How to modernize the legal industry

[Intax]

Hello my dear fastlane forum,

for the past two years I've been working with three IT geeks on a startup to drastically improve the legal industry (FYI in Germany it sucks for clients). Our goal is to make client offers more transparent, cheaper and help lawyers to work more efficient through automation.

Thanks to funding from the German government we are able to work full-time on our venture. At the moment we are not making any revenue yet but we are working together with a handful of law firms as test users.

Most of my days I spend my time cold calling and think about how to get new clients. Here are three lessons to help you improve your cold calling in B2B.

1. It's worth it to put in the time to consider who is the most likely to buy your product rather than wasting time cold calling just anyone. This will save you time and energy.

2. Write a good cold calling script, present it in your call and improve it constantly. Actors do it. TV hosts do it. Politicians do it. And so should you.

3. Track your stats. Yes it takes time. Yes it's annoying. No, it's not a waste of time. Cold calling is an emotional game. Your jugement is usually flawed. So knowing your stats helps you to objectively judge your performance. This lays the foundation to improve your cold calling.

In certain areas cold calling works really well. Make use of it.
But I have to admit there is a downside to it. Cold calling is hard. It drags on your emotions. You interrupt people. You get rejected harshly. You develop the feeling that you are doing something bad.
But remember that you are not. You are in a service of the person on the other line.
You want to help them to improve their life, help them see a problem or solution more clearly and help them to solve their problem. This viewpoint doesn't make cold calling easy. But a hell of a lot easier.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my journey and lessons. I'm looking forward to reading about your thoughts, ideas and feedback.

 

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[FastNAwesome]

Best of luck with your business!

Have you considered networking? It's what always worked best for me.
From asking anyone you know if they know someone who could be interested.
To attending events or making an event yourself.

So even from those who don't buy, when you meet in person, maybe you'd get some feedback,
so that you can improve your pitch or offer.

 

[Kirk84]

Hi Intax, that is a very interesting niche! I wish you all the best.

Our goal is to make client offers more transparent, cheaper and help lawyers to work more efficient through automation.

I got German state funding, a long time ago, too. In my personal experience after many years of B2B sales, customers are much more interested in RAISING REVENUE opposed to just lowering costs. So, always show your prospects, how then can make more money, not just save money.

At the moment we are not making any revenue yet but we are working together with a handful of law firms as test users.

You need to validate your market ASAP. Until no one has (repeatedly) paid for your product/service, you do not have reached product market fit. I lost roughly 3 years working full time on a product that nobody needed. Don‘t make the same mistake. Push for a sale with your test users. If they’re not willing to do so, this means you‘re further away from product market fit.

 

[Intax]

Best of luck with your business!

Have you considered networking? It's what always worked best for me.
From asking anyone you know if they know someone who could be interested.
To attending events or making an event yourself.

So even from those who don't buy, when you meet in person, maybe you'd get some feedback,
so that you can improve your pitch or offer.

Thanks for your message and your advice. Yeah we did networking events but still experimented with some. We went to some congresses/fairs and exhibited there. The results were okay but we don't have enough experience yet to evaluate it as a sales channel. Sadly there aren't so many events like this but we usually try every one that we can.

Generally it's a good opportunity to meet lawyers and understand them better but currently I think the most important thing for us is to make sales and understand our customers better. Our funding pays our salaries until June. Afterwards we have to have an monthly revenue of 20k or an investment (preferably the revenue )

Right now we also have the first two paying customers who pay us between 95 and 1995€ a month. Some more are in the pipeline and let's see how many I can convert.

 

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[Intax]

Hi Intax, that is a very interesting niche! I wish you all the best.



I got German state funding, a long time ago, too. In my personal experience after many years of B2B sales, customers are much more interested in RAISING REVENUE opposed to just lowering costs. So, always show your prospects, how then can make more money, not just save money.



You need to validate your market ASAP. Until no one has (repeatedly) paid for your product/service, you do not have reached product market fit. I lost roughly 3 years working full time on a product that nobody needed. Don‘t make the same mistake. Push for a sale with your test users. If they’re not willing to do so, this means you‘re further away from product market fit.

Thanks for your advices. I highly agree on both of them.

When lawyers wants to handle hundreds or thousands of clients with us (which he couldn't handle without us) then they are also willing to pay more money. So currently I'm trying to close one of them and trying to find more of these lawyers.

