Episode 56: Empowering Consumers with Access to Legal Information with Inna Ptitsyna

This is Legal Design Podcast. We are your host, Hermann Thorbenen. And Nina Torbenen, today we have Inna Pzizina joining us from Kiev, Ukraine. With Inna we talk about how different technological solutions can help access the law. Inna works as a product communication manager at Laurena, a growing legal ecosystem where customers can read legal guides and create legal documents which already made templates and also find a lawyer who services match their legal needs. Of course, we also talk about Ukraine. Inna gives us tips on how to help Ukrainians. When they are defending against Russia's massive assault against independent Ukraine and its people. Hi everyone, thanks for inviting me, Hannah and Nina. I am a product communications manager at Laurena. And I am Communications Pro interested in legal innovation and design particularly. I believe that communication is always the key because it helps businesses to grow and people to understand themselves and others. Also, I have a legal background and a long story with legal tech startups because firstly I helped them to improve their communications with clients as a member of accelerator for access to justice startups. And then I moved to work to one of the legal tech startups in Europe. And I love working with legal tech and communications. That's why I am here today. It's great to have you join us. Inna, you currently work at Laurena, a legal tech ecosystem for all lawyers and their clients with legal guides, legal templates, AI based contract drafting and review software and a lawyer directory. So it sounds like a full package of nice things together. Would you like to tell us more about the core idea of Laurena's service and how the company was initially founded? Yep, you're right. Laurena is an innovative, very comprehensive platform for lawyers and their clients. Laurena has step-by-step legal guides in simple language that describes legal processes, diamonds, etc. As well as in our teledesigned interviews for creating professional contracts and other documents. Also, we have AI based contract drafting and review software and a lawyer directory with a lift of verified attorneys in different states and in different practice areas, aka industries. And diving deep into our history, we are a tea company with the gradient roots that started with big desire to create software products that have a point, that meaningful impact. It was like more than 10 years ago and it was phase one karma because Laurena is one of the projects of phase one karma company. That phase one karma created a tech product, it was Unichette and it was aimed to fought plagiarism in students' work. And I may say it was a great success because it produced rate of plagiarism in Ukraine, universities from 90 to mere 15%. And more over, we have over than a million users across all of the world. But then we decided after six years to sell this project to a bigger U.S. corporation. And during the process of selling the company, we saw that a lot of contract work, paperwork, so that made us think of ways to make lives of lawyers easier. That's how we got up with the idea of lawyer. It was 2018. And since ever since starting, with desires to free lawyers from their monotonous work and many old tasks, we create i.e. Drian software to revolutionize legal industry with legal review and contract drafting. Then I understand that in the year there are a lot of other problems like access to justice for everyone. That's why we decided to create portal backed with helpful resources like our blog, legal guides, and extensive database of both federal and state law. Then we understand that also there is problem in finding an attorney in your district area with specific experience. That's how we understand that to find perfect match, you just can use an internet. And we decided to create arena match where you can find the word in just a few clicks. So now people can just go through or directory and choose great specialist that will be perfect match for them. And almost a year ago we decided that willingness should be an ecosystem, one larger arena and restart building vibrant system to fulfill the needs of both lawyers and their clients. Then we created templates. It's like our the news feature, which is template builder, so creating documents takes minutes instead of hours of lawyers work. And nowadays we think that we need to make our platform alive. I think the power of AI and creating meaningful connections between legal professionals and their clients. That's our next point where we are heading to. Do you have any data available yet about your users? Like you said, the ecosystem is for both lawyers and non lawyers to use. Do you have data about like we put kind of users mostly using your services like is it lawyers or non lawyers or do you have a visibility into this? So mostly our portal is visited by non lawyers, because the resources for them, yep. So lawyers have lawyer and match itself. So they have two features and users have more features because they have more informational content that just tools. But we have a lot of users who use lawyer there on the world and you know because nowadays AI is the most popular thing. That's why we get even more users because recently yesterday I believe I was conducted by professor from Washington University. And he told me that he want his students to use lawyer for home assignment during his legal technology course. So yep, yep, yep. So I believe it's like the most present trend right now to use AI. That's why we got my users. Yep. So if we're talking about Lorena as a platform and our website, the most part of all the users are non lawyers. If we are talking about projects like Lloyd and match, the most part of users are lawyers. But of course, there are other contracting experts or other people who work with contracts, for example, lendments and we get specifically trained our algorithms for them because we have partners in this area. So, yeah, that also could be non lawyers who use features which was designed firstly for lawyers. Lorena's platform also helps people to find a lawyer, just like you just described, how does this feature work? For example, if let's say a lawyer wants to be featured in your directory service, what should they do? Or and how does it work for them? Yeah, so you just need to go to Lorena website, go to find a lawyer section, and then you need to press the button, lawyers get listed, then you will have it to specific question here that you need to comply with. And then after verification of your attorney's license and after cooperation with our customer development manager, you will be included to our list and afflores. All of our professionals are verified because we believe that we have kind of like obligations between our lawyers and their clients, so we understand that we are connectors and we need to know that this specific expert is verified and licensed. I think this matchmaking