DIGITALIZATION OF LEGAL SERVICES – INTERVIEW FOR DIYA

- Please tell us about your company (fields of activity of the company, experience in the sector, market share, products, types of services, sales markets, key customers, competitors and competitive advantages of your company, etc.)?

Our group of companies, including the "Prykhodko and Partners" Law Firm, the PRIKHODKO&PARTNERS Law Company, and the CONSULTANT Legal Marketplace (https://consultant.net.ua/) are a strong and well-coordinated team of professionals.

Experience in the sector is almost 6 years of successful operation of the bureau. During this time, thousands of professional legal services have been provided to our clients. In particular, in 6 years, we were able to increase the volume of specialists of the bureau from three to almost 100 employees, and this mark is constantly growing every year.

It is quite difficult to single out the market share, taking into account the daily progressive increase in the number of requests for legal services in Ukraine. At the same time, it is worth noting that the "Prykhodko and Partners" law firm is among the TOP 30 taxpayers among legal companies in Ukraine, the PRIKHODKO&PARTNERS law firm is the largest Ukrainian law firm in the field of international partnerships, and the CONSULTANT legal marketplace is the best legal start-up in Ukraine.

The range of services provided is quite wide and covers most of the legal fields. This includes, in particular, civil and family law, economic and corporate law, administrative law, criminal law, land and environmental law, financial and tax law, migration law, as well as the highlight of the year - military law.

The sales market has changed dynamically in recent years, and in 2023, a larger share of services is provided in the field of military law.

Our lawyers and assistants provide services for a wide range of clients: from pensioners to clients of the "V.I.P." category. The cost of the provided services starts from 200 hryvnias in the mobile application and up to tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in the international market.

Competitive advantages lie in a wide range of services, areas of law and a range of pricing policies. In addition, it is worth paying attention to the fact that we are constantly increasing our partnership with lawyers in other cities and countries, with the aim of increasing the share of the market for the provision of services. In addition, we use modern technologies in our activities to automate processes, which as a result successfully pays off.

- Specify the sustainable development approaches that are present in the company?
The concept of sustainable development corresponds to the values and principles of our company: responsibility, innovation, continuous development and high level in everything. AB "Prykhodko and Partners" considers sustainable development as a way to ensure profitable business and long-term growth.

The company's success is based on the following principles:

1. Work for the result of all process participants;
2. Full involvement of each team member in the work;
3. Customer orientation that improves the company;
4. Continuous development and improvement.

Instead, the drivers of development are the use of technologies - Legal tech, and the implementation of effective marketing strategies.

- Describe the company's short-term development strategy for the coming year and long-term strategy for up to 3 years?

The short-term strategy consists in increasing the number of jobs and maintaining the stability of the current implementation of the set plan. The war made its adjustments, and along with this, we plan to continue providing lawyers with work and, accordingly, with earnings. Our goal is to connect approximately 1,000 lawyers and lawyers to our service by the end of 2023. With this, already this year we are planning to enter the Polish market, for further scaling throughout Europe.

The long-term perspective in the narrow sense involves strengthening the culture of ordering legal services through the application, which in turn leads to greater automation of service processes. In addition, by the end of 2023, we plan to attract legal specialists from two more categories of specialists, in the amount of 300 people from each category. In a global sense, we plan to open an office in the following countries: Poland, Austria, Great Britain. The set goal will allow to develop the company's income stably regardless of the situation in a particular country, and to focus on each of them separately. Lawyers connected to the CONSULTANT project will make legal services more accessible and comfortable for our clients from different parts of the country.

- Tell us how the company's activities changed as a result of the full-scale war?

Since the declaration of martial law throughout Ukraine, our business has undergone significant changes, namely:

• according to the dynamics of the profit obtained in comparison with 2021, the profit in 2022 decreased by 30% on average, and the pre-war indicators have been trying to recover for quite a long time;
• client requests for services have narrowed: there are fewer issues related to land law, but more specific requests for divorce in a court order, as well as drafting attorney requests to military units;
• the number of requests related to military service in the field of criminal proceedings has increased;
• approaches to marketing strategy have changed radically: almost all campaigns are on military rails;
• the number of paying customers has decreased;
• in connection with the constant shelling of Kyiv, the process of providing services to clients with compliance with security conditions has become significantly more complicated.

- Describe the project that you would like to implement after receiving grant support?

Our pride is CONSULTANT - Legal Tech Marketplace

The size of the legal market - 500 thousand consultations per year (according to the official statistics of the BPD https://legalaid.gov.ua) - this is a minimum of 35 million UAH in monetary equivalent.

Growth opportunities - 31 million consultations per year (opendata statistics) - at least 2.1 billion UAH.

