Utmanarna: ”Vi vill skapa ett Amazon för juridik”
Please have a look at this article! Journalist Daniel Mellwing sat down with our co-founder Olle and wrote this piece that was published on 12 October 2023 in Tidningen Näringslivet. Link here! See translation to English below.
[Article written by Daniel Mellwing, Tidningen Näringslivet, and published 12 October 2023 available at https://www.tn.se/article/32430/utmanarna-vi-vill-skapa-ett-amazon-for-juridik/. Translated by Liselott Lindberg and ChatGPT on 16 October 2023.]
The Challengers: "We Want to Create an Amazon for Law"
AI is reshaping industry after industry. "We want to bring about a paradigm shift in the legal market," says Olle Westerlund, a lawyer and co-founder of the AI startup Law Off The Shelf, to TN.
AI, language models, and ChatGPT are reshaping industry after industry, and now it's the lawyers' turn. Several law firms have already begun using generative AI technology to review and adjust documents and answer questions. Repetitive tasks that used to take hours can now be done in minutes.
One of the questions raised by AI technology is whether and, if so, how it will change the dominant business model where lawyers and other legal consultants charge by the hour.
"We don't just want to change that; we want to lead the change," says Olle Westerlund, who is a co-founder of the AI startup Law Off The Shelf.
"The legal industry needs to change"
Generative AI will undoubtedly free up additional hours in a day that legal consultants can sell. But the question Olle Westerlund asks is whether AI will also increase access to legal knowledge for more companies and contribute to lower prices.
Despite the AI revolution simmering beneath the surface, it will probably take time before law firms adapt their business models, he reasons.
"Good legal security is at risk of remaining trapped in a business model where lawyers' knowledge is sold by the hour at fees that many companies don't think are worth paying," he says.
Furthermore, he explains that so-called "Legal tech providers" that apply AI in legal service solutions typically sell expensive annual subscriptions and package deals. A customer who needs help with one matter may end up paying for several, and the price tag can exceed 500,000 Swedish kronor per year, according to Olle Westerlund.
He argues that the legal industry needs to change in more ways than just automating repetitive tasks with AI. The idea behind Law Off The Shelf is not just to automate certain legal work but primarily to revolutionize the business model for how legal knowledge is sold and purchased and at what price.
Law Off The Shelf aims to increase access to high-quality legal services for more businesses and at lower costs.
"In simple terms, we are building a marketplace for legal products for businesses, like an Amazon for legal products," he says.
"You add a legal product to your cart and get it delivered immediately or within 24 hours."
Law Off The Shelf's goal is to productize all aspects of the legal service market where it is possible, and the company has just launched an initial version of a digital marketplace where corporate customers can purchase various types of legal products at fixed low unit prices. No hourly costs and no subscriptions.
On the marketplace, in addition to templates, you can currently purchase review and risk reports for commercial agreements, tender documentation for procurement, including in areas like cleaning or property management services (facility management), with legal comments and tips on questions to ask the procuring entity.
The reports are based on guides (so-called playbooks) created by experienced lawyers and are generated using advanced AI legal tools. This involves machine learning or in tech terms, "legal-grade AI."
However, the process also includes human involvement from a specialized lawyer before the report is delivered. Some reports even include a brief team meeting to go over the report.
"Our initial products are just the beginning, and we are now building a network of skilled lawyers who want to create playbooks for various legal challenges that businesses frequently face and legal tech actors who want to increase the impact of their AI technology."
Together with these actors, the idea is to create lightning-fast legal support.
"On Amazon, you can buy a movie, a book, or a pair of shoes. On our marketplace, you add a legal service to your cart and should be able to get it delivered within 24 hours," he says.
"We have already started delivering our own products to prove the concept and have several paying customers."
Olle Westerlund himself has a solid background as a Chief Legal Officer, including at a legal tech company. Furthermore, he has manually reviewed facility management procurement agreements in his daily work for several years. Now he has chosen to fully commit to the Law Off The Shelf entrepreneurial project.
Also on this journey are co-founders Liselott Lindberg, who has extensive experience as a corporate lawyer and is a trained computer scientist, and lawyer Carl Bokwall, who is consistently ranked as one of the country's top lawyers and advisors in public affairs and procurement law.
Olle Westerlund believes that with AI, law will become increasingly demystified and can actually be standardized in many respects. When you combine this new technology with a new business model, it becomes a real game changer, he predicts.
"Something that might have taken five hours and cost 25,000 Swedish kronor can now be bought for just a few thousand," he says.
"The potential is enormous."
When law becomes accessible to more, the hope is that it will create volumes and make the business model sustainable for the legal industry. The idea is that more and more lawyers will see the value of contributing their "know-how" to the marketplace, while the traditional model of hourly consulting fees remains for matters that warrant it. Olle Westerlund sees immense potential in the long run.
"The development cannot be stopped. Manual contract review is dead, and there are contracts in all businesses. Just when it comes to tender documentation for public procurement, there are 100,000 bids submitted annually in Sweden, and all bids follow the same legal checklist. It involves 'reference tasks,' 'technical and professional capacity,' 'financial standing,' 'contract duration,' 'evaluation model,' 'price annex,' 'confidentiality,' and so on," he continues.
"Tasks that used to take me 5-6 hours when I worked as a corporate lawyer now take 15-20 minutes. And the result is better. Suddenly, an entirely new market segment has opened up where small and medium-sized businesses can afford to participate in procurements with much greater legal security than before. AI creates a new gap in the market, and we want to be a player that fills that gap with an entirely new business model."
But isn't there more competition in this space? What does the competition look like?
So far, law firms are using technology to work faster, but from what we know, they have not changed their business models. On the other hand, legal tech companies often only sell package solutions, which exclude many, and they usually do not have lawyers with years of industry and specialist expertise associated with them, which we hope to change.
"We want to democratize law."
The vision is to bring together different stakeholders and make everyone a winner, the business customers, legal tech services, and lawyers.
"We want to democratize law by making it possible for more businesses to act with greater legal security at a lower price. Think of how Spotify transformed the music industry or how Netflix reshaped the film industry. We think big and want to bring about a paradigm shift in the legal market," says Olle Westerlund.