I 100% agree with your point about paying customers. We also wasted so much time with lawyers that were interested but never willing to pay. So our current approach is to sent the clear offer upfront and only when they agree then we start working. Like this we are wasting less time on false leads. We still have a problem of pre-qualifing our leads before the demo calls but let's see how we can improve that.

 

[Intax]

Half a year is over. Here's a little update.

1. Our software improved greatly and we now have some workarounds that act like interfaces to existing software for law firms (huge step)
2. We finally have our first two paying clients and many more in the pipeline (our pricing packages are a monthly fee between 100 und 2000)
3. Our software is used by lawyers and clients regularly
4. We are exchanging and negotiating with other law firm software to collaborate more (at first a full interface and afterwards deeper connections with their software and on the business side) - could be a huge opportunity
5. We incorporated which was a really annoying and time intense

Biggest issue is still sales: our monthly revenue goal (MRR) for June is 20k. This is needed to keep our venture going.
We missed the subgoal for December (5k) and are currently at a minimum MRR of 500.

I think the following reason is the cause why we didn't reach our goal:

1. I was letting myself be distracted by my most important work: getting and closing leads.
-> now I'm trying to block 4 hours a day for getting and closing deals and as soon as they are closed I hand them over. This already improved our results.

 

[Intax]

Monthly revenue is now around 2500 with 6 customers. Everything is progressing but slower than it could be.

We made the goal for end of June a bit more realistic with 12500 monthly revenue.

Next goals are march with 4500 and April with 7000 MRR. I’ll keep you posted.

 

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[WillHurtDontCare]

glad to see that you're doing well @Intax

Get $12,500 in May and get $16K in June!

 

[Intax]

glad to see that you're doing well @Intax

Get $12,500 in May and get $16K in June!

Hey @WillHurtDontCare,

thanks for your motivating message. I appreciate it

Actually it made me think of an idea that could help us reach this higher revenue goal. I'm gonna implement a referral system which we don't have yet. This can definitely increase the leads we get. I'm gonna think a bit more how we can reach this higher revenue goal. Thanks for the challenge and stay in touch!

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Hello my dear fastlane forum,

for the past two years I've been working with three IT geeks on a startup to drastically improve the legal industry (FYI in Germany it sucks for clients). Our goal is to make client offers more transparent, cheaper and help lawyers to work more efficient through automation.

Thanks to funding from the German government we are able to work full-time on our venture. At the moment we are not making any revenue yet but we are working together with a handful of law firms as test users.

Most of my days I spend my time cold calling and think about how to get new clients. Here are three lessons to help you improve your cold calling in B2B.

1. It's worth it to put in the time to consider who is the most likely to buy your product rather than wasting time cold calling just anyone. This will save you time and energy.

2. Write a good cold calling script, present it in your call and improve it constantly. Actors do it. TV hosts do it. Politicians do it. And so should you.

3. Track your stats. Yes it takes time. Yes it's annoying. No, it's not a waste of time. Cold calling is an emotional game. Your jugement is usually flawed. So knowing your stats helps you to objectively judge your performance. This lays the foundation to improve your cold calling.

In certain areas cold calling works really well. Make use of it.
But I have to admit there is a downside to it. Cold calling is hard. It drags on your emotions. You interrupt people. You get rejected harshly. You develop the feeling that you are doing something bad.
But remember that you are not. You are in a service of the person on the other line.
You want to help them to improve their life, help them see a problem or solution more clearly and help them to solve their problem. This viewpoint doesn't make cold calling easy. But a hell of a lot easier.

Thank you for taking the time to read about my journey and lessons. I'm looking forward to reading about your thoughts, ideas and feedback.

Nice initiative.

The problem with the legal industry, much like the medical industry, is one of mentality.

Lawyers (& doctors) succeed and maintain their status through the asymmetry between their knowledge and the knowledge of the client. If the lawyer knows more, the client has no choice but to listen to them.

To this purpose, both lawyers and doctors have invented their own language, not to simplify things, but to do the exact opposite: to complicate things so much that the client cannot solve the mess without them.

The problem for both lawyers and doctors is that the internet has made access to information really easy. Today I can read the law I’m interested in myself, with a few clicks of a button. 50 years ago, this was impossible.

Now the average person or company approaching a lawyer is a lot better informed than in the past. The asymmetry of information is vanishing, and with it goes the status of lawyers and doctors.

