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Valentin Feklistov tells what LEGID.app is and answers some questions about the application and its features

About LEGID.app

LEGID.app is a marketplace that helps clients find the right lawyer simple and quick. It empowers lawyers and clients with tools that make providing or getting legal help faster and easier. All clients have to do is write a question and the lawyers can then make price offers. No unnecessary steps - our AI understands which experts to direct the questions to, provides lawyers with necessary features and automation tools. LEGID’s lawyers are verified by expert partners and the dispute resolution system safeguards both sides in case something goes wrong.

LEGID.app is an inspiration of years of experience

As a lawyer that has been in the industry for over 12 years, leading and working on many successful projects (such as Yandex Taxi - a giant Russian taxi software company, in the Baltics and Serbia), I came to the realisation that the current model in the legal industry is way too bureaucratic, and causes great frustration for those seeking legal help and for lawyers themselves. Bureaucracy doesn’t help anyone – it hinders the development of the legal industry, and practice of law, and it doesn’t protect clients or give them any extra value, yet it ends up wasting lawyers’ time and costing clients an unnecessarily large amount of money in legal services. 

During my experience as a lawyer, I faced different obstacles in serving my clients’ interests, and even as a specialist with partners across the world (I was working in Crowe Global network, top 8 consulting network worldwide), I still had difficulties finding adequate legal help in another country; had to spend weeks research and then establishing relationships within one single project. As for smaller clients, sometimes I faced situations, where law firms neglected smaller clients over larger ones, and applied a lot of bureaucracy to increase costs, which was very frustrating for me as a lawyer because I always tend to be honest and apply empathy when serving clients. Moreover, none of these bureaucratic steps bring any profit to society or the legal education of people. Finally, many people cannot afford legal services exactly due to the bureaucratic and old-fashioned approach in providing legal services. This is a serious problem that needs to be solved, this is what was confirmed during our thorough research where we surveyed and interviewed lawyers and clients, and that is what inspired me to launch this project and to build our team. 

From the left to the right: Alex Bitskov, COO and Co-Founder; Valentin Feklistov, CEO and Founder; Jevgeni Kapparov, CSA and Service Developer; Jevgeni Shupilov, CIO and Lead Developer; Ilja Bugrejev, CMO. 

It is important to mention that our goal is not to replace lawyers with AI as some start-ups are trying to do. We are convinced that due to the creative nature of the work lawyers cannot be replaced by machines in terms of consultations. Instead, LEGID.app aims to empower boutique law firms and solo practitioners with tools that extend their services to hard-to-reach clients and serve their interests by increasing revenue. We want to help people become more legally aware of situations that may in fact have legal remedies with the help of our clients - the lawyers. Only 1 in 3 people understand that their problems have legal remedies, which is an insane statistic. In the US, for example, people may use lawyers for many purposes; however, in the EU, the mentality is different. People tend to be more independent and self-regulated, and sometimes think that they can deal with everything by themselves, which will probably lead to serious consequences. 

1. For which main purposes did you create LEGID?

The LEGID team created LEGID.app, because we saw that there is a big demand for such a product in the world and we that people desperately need an instrument that would grant them access to quality, affordable legal help. So LEGID.app was created to bring quality legal services, at affordable prices to people across the world, on the spot, in their language, wherever they are. 

LEGID.app is thinking how to help people in the legal industry to be more efficient and active, not to make them obsolete. LEGID.app empowers solo-practitioners’, as well as boutique law firms, boosts revenue and work-life balance through automation and access to global clients, and unbinds legal professionals from time, location and admin tasks.

2. Does LEGID fill a need or a gap in the legal sector?

Yes, LEGID team made an incredible survey during our customer development process, LEGID questioned hunderds of ordinary people and hundreds of lawyers and then made a product that would be align with everything they struggle with. LEGID found that lawyers lack time and resources for dealing with administrative tasks. Recurrent delays and non-payment of invoices is a common challenge. LEGID found that an average person has no simple way to access/find quality, trusted and affordable legal advice quickly and safely.  LEGID found that abroad, people are more in need for legal help, because they do not know their rights, as well as vulnerable to scams and fraud due to a lack of legal awareness.