CONSULTANT provides an opportunity to receive expert advice through a mobile application, which is much more effective than through websites (loyalty systems, customer retention, activity incentives, referral system, automatic quality and control system, etc. are implemented in the mobile application through push notifications and other phone functions), at the same time cheaper and faster than visiting law firms.

Similar sites:

• UKRAINE: protocol.ua, lawyer.ua, b2bconsult.ua
• US/EUROPE: rocketlawyer.com

The main advantages of the innovation: the availability of a mobile application, a quality system - weeding out low-level specialists, a system of automatic movement of funds, the ability to quickly respond to customer requests, a convenient system of cooperation with other companies.

Currently, the emphasis is on attracting consumers of legal and accounting services (approx. 12 thousand) to the project.

There are about 600 specialists from all over Ukraine - lawyers, advocates, accountants, notaries and others.

Monetization occurs by withholding a fee from customers for using the application, selling template documents, and selling specialist contacts. At the same time, all income is currently directed to support the team and advertising services.

- Specify what additional resources the company will be willing to attract for the successful implementation of the project (loans, other grants, own funds, etc.)?

We are ready to independently cover almost all expenses related to the implementation of the CONSULTANT project for the successful implementation of the agreed plan. But of course, given our innovativeness and startup model, we make efforts to attract grants.

We would also like to emphasize that our team is an active participant in various acceleration programs and grant competitions, with the aim of improving the conditions for providing grant funds for implementation. And although we currently cannot guarantee the coverage of part of the project implementation costs by other grant providers, since the final decision still depends on the grant providers, we still undertake to inform the "Ukrainian Business in Action" program about the possibility of reducing the budget burden on specific grants , in order to attract funds from other grant providers.

- List the main risks associated with your project and how they can be minimized

The key risks associated with the implementation of our project are expressed as a result of active hostilities on the territory of Ukraine, due to the aggression of the Russian Federation. Here we include:

• dynamic inflation;
• real risks of hostilities on the territory of Kyiv;
• risks associated with a decrease in the level of financial security of the population.

In turn, in our opinion, risk minimization is possible in the following ways:

1. In order to ensure against a lack of funds due to inflation - laying in the budget funds that could cover the difference in indicators;
2. To provide safe conditions for the organization of work - the ability to work remotely, with the support of an IT specialist, for the correct performance of assigned tasks;
3. To reduce the risk with a decrease in the level of the population's solvency, weekly team meetings are planned to update needs, manually adjust the cost of services, or whatever.

- Describe the expected results of the successful implementation of your project and its role in the development of the company

The following expected results are planned for the company:

• an increase in jobs, which will allow us to cover a larger market for the provision of legal services on the territory of Ukraine;
  increase in profit, which will help the CONSULTANT project to become more independent and sustainable;
• an increase in the number of clients, which is directly related to the coverage of both the classic market for the provision of legal services and the coverage of the legal-tech market;
• for the project, the received and implemented grant becomes a rather serious, significant mark for the company's record in establishing new connections and establishing partnerships from abroad;
• established partnerships, in turn, will allow both to attract more investment funds from such partners, and to expand the range of services on international markets for a specific niche of clients whose request is similar to the relocation of their own business abroad;
• the result should also ensure the stability of the online service from a technical point of view, which will allow further investment income to be focused on development and improvement, instead of the basic provision of the basic functions of the site.

- Indicate how many jobs will be saved and/or created as a result of the implementation of your project and provide an argument.

The project implementation process will provide more than 100 full-time jobs and more than 1,000 lawyers on contract.

In a more global sense, the project will provide work for a large number of lawyers on the CONSULTANT service platform who are connected from different parts of Ukraine and the world. An increase in passive sales of the platform is expected, which will also, in turn, increase the company's income, its recognition and consolidate the culture of legaltech in Ukraine.

- Provide financial forecasts of the effect of the implementation of your project and expectations for the growth of the company's income 6 months after the implementation of the project.

According to preliminary calculations, with an investment of 1,300,000 hryvnias, within the first year it is quite realistic to receive net income for the fourth quarter in the amount of 232,000 hryvnias.

Such dynamics make it possible to make an assumption that raising funds in the amount of 2,000,000 hryvnias could bring a net income of 355,000 hryvnias already in the fourth quarter.

As of the third quarter, this amount will be smaller and will amount to approximately 110,000 hryvnias.

Such a perspective is quite promising and will allow to stabilize the company's income and, accordingly, to realize the set global goals of the company's development.

- What do you wish our readers, lawyers, students who are just planning to become lawyers?

I believe that the legal profession is the best profession. Maybe it's because I'm a lawyer myself. And a lawyer plus a programmer is the future. The future is of an independent, successful Ukraine that defeated the enemy, won a victory and showed the whole world not only how to fight, but also how to create new revolutionary technological solutions that will change the world.