Legal Lens, a new legal tech start-up, has been established in SA, promising to reduce legal fees by as much as 60%.
The founders, Catherine-Jane Paulse and Yusha Davidson, both admitted attorneys, say legal invoices often reflect billing practices and errors that result in unfair, high legal fees.
The duo, through the start-up, aims to disrupt the status quo of inflated legal fees, while maintaining the client-attorney relationship.
According to Legal Lens, lawyer invoices contain a number of billing errors which result in inflated fees. “Unfortunately, clients are unable to reduce their legal spend, as they lack the skill, knowledge and time to review and dispute their legal invoices.”
More importantly, the start-up says, clients are hesitant to disrupt the relationship with their attorneys.
“We realised it’s awkward and difficult reviewing legal invoices, as clients fear disrupting the close relationship they have with their lawyers and may not have the knowledge needed to dispute a legal invoice. It’s time-consuming. So, we developed a tech solution to review legal invoices and reduce legal fees,” explains Davidson.
In a statement, Legal Lens says all clients need do is send the legal invoices to the start-up ,as well as any correspondence regarding fee arrangements and their letter of engagement with the lawyer.
Using experienced attorneys, optical character recognition and machine learning, Legal Lens digitally reviews the legal invoices to identify areas for potential savings. Legal Lens then engages with the customer’s lawyer regarding the fees in dispute.
“All engagements are professionally handled to ensure the relationship between the customer and the lawyer is maintained. After the legal invoice has been renegotiated and revised, Legal Lens obtains a new invoice from the legal firm that reflects the reduced amount to be paid.”
Clients are charged 17.5% (including VAT) of the amount saved. If there are no savings, Legal Lens does not charge.
Legal Lens has entered into discussions with the Law Society of South Africa for the organisation to recommend the offering.
It is also in talks with some of the major banks and insurance companies to offer its service, but serves any company, state entity, or individual who would like their legal bills reviewed.
According to Paulse: “The recent discussion paper by the South African Law Reform Commission regarding its investigation into legal fees also confirms improper and unethical billing is a reality in South Africa.”
The paper required the commission to investigate and report back to the minister of justice and constitutional development with recommendations on the “the manner in which to address the circumstances giving rise to legal fees that are unattainable for most people; legislative and other interventions in order to improve access to justice by members of the public”.
The commission also investigated the desirability of establishing a mechanism which will be responsible for determining fees and tariffs payable to legal practitioners; and the obligation by a legal practitioner to conclude a mandatory fee arrangement when that client secures that legal practitioner’s services.
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