or lawyer director is a very interesting question. service is a brilliant idea and there really should be more services like this. Usually for the private individuals, the price of an attorney or legal service is the one thing that keeps them from getting the help they need. That's the law and I help people to compare prices or does the platform offer information on billing before people use service to find a lawyer. So, yes, we do a lot of stuff on that because we understand that the different prices of course per hour in different industries in different states even and it also depends on expertise of the world, you know, like numbers of years here she spent in this area. So for our users to understand better what they can get on the side of pricing. Firstly, we prepare materials for our legal work, show and how to find a lawyer for your needs, what is pricing, what is the best pricing for attorney in some states, etc. And before you move to a lawyer itself, you need to compose a survey and during this survey we show that for your state, for your precarious areas there is average sum you can expect per hour because we do believe it's like we're user friendly because every lawyer has different pricing, it depends on a lot of stuff, but we need to show at least statistics what you could expect. Yeah, exactly, but that's really good. How big is your team? How many people work for a lawyer at the moment? It's almost 50 people. How long? There is a big development team because you know, kind of big development team because we need to develop a lot of stuff for a lawyer and for companies. And for a lawyer, we try to use specific sector training. So if we understand that we have partners in real estate, we get a lot of materials to learn our algorithms. So there are a lot of work to do. That's why. Yeah, that's understandable. Yeah, and I find it very bold that Lorena has aimed to the American market from the very beginning. Are there some special aspects in the US legal system that define the way people find legal information or perhaps make it more difficult for people to find and how does Lorena's design solve these particular challenges perhaps? So as I mentioned before, we understood that it's kind of problems on the way in access to justice in the US because there are not a lot of platforms which provide you legislation for free, especially on the state level. So specific of the US legal system is that it is very conservative, but there are a lot of points in which you can penetrate with your innovations. And this structure of the system, so you have federal level and state level, you need to be very careful with that. Yeah, why you are doing all of stuff, all of informational materials, all of products because all of contracts, they have specifics that depends on whether it relates by federal law or state law. And the same is for all of our legal guards and all of our blocks because you need to understand what specific regulation is for this document or for this question. And to solve this, we just understand firstly that we need to go down through the system itself, understand its structure, then understand what we can do in the parts of innovation. So we decided to provide legal guides, legal block with materials, just to educate people on what rights do they have and how to protect its rights. And moreover we saw that there is a lot of opportunities on the US market because it's the biggest one. And although it is super conservative in its approaches to solving legal issues, there are a lot of innovative practices and there are trend on legal innovation. That's why it's very popular to create legal marketplaces, to provide legal help online and to help lawyers to work on their legal market in the way. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hey, you already mentioned that there's 50 people or around 50 people working in Imo renaum. And I think it's really impressive that you cover so many different practice areas in so many different states. And I do believe that there really is a need for a service like this. And the number of people searching for information we are all renaum is really impressive. What kind of processes do you have for the content creation? Yep, so it's my legal team who do the contribution because I'm a leader of content and comes team. So we try to approach our content very seriously because it's legal content. Yeah, but we try to write it in a simple manner. So the regular person within a standard, even the word will understand and will not have to try to read it one more and one more time to understand what is reading in this article. Our legal team prepares all templates, all the legal documents. And we content team prepare the materials for legal block. Also, we outsource expertise because we do understand that in the United States, there are a lot of states in which there are specific rules. So to know the specific rules, you need to have experience with these rules. And it could not be done without specific practice in this area and in the state. That's why we outsource expertise from lawyers who experience in specific practice areas. And they are practicing in specific states to understand better the core reasons and the core features of these problems and try it as more resourceful material as we could, as more highly explained material as we could and as more backed with the resources material as we could because we care about our users. Also, we try to review all of our materials once in a while, once in three months. Exactly. Because we understand that through this could be change. And this is what our legal team are looking for. They are looking about any initiatives in the US concerning the laws. And they told us that it could be the thing that next month we will need to change this article or changes template, etc. So it's a very big process where legal team and content team cooperates. We also outsource our expertise and we also outsource writers with legal background because they are professionals in content creation, but they also understand the basics of legal procedures. And for these, we try to approach our content in strategic manner to understand what is the channel purpose of this content and how many content we want to create in the next month or year, etc. So that's the main point we try to go on with. That's really interesting. And well, you have mentioned templates that Lorena is now offering. And I took a look at your templates and there's so many different areas of lore. It's really interesting. I mean, I spotted things like templates for military law and media and entertainment. How do you decide like what kind of them to create? Do you do client interviews or do people actually ask for certain templates? What they feel that they will need and they can't have from anywhere else? So we do both research with the now users and research within our competitors and other platforms and provide legal templates or just informational background for these templates. We understand