Malaysia based legal tech startup BurgieLaw.com today announced it raised a USD200,000.00 seed round of funding led by TinkBig Venture.
The legal tech start up is one of the few active ones in South East Asia alongside other legal tech like Asia Law Network in Singapore and Dragon Law in Hong Kong.
BurgieLaw aims to work closely with other legal tech companies in the neighboring regions and aims to use the funds for marketing purposes and introduce more tech based services to the legal industry and to the customers at large with the primary objective to make legal services more affordable and accessible.
BurgieLaw is a service marketplace which serves as the initial point of contact for various legal issues for corporates, internal legal counsel and individual customers. It allows them to:
(a) make a general enquiry;
(b) book an appointment;
(c) request for quotation; and
(d) hire a lawyer
Instead of doing the impossible by googling or asking for referrals, BurgieLaw ensures customers to get the right lawyer with the right expertise and advice instantly!
Solving a perennial problem
The idea came about when the Co-founder, Louis Gan tries to seek legal advice.
“There is no complete directory for me to look up. Even the referrals made through friends are not accurate. The lawyers either come with no experience in that particular area or they are not the correct lawyer I am looking for. The lawyer you appoint must be someone you are comfortable with. Even the legal firm’s website does not carry the information I want to know. Ie, language a lawyer speaks, years of practice, areas of practice, hourly rates.”
“In the end, you end up appointing a wrong lawyer with wasted costs.”
Over the years, the other co-founder, Lai Chee Hoe also realized a lot of customers cannot afford legal access since it is viewed as an expensive commodity. A lot of deserving clients although have good merits to their cases unfortunately cannot pursue further because of cost constrained.
What is in for Registered Lawyers
Registered lawyers with a complete profile also report to have the number of enquiries increased and some converted to a successful retainer.
BurgieLaw will also organise networking activities for registered lawyers to expand its horizon outside of Malaysia.
With the funds injected in, BurgieLaw targets to manage more than 20 legal enquiries / appointment a day and sign up 500 lawyers by end 2017.
At this moment, it is managing about 20 enquiries and appointments within a week with a number of 150 registered lawyers. All these registered lawyers hold a valid practicing certificate and the number of lawyers signing up are encouraging making it the legal tech with most signed up lawyers in Malaysia thus far after its launch in March 2016.
Value in Legal Tech
TinkBig Venture led by Andrew Tan sees valuation in the legal tech sphere simply because legal services is almost mandatory for all business and start ups. According to him:
“the number 1 thing a VC would look into a start-up before deciding on whether to invest is the method of incorporation, the shares structure and various agreements binding its founders, employees, key personnel, suppliers etc. If these legal matters are not in place, a VC will not look further no matter how much the revenue one can bring in.”
Andrew hopes by bringing in BurgieLaw as one of the portfolio, the team can come up with some more economical methods to assist start-ups to allow them to start off from the right footing. Timing wouldn’t have been perfect since BurgieLaw was also looking for a business partner to expand their services. Being a tech start-up itself has so much benefit since they are equally going through similar stages, speaking the same lingo and belonging to the same ecosystem.
Latest Offer by BurgieLaw
To keep to the promises of the co-founders, BurgieLaw now offers RM99.00 for a basic monthly retainer *applicable only for Start Ups; (“R99”) which entitles a start-up to enjoy:
(a) quick legal consultation (whether by phone call or email) for an aggregate hour of not more than 60 minutes per month;
(b) access to 3 standard legal templates;
(c) discounted fees for any further advise or drafting;
(d) legal support in general;
(f) legal services in relation to incorporation of company, human resource, intellectual property, contract drafting.
Contact Person:
Louis Gan
CTO
BurgieLaw
+6012 629 1688
[email protected]
