India’s legal system is generally known as a ‘heaven for lawyers’, what with the complexities that evolved since Thomas Babington Macaulay introduced English education and British legal practices in the 1830s. One of the complexities is legal documentation, whose current annual market size is estimated at a whopping USD 4 billion (₹27,146 crore)!
This big market has now attracted Wonder.Legal, a Paris-based online platform that allows its users to easily create legal documents on-the-fly. Launched in 2014, the company swiftly penetrated 14 countries, including India where it set up online shop on May 1, 2018. Next, it is entering Chile, Ukraine, Sweden and Thailand.
“For now, our Indian website only works in English. Support for additional Indian languages will be added in the future,” Jeremi Eskenazi, Founder-CEO of the legal tech startup, Wonder.Legal, told
The online service will allow Indians to create personalized high-quality legal documents in real-time for a fraction of the fees currently charged by those in legal profession. Documents are priced competitively from ₹99 to ₹999. Users can create their own documents, generate their legal content, and buy them online.
Wonder.Legal’s document creation platform currently has 30 Indian templates for documents. The templates range partnership deed to trademark infringement for business purposes, to residential lease deed to tenant’s notice to end tenancy for personal purposes. “We plan to have 200 templates in a year.” More documents will be added on an ongoing basis, he said.
Easy access
Asked how will Wonder.Legal’s service impact the judicial system in India, Eskenazi, an alumnus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said it would, in general, help people get an easy access to the law.
He said the online platform will not compete with lawyers. “We don’t offer personalized legal advice and we don’t go to court. In all the countries where we launched, we always had good reception from lawyers.”
Eskenazi said India’s market size in legal documentation is estimated at USD 4 billion. “I believe that we’ve got a platform that can seamlessly fit into the Indian legal ecosystem,” he said.
With 4,00,000 users, Wonder.Legal is driven by a growth rate of 24 per cent month over month. The company anticipates similar growth in India after identifying a gap in the market for easily accessible and affordable legal documents. Its worldwide clientele comprises of 50 per cent individuals and 50 per cent businesses.
The company’s software streamlines the document drafting process so that a user simply needs to select a professionally developed template and answer the relevant questions to generate a legal content.
Wonder.Legal is on its way to cover all 193 countries in the world. “We will be in 22 countries before the end of the year.”