that it's important to see what templates are the most popular ones, because we decided to start with them to get more users and to test the idea faster, you know, to understand what we should improve in our product. And also, except the research within competitors and the market of legal templates, we do research within our own clients, because sometimes there are a lot of questions from people from the Yes, about templates we do not have. So we go to our league. team, tell them about this template, they do a little research, and then product content and legal team decide whether this particular template is worse to add in right now at this period of time or we will need to add it later. So we also understand that our users have particular needs and we care about them, especially as we have a cabinet where user can find all of his or her templates. That's why we understand that we need to hear to them, hear their needs, and we need to listen to them. That's how we decide what templates we will need in the next month also, not only based on research through the ethical templates. It's time to move on to our next topic, which is severe and concerns all of us, and since you are located currently in Kiev, Ukraine, and we're talking about a legal tech platform created by a Ukrainian company, we feel that it's necessary. We also cover and discuss the situation that Ukraine as a nation is going through and how possibly legal deck and legal design can help in the recreation process of your country. So I'm, of course, talking about the ongoing war in Ukraine that has caused a terrible humanitarian and social crisis and violating our fundamental understanding about right and wrong and caused long-lasting effects also for the future generations to deal with. But as we know, times of crisis also provide an opportunity to redesign and rebuild something more sustainable and better. Inna, do you see that legal design and legal tech play a role in the reconstruction and healing of Ukrainian society after the war? And if yes, what would that role be? Yes, I see it. Before the war started, before the full invasion started actually because it was like four years ago, Ukraine has e-government systems, like e-passports and other, which called DIA. And that's why it was very elevationalized here those times because you don't need, not need to use your paper documents with yourself. And I understand that such events provide specific and very strange but very great opportunities to create something new. I do believe that legal tech could help us to create better justice system and also could help us to provide access to justice to all who needed it. I personally, personally, I know a lot of legal tech startups in Ukraine who continue to work and provide their services to Ukrainian citizens. And I do believe that they are doing great in providing protection for rights of Ukrainians because, of course, because of the war, there are a lot of rights violated. And I do believe that we need more complex view on the legal tech from our side. And we need to understand that we do not only need different small projects where we go to tech startups, but we need to implement legal tech in our system. And for all things I love service design. And before I said it in communications, I was trying myself in service design for legal sector and just trying how design approach could help you to solve legal problems better. I believe that not only legal tech could help, but other practices in legal innovation like legal design could help to understand how to solve problems even better than it was before. And how to change your perspective to find new solutions which will be more effective and more affordable for people. Yes. And I think there have been, like as far as I know, from my perspective, I've seen many interesting initiatives rising from legal design and service design movements to help Ukrainian citizens, for example, to seek asylum and creating solutions of how to evaluate their own legal stages. So I believe there already is happening a lot in this space. Yes, that's true. Thank you so much for joining us in A and we really can't wait to see how Lorena's story develops. One final question if you don't mind. Many people are looking for ways to help Ukraine and Ukrainian people. Could you maybe give us and our listeners some tips or recommendations on how can we help? Yep, it will be my pleasure. So I see five ways in which you can help Ukraine and Ukrainians. Firstly, it's telling the world about the world as an horrible act of oppression because your family, your friends, your colleagues across the globe should know about this and we should not forget about this. I guess it's just a little bit more than a year pass. Yeah. After the full scale invasion, there are a lot of news and a lot of false and social media with support of Ukrainian Ukrainians. The next one is how Ukrainians with your kind words. I understand that a lot of friends of mine from Europe and T.S. they told me that we understand that words didn't help but we show the violin itself, but it always helps. And the most important that when you see the world, especially people who know from different countries, support you and your country's mission, you feel a lot of strength to move forward. Yeah. So it's a very great way to help Ukrainians just to spread kind words to them, words of support. The third one is to help Ukrainian organizations. They take care of Ukrainian people, like non-governmental organizations who work with humanitarian aid. You can find institutions for the nations gathered on our government's website. Also, we can discuss with you. I could just provide link for people who could find specific verified sources for the nations. Yeah. That would be perfect. Yeah, because it will be very helpful. The fourth one is that he could support the armed forces of Ukraine. I knew that around the world it's kind of controversial, but things got not easy here. And I do understand that in their hands there is freedom of Ukraine and freedom of the whole democratic world. That's why it's very important. And the fifth one is to understand and to understand how you can support Ukrainian projects, Ukrainian businesses. Because I see a lot of innovations in Ukraine raised and I see nowadays a lot of projects. They got a lot of support from our partners abroad. And it helps us to understand that we are a great country and to firstly have inspiration to make even bigger efforts to end this war. As well as each will get a lot of economic opportunities for Ukraine to raise after the war going on. Yes, that's a very important point. Thank you, Anna, what's the pleasure to have you as our guest. And thank you so much for giving the tips how to help. I know this is important for so many, for so many of our listeners because it's horrifying to just watch from different countries while you're fighting for all of us, basically. Thank you for listening to the Legal Design Podcast. Get to know us at legaldesignpodcast.com.