{"id":44193,"date":"2023-10-20T15:34:06","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/corporate-legal-world-held-no-attraction-for-legalvisions-lachlan-mcknight-follow-the-founder-series-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:34:06","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:34:06","slug":"corporate-legal-world-held-no-attraction-for-legalvisions-lachlan-mcknight-follow-the-founder-series-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/corporate-legal-world-held-no-attraction-for-legalvisions-lachlan-mcknight-follow-the-founder-series-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate legal world held no attraction for LegalVision’s Lachlan McKnight \u2013 Follow the Founder series – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

After working as a corporate lawyer in Europe, Hong Kong and Australia, Lachlan McKnight couldn\u2019t see the attraction of spending 10 to 15 years climbing the company ladder to reach the top.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I never liked being told what to do,\u201d he tells StartupSmart<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked doing my own thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKnight was working in investment banking structuring hedge fund products when he came to the conclusion that the legal services industry was ripe for disruption.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring that time I always wanted to start my own business.\u201d<\/p>\n

He met developer Evan Tait-Styles through a friend and together they launched LegalVision, an online platform providing customised legal documents, in December 2012.<\/p>\n

They decided to pivot their offering soon afterwards when they discovered people who were coming to them actually wanted to engage a lawyer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found a much bigger market of small businesses who didn\u2019t have a lawyer and weren\u2019t comfortable with lawyers going online to find information and get help,\u201d McKnight says.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many small businesses \u2013 tradies are a good example \u2013 just don\u2019t bother with legal services because they think it\u2019s going to be expensive and a pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company came third in StartupSmart\u2019s<\/i> recent So You Think You Can Start-up pitching competition and will be part of our Follow the Founder series on the winners for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n

LegalVision has a pool of around 20 specialist lawyers who provide legal advice to small business clients through the platform for a fixed, upfront fee, as well as continuing the legal documents side of the business.<\/p>\n

McKnight says he sees LegalVision as a technology business that happens to do law, noting that tech was something law firms \u201cdon\u2019t do\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s fun about doing this. We\u2019re helping small business get access to high quality legal services but who don\u2019t want to deal with someone in a suit.<\/p>\n

\u201cBig law firms aren\u2019t interested in our customers (and) our customers can\u2019t afford a big law firm\u2019s hourly rate.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKnight says he and Tait-Styles to want LegalVision to become the place where small businesses go if they\u2019re looking for legal help, assistance or just have legal questions.<\/p>\n

He adds they aim to focus on building the business in Australia this year before looking to expand overseas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is easily transferable overseas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, McKnight is not missing his former corporate life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing something different every day,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can actually see the benefits of what you\u2019re doing very quickly. It\u2019s very rewarding compared to the corporate world.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll check in with LegalVision again later in the year to see how it\u2019s progressing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After working as a corporate lawyer in Europe, Hong Kong and Australia, Lachlan McKnight couldn\u2019t see the attraction of spending<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}