Recent studies show that 77% of legal problems don’t receive legal help, and 86% of legal problems faced by individuals receive either inadequate or no legal help at all. This indicates that there is a massive gap between those who need legal help and those who provide legal services. In business terms, this is known as a latent market, one that presents a significantly large opportunity for law firms, and solo practices in particular, since the lawyers that determine the means for servicing this market are the ones that will see the rewards of a more profitable business.

The highest growth areas for tech adoption was in serving clients virtually. 76% of solo law firms think that the majority of legal services can be streamlined when conducted virtually, and 35% believe that lawyers should consider operating their firms fully virtually in the future, especially since a significant number of lawyers also believe that clients want to meet virtually instead of in person. In the end, based on the surveys lawyers saw up to 58% more revenue and 50% more casework when using technology.

LEGID is going to create educational, legal awareness-focused campaigns in order to make our product widely available, and to enable people to turn to legal help as much as possible. Our customer development studies showed us that people are struggling, and are afraid to ask for legal help because they are afraid of being charged unreasonably.

Ultimately, LEGID.app aims to become the go-to legal assistance app that comes to one’s mind when one needs help with any legal matters.

3. How does LEGID make use of Artificial Intelligence?

With AI implementation, LEGID.app makes finding legal help easy and comfortable for clients, plus empowers decision making for lawyers when providing legal services. LEGID uses AI to improve user experience (UX) for customers and provide them with a better and faster access to legal services wherever they are.

Once submitted, LEGID.app AI recognizes and qualifies the legal area of the question and directs it to the right lawyer. For lawyer, our built-in smart-chat helps to manage the consultation and will also suggest decisions one can make. 

4. What is the business model of this original project?

LEGID.app is a SaaS-enabled Marketplace. The money is planned to be earned on a commission basis and the premium CRM for specialists is subscription-based. LEGID platform has a fixed price for each question (can be increased during consultation), so lawyers must evaluate the question and make an offer accordingly. LEGID.app charges 15-25% commission to lawyers from each transaction. LEGID.app charges a subscription fee to lawyers for premium CRM features and lead acquisition fee to lawyers (classical B2B SaaS).

5. What distinguishes LEGID from other projects with similar aims?

LEGID.app is a lawyer in your pocket. A low friction, easy-to-use experience with zero chat bots - just open and write a question – LEGID.app will do the rest and with the quality ensured by expert lawyers.

LEGID.app AI recognizes and qualifies the legal area of the question. 5 clicks and the question is sent to the right legal professional based on the content of the legal question. Just a few taps and you are talking to a local expert, in your language, wherever you are. LEGID.app is fast, simple, and affordable, with transparent prices, quality control and dispute resolution. Something no other platform or app can match.

6. What are the elements that characterize an adequate and effective legal advice service?

LEGID.app takes care of that all legal professionals on the platform are professionals in the field and would provide quality legal help. For this LEGID.app implemented a quality control system, which also includes a dispute resolution that protects both lawyers and clients.

From the vision of LEGID.app:

• Quality advice shall offer a solution to the problem or qualify the legal issue precisely enough to understand the legal remedies that one can have or cannot have based on the given circumstances.
• Quality advice shall be straightforward and simple so even a grandmother would understand what to do next.
• Quality advice can only be given by a professional, with a certain background and level of education.
• Quality advice shall be accurate, because any legal advice can have legal consequences and influence businesses, lives, and even health.
• Quality advice is something you can find at LEGID.app.

7. How many countries does LEGID's services cover?

Currently four countries. These are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. By the end of the year Spain, Finland and Serbia to follow. The target market is the Europe.