LATCH - WA Disrupting Law National Finalists
Introducing the sixth and final team competing for the glory of being the national Disrupting Law champions, we have the WA finalists, team LATCH!
The problem: Differences in personality and expectations result in negative legal experiences. According to the LPCC, most complaints each year are about costs and communication.
The solution: LATCH
Latch is a program that pairs lawyers with clients based on personality and communication style. The program gives lawyers the option to post a short video about themselves explaining a bit about themselves and how they work. This allows clients to choose a lawyer suited to their needs who they can get along with. Latch is designed to benefit people with smaller claims that deal with everyday issues
We’d love to know a bit about you- what are your names, and what are your ‘superpowers’?
Lucy Burns - turning a negative into a positive
Samuel Dulyba - coming up with witty responses to questions.
Is there a famous quote that you think best describes your team?
“There are no problems, only solutions” - John Lennon
Give us the elevator pitch - what is your pitch in one sentence?
What is the hardest part of finding a lawyer that is right for you? Knowing where to look. Latch is a platform that helps both prospective clients and committed lawyers to find each other, and get it right the first time. We ensure that clients not only find the best lawyer for their case, but that both the client and lawyer are satisfied with how the matter is conducted and that their expectations are met.
What is the problem that your team chose to solve? How did you land on it?
The initial inaccessibility of the legal field faced by individuals seeking advice seemed to us to be a prominent issue. More often than not clients and lawyers experience personality clashes and differences in case-management expectations and this results in negative legal experiences. We decided that this was a significant issue in the legal industry early on, as we went around the table and asked each person there to share a concern/experience of theirs relating to legal services. Often people facing legal disputes do a simple google search, meet with the first lawyer that they can speak to, and then invest with that lawyer rather than ‘shopping around’. We wanted to enhance this process by providing a platform for better matching clients and lawyers.
Tell us about your favourite mentor during the Disrupting Law weekend. What organisation are they from, and how did they help you?
Nick Malone from Pragma Lawyers was an important mentor for our team over the weekend. He provided continuing support, working with us over the majority of the 54 hours and encouraging us to be creative, positive and thoughtful in developing our ideas. Since we wanted to create a solution that would appeal to both lawyers and clients equally, his insight into a lawyers’ perspective was invaluable to us.
When did you finally land on your solution during the weekend (towards the beginning of the comp? In the middle? Towards the end?), and were there other problems or solutions that you had considered?
We decided on the problem that we wanted to solve on the first evening and began to play around with ideas shortly after. We landed on the basic model of our solution very close to the beginning of the weekend, however it constantly evolved. It was, at times, a process of taking two steps forward and then one back again as we aimed to find a solution that would appeal to both lawyers and clients. We had very briefly discussed a few other problems, however we were quite convinced from early on that the problem we chose was a prominent one. To find a solution, we began by discussing a sort of ‘lawyer handyman’ service and moved onto exploring ways of deconstructing legal issues so that they might be manipulated in a search field. This led us to the idea of creating a sort of lawyer-client matching website where both parties could be matched accurately based on a set of search criteria. We decided to add unique criteria around engagement expectations to focus on the too-often overlooked human element of the client-lawyer relationship.
What tips do you have for people interested in competing in Disrupting Law this year?
Be open minded. Be open to the experience and to getting to know everyone involved - your mentors, your sponsor firm and also the participants. Be open to all of the ideas that come up because each one will guide you to your end solution in some way.
Do you think events like Disrupting Law are important for students to get involved in, and, if so, why?
I think that these events teach (or further develop) students’ skills in many ways. They foster teamwork, collaboration, confidence, perseverance and open-mindedness. These skills are integral to success as a law student and so we would encourage anyone thinking to participate in law-related events to do so. Further to that, we made connections with people from different industries including the legal and tech industries and also made lasting friendships.
What is the no. 1 reason that our readers should vote for you?
We feel like we developed a solution that can help both clients and lawyers in a way that will increase justice, accessibility and satisfaction in our legal system.
We look forward to finding out who the judges are and what the prizes will be!