And guess what, they do not want to give up their status, because they’ve been trained by previous lawyers that the client must listen to them and they are the experts.

So the biggest thing that needs to happen before the industry can change is that lawyers themselves must let go of their egos, and understand that results aren’t obtained because of their genius - they are obtained because of the collaboration between the lawyer and his expertise, and the client and their knowledge of their own business + desires.

This is very very difficult to do. It’s like going to a doctor and telling them that a surgery isn’t right for you. Their instinct will be to tell you “well, you think you’re a doctor?! You think you have my experience? How dare you question my judgement?”

 

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[Stargazer]

Some kid from London created an AI lawyer that dealt with parking tickets a few years ago for free.

It was going to make history this month by defending a client in an actual US courtroom.

The defendent would be wearing airpods and the phone with the app installed would be next to him and switched on listening to the prosecutor and 'whispering' to the defendant what to say.

The US Bar Association and lawyers in whatever state threatened to jail the AI company owner so he cancelled the experiment a couple of days ago. Something to do with the phone is technically recording the proceedings or some such thing but really they are trying to do a King Canute and stop the tide.

The First 'A.I. Lawyer' Will Help Defendants Fight Speeding Tickets

Two people equipped with Bluetooth earpieces will repeat to a judge what the robot tells them

www.smithsonianmag.com

The founder of the company is now 23 and has just got £25 million in investment.

Modernising any industry usually entails disrupting it.

Don't know if stories like this get you thinking?

Dan

 

[Intax]

So the biggest thing that needs to happen before the industry can change is that lawyers themselves must let go of their egos, and understand that results aren’t obtained because of their genius - they are obtained because of the collaboration between the lawyer and his expertise, and the client and their knowledge of their own business + desires.

I agree a lot with this part. Lawyers in Germany are most of the time arrogant and think they are way smarter. Luckily for me, some lawyers see that the world is changing, that they need to change, and that it can be a beneficial thing for them if they make use of changing times to get an advantage over other lawyers/law firms. IMO it’s mostly their resistance to change, ego, and closed mindedness that keeps them from flourishing.

 

[srodrigo]

I'm not sure about Germany, but lawyers in the UK are a rip off. If, as a customer, I could get an AI (or just normal software) tool that can give me a contract for a lawyer to just review and stamp, my costs would be just a fraction. I don't know whether there is something like this out there already, but I doubt it since there are dozens of firms with prohibitive prices.

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

I'm not sure about Germany, but lawyers in the UK are a rip off. If, as a customer, I could get an AI (or just normal software) tool that can give me a contract for a lawyer to just review and stamp, my costs would be just a fraction. I don't know whether there is something like this out there already, but I doubt it since there are dozens of firms with prohibitive prices.

For most contracts you don’t need a lawyer. There are a ton of templates online, just find one that seems to be what you need, then read through it, add the conditions you want, remove conditions you don’t want and you have your contract.

Some clauses from there may not be enforceable in court. It doesn’t matter, because most of your clients won’t know that. The contract is there more to discourage bad actors… sort of like having a security guard in front of your house who is an old man. That guy isn’t there to protect you if a proper team of robbers wants to get in. He’s there to discourage them from trying and moving on to a weaker target.

Now if you have a more complex contract like a licensing agreement or a distribution agreement - basically anything that’s not just a service agreement or NDA - sure it would be a good idea to get a lawyer to look it over. I’ve been making contracts for myself for a long time. Once you do it a couple of times you get the hang of it. And many times, you’ll actually do it a lot better than a lawyer will because you understand your own business better.

 

[Intax]

A little update on my end. Our MRR is now 2600€. So sales didn’t progress at all the way we wanted. A handful of prospects are in the pipeline who seem to be quite interested but the sales cycle time is generally longer than I expected (everyone has to speak with their business partner, then we have to go through the case and present a solution for their case and in the worst case we also have to talk to a law firm software to build a connection).

Also, my cold outreach approach was less effective on mid-sized law firms and in our sales coaching, I learned that my sales message is still way too broad. I was always pitching our whole software with examples but now I pitch a specific use case to a specific audience. The first trials with this approach led to better results.

I also want to generally get more lead generation systems out because almost all of our leads are coming from cold outreach. This means that if I’m busy with other tasks then no new leads come into our pipeline.

If you have any tips on how to improve my sales or help me to get leads automatically then I’m all ears
Thanks and have a great day.