LawPath connects startups to lawyers

LawPath CEO and co-founder, Paul Lupson

A new attorney-matching service aims to ease possible apprehension of Australian startups and other small businesses to find and contact lawyers.

LawPath, based in Sydney, has launched a website where users can ask legal questions and get matched via algorithm to an appropriate attorney. After a match is found, the lawyer phones the client for a 30-minute chat about the question.

If the issue isn’t resolved within 30 minutes, LawPath users get 10 to 20 per cent discounts off the lawyer’s hourly rate for future consultations.

LawPath charges $29 per conversation. It also has subscriptions for clients who want to ask a few questions per month. The initial $29 fee goes entirely to LawPath; the attraction for an attorney is a potential client lead.

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LawPath has been live for only two months and its matching algorithm—now in version 3—continues to evolve, LawPath CEO Paul Lupson told Techworld Australia. “We understand there’s a need there and now we’ll be spending the next year or two tuning our system.”

So far, LawPath has fielded a “huge variety” of questions from Australian startups, related to topics including patents, terms and conditions, non-disclosure requests, disputes and non-payment issues, Lupson said.

“I don’t think we’re seeing a pattern of one specific type of request,” he said. “In the hundreds of questions we’ve had come through, I’ve seen three or four that are on a similar vein.”

LawPath has more than 50 Australian attorneys on its service so far, and “they’re joining five a day,” Lupson said. The service can also connect clients to international lawyers, including a firm in Silicon Valley, he said.

The attorneys’ specialisations include business, dispute resolution, real estate, intellectual property and information technology, he said.

LawPath is based in the Pollenizer office in Surry Hills. The startup incubator is an investor and adviser for LawPath.

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