Legal platform LexNove has launched in South Africa, allowing legal service providers to bid for user-posted jobs and describing itself as a blend of Uber and Match.com.
LexNove, which went live last month, allows service providers to bid – at free market, fixed prices – to do the user’s legal work, easing access to high quality legal service providers for small to medium sized businesses.
The startup believes this access is currently largely restricted to large corporates and wealthy individuals, and says its approach moves away from several of the inefficiencies of the “Big Law” environment, cutting costs and serving the needs of the customer.
“Our vision is to dramatically transform the South African legal landscape by increasing access to, and the transparency of, high quality legal services, whilst, simultaneously providing more certainty to the consumer as to their cost exposure, something never seen before in traditional legal environments” says Kyle Torrington, LexNove’s chief operations officer (COO).
LexNove was founded by two ex-practicing attorneys and graduates of the Ignitor startup accelerator programme, and allows users to submit a description of their legal problem and receive a free early case assessment by qualified legal professionals, who guide the user through the creation of a project brief.
This project brief is then submitted to a panel of pre-vetted service providers who bid, at fixed prices, to assist the user in the resolution of their legal problem, which is conducted online. All project funds are protected by bank grade security in a third party escrow facility.
LexNove loosely means “New Law” in Latin, and is based in Johannesburg.
