. They merely state what you should do and then attempt to upsell you into that service. This means that you never know exactly why you need to take legal steps. This knowledge is important as when you decide to go with a different lawyer or obtain advice from another source it may be different because the explanation and your understanding of the law is different.
Explanation for the business owner so that they can understand why they need to take steps
Again, this is a feature that lawyers mostly provide although some will just expect you to follow their advice without any explanation as to why you need to take legal steps. One of the key features of our Legal Risk Assessment is that it not only tells you what you need to do but why you need to do it. As set out above, that knowledge allows you to know why steps are to be taken and what you need to do with that knowledge.
This is another reason why we developed our education course, to give you a deeper understanding on the legal risks in your business. Once you understand the legal risks you can then do your best to minimise the risk going forward.
Documented plan for the future success of the business
Going with the last two features is having a plan for the future of your business. Unfortunately, the other lawtech tools in the market do not provide that future look into your business. They consider what you need now to reduce your legal risks with no foresight into the future. Our Legal Assessment Report is designed to give you that guidance into the future. By assessing where you are in the lifecycle of your business we can then help you to understand what is next so that you can plan for the future success of your business.
Most lawyers when performing a health check are merely looking backwards and what the legal risks are for your business as they stand at the time of the check. The problem with this, is that it requires you to get advice and spend lots of money getting that advice regularly so that you can figure out what else is missing.
Plain English/easy to understand
Our research has shown that most people when dealing with lawyers and lawtech tools dislike (and even hate) when they are confronted by complicated legal terms that could have been explained in plain English. A common complaint from business owners that we talk to is that it feels like the lawyer is talking down to them because of the language that they use. This is unfortunate as all law can be explained in plain English. Our report outlines everything that you need and need to understand in plain English so that you can understand what and why you need to take these legal steps.
Document generation
This is a feature that is becoming more and more prevalent in lawtech tools. Currently the technology only really allows for a ‘fill in the blanks’ exercise when generating legal documents. For a lot of legal areas this may work, the issue is that it takes no account of the nuances of your legal position and risks. As artificial intelligence develops and becomes more cost effective the technology will become better and will allow this to occur.
Document management
This is a feature that some people find useful and is available on several lawtech tools. It creates a space for you to store all of your legal documents. This is a useful feature if you don’t have another space to store them or want everything saved in one place. Once it becomes worthwhile to generate documents on our platform we will include this feature.
Cost effective
When taking legal advice you need to invest your hard earned money where you will receive the best return on your investment. Most of the lawtech tools that we have found in our research are cost effective in providing you with advice. They generally are not expensive and provide you with a path forward it a comprehensive way. When you receive this advice from a lawyer generally it will cost a lot more as lawyers will charge on time to complete the assessment.
Our Legal Risk Assessment will actually save you money in the long term by empowering you with the confidence and knowledge to prevent the legal risks in your business. You can then go to your lawyer to reduce your legal risks to prevent legal risks within their business and prevent so many problems that commonly afflict small to medium sized businesses.
Get your Business Legal Lifecycle Legal Risk Assessment by clicking here now.
Still unsure check out our “ebook” (to be written)
