{Tech Platform: Advokatguiden} A Tripadvisor for Lawyers

This Oslo based platform wants to become the Tripadvisor and Napster of the legal sector. It allows past clients to rate lawyers who have assisted them, so that new clients can access ratings, price, location, and other information to decide about the lawyer.

In the last ten years, technology has disrupted many sectors, like travel, banking, and music, but for some reason, the legal industry, despite being an essential pillar of our society, is continuing in its old ways.

Apart from word-of-mouth, there’s still no way for a client to know how good a lawyer is. In fact, clients struggle to know how much a lawyer will charge. Similarly, lawyers find it tough to communicate with their prospective clients to explain the quality of their service. The legal industry is not very transparent, at least from outside.

But now, a legal tech platform called Advokatguiden is all set to disrupt the legal industry by making it possible for clients and lawyers to connect in an open and transparent manner. This platform will be for the legal sector what Tripadvisor has been for the travel industry and Napster for the music industry.

“With Advokatguiden, the goal is to democratize the legal industry. What lawyer is the best? How much does the typical lawyer cost? Today, there are far too many unanswered questions in the legal world. We want to help the legal industry become more open and transparent,” says Erling Løken Andersen, Founder and CEO of Advokatguiden.

How it Works

Advokatguiden has built a platform on which past clients can rate lawyers who have assisted them earlier. The platform has built a system to authenticate the ratings as well to assure users that the ratings are genuine.

Past clients send reviews of the lawyers who have helped them earlier to the platform. The reviews thus received are sent to the concerned lawyers. The lawyers know which client has written the review, but they can’t see the review content. They can only confirm if they had an actual client-relationship with the reviewer or not.

Advokatguiden is a win-win platform for lawyers and clients. Clients can access genuine reviews of lawyers. Lawyers also know that they can use positive reviews to get new clients.

Origin

Apart from the ratings, the platform also provides a lot of information about law practices, like the lawyer’s fees, the location, area of specialization, etc. Founder Andersen is a former attorney with the Norwegian Bar Association.

When he started practicing in 2017, Andersen was shocked to discover how old-school the legal industry was. The case handling systems were out-of-date, and client recruitment happened largely based on word-of-mouth.

Advokatguiden currently has around 10,000 Norwegian lawyers on its platform, with plans to commence operations in European countries, like Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany, in 2021.

The platform was founded in March 2020. Since then, it has done well, with 40,000 visitors per month and reviews of around 1,000 lawyers from Norway on its platform.

Andersen is a former attorney and a seasoned entrepreneur. He has built successful ventures like the Norwegian social networking site, Biip.no (sold for US$12.5 million to Danish media giant, Egmont, in 2008), and a digital consultancy called Omega Media (more than US$3 million in revenue).

François Savard, Co-founder and CTO, is originally from France, but moved to Norway to pursue a career in digital design. At Advokatguiden, he oversees the platform’s technical development and created the design of the user interface.

Navanwita Bora Sachdev

Navanwita is the editor of The Tech Panda who also frequently publishes stories in news outlets such as The Indian Express, Entrepreneur India, and The Business Standard