Lawteract is on a mission to enable access to lawyers and legal solutions much easier, efficient and cost-effective. A digital marketplace will significantly improve and expand the delivery of legal services and Lawteract is building just that, as a mobile application. Let’s just say, like Amazon but for legal services. Taiwo Oni built Lawteract to bridge the gap between the demand for and the supply of legal services. Using Lagos as a case study for his user research, Taiwo found out that 92% of Lagosians do not have the most basic form of legal protection for various reasons including issues of proximity to law firms and the high cost of accessing legal services.

With the evolution of technology and the disruption of legal services delivery, clients can now access on-demand lawyers for their different projects and legal task. Through the Lawteract app, users get access to unique features that include : in-app chat, file sharing, services display, lawyers verification using the Supreme Court Number and NIN, This way, no one can take up a false identity of being a lawyer and it helps to eliminate quackery. Another interesting feature of the app is that clients are able to set a budget for their requested task, so lawyers can take up a client’s request if they are comfortable with the budget of the client.

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The Beginning…

The Lawteract app started out as a law blogging site in 2018, with articles on different areas of law. After his service year, Taiwo decided to upgrade the platform from just a blogging site to a place where users could search for lawyers, draft documents, and review documents. With a few challenges and good feedback, the platform evolved to a mobile app for ease of access and navigation. It is also good to note that right before the launch, the soon-to-be mobile application had about 300 clients on the waiting list. All that was left was the onboarding of lawyers to commence the process of demand meeting supply as it should be in a marketplace. 

Beta test…

Before launching the platform, we did a beta user experience test, says Taiwo. About 50 lawyers and clients were invited to test out the platform and we got good feedback about the user interface and user experience of the app, the . The other feedback we got from the beta users was around the chat system, and we already had plans to look into that, at the time.

Product Validation & Fundraising...

In the journey for fundraising, Lawteract has applied to be part of some incubation and accelerator programmes. Some of the prorgammes include the HiiL Justice Accelerator, Google for Startups Africa, Kenya Afritech Innovation Challenge and Lawteract scaled to the final stages of all of them.

‘Although, we got regret mails from HiiL, that was because we were not fit for the acceleration program but for the incubation program, and not because our product concept was flawed. We see that as a win. For Google Startups for Africa, over 4000 startups applied, and we made the final 40, though not the final 15 and that’s a small win too. I am sure we will be applying at the next call for applications and we are going to break in. I am certain that we would not have been able to make the final stages of these applications if our product idea or business model was seen as flawed’, says Taiwo.

The long term game…

Lawteract is working towards building traction and once that is achieved, the company plans to launch in other countries in Africa, like Gambia, Cameroon, Ghana and South Africa. The company aims to create an African legal digital service marketplace, a centralization of African legal services. ‘I know, the amount of my personal funds that have gone into the development of Lawteract app. I could as well have invested that money in other ventures, but I am not doing this just to make profit but to set a trend, to change the narrative about the lucrativeness of legal technology’, says Taiwo.

With Lawteract, users have lawyers at their fingertips, and you can check out the app on the Google Play Store or the Apple Store.

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