Oxford-based SMQ Legal, the award-winning crime and family law firm, has partnered with Lawyer 365 as a “Platinum” partner to help connect to new clients online.

We’re all too familiar with wanting things on demand, is it the same for speaking with a lawyer?

“Life often gets in the way for a lot of our clients and makes seeing a lawyer between the hours of 9am and 5pm impossible, so the option to speak to a lawyer out of hours is important for our clients”, said Suezanne King, Partner at SMQ Legal.

It is an interesting time in providing legal services. Many law firms have had to adapt to new working practices such as finding new ways to provide legal advice and legal representation. Mrs. King recalls first stepping into the Magistrates’ Court wearing her visor, mask, and purple gloves (black ones were out-of-stock!) when the pandemic first hit and having everyone look at her like an alien from outer space.

Lawyer 365, a virtual video marketplace for lawyers, helps law firms who want to work “flexibly”. Lawyers are told they can work from home or their usual workplace and connect with a pool of consumers seeking legal information and advice through the app. By forming this strategic partnership, Mrs. King believes that her staff will be able to generate new business without having to rely on digital agencies who “don’t understand legal services”. Instead, she is now able to feature all her lawyers on Lawyer 365 and market her legal services “strategically”.

“We work with a lot of clients through Legal Aid, so communicating virtually through Lawyer 365 enables us to provide legal advice conveniently for our clients”, referring to the savings on travelling to her office for her clients. “We have also undertaken several paid consultations through the app, which is something we really like. Our team sees a huge difference in what our clients want now as opposed to few years ago, and we want to make sure we strategically adopt the right technology of the future”, she added.

The Warwickshire-based legal technology company has already secured several large national law brands to the app, but Azeem Rashid, Director and Co-founder at Lawtech 365, the company that owns the Lawyer 365 platform, says he wants to continue being at the forefront of innovation in the legal sector. “We understand that consumers want easy access to legal services – their legal needs met fairly, effectively and economically. As with many other industries, such as financial and health care, the virtual lawyer service aims to replace traditional, inefficient office-based appointments”.

The legal tech sector is “set to explode” in the coming years, giving companies like Lawtech 365, the opportunity to provide greater access to legal services, and better, faster, more affordable outcomes. In a recent Lawtech UK report, it was identified that unmet demand from UK SMEs and consumers is valued at £11.4bn annually in the legal sector alone.

Lawtech 365 is also making waves with another app-based lawtech platform, an anti-money laundering and compliance solution “Verify 365“, a near-field communication (NFC) verification system that enables consumers to validate NFC-compatible identity documents with both iOS and Android devices. Reading the data directly from ePassport’s chip provides the highest security and the ability to check whether someone has tampered with the document. Online verification can be taken to a new level as most passports today are already equipped with the chip, and the chips are being added to all other ID documents across the globe.

“This is what people want, what clients want nowadays. They want to connect with lawyers with their smartphones. We must engage with that change. It’s not a question of filling gaps in the market, it’s a question of being transformational, in the same way that Blockbuster was replaced by Netflix. Lawtech 365 products are not just legal platforms, they are completely new business concepts, underpinned by the latest technology, blockchain and artificial intelligence, which genuinely have the potential to disrupt the legal market. We’re not building this for today, we’re building it for the next five to 10 years. Change will come, whether we like it or not. We’re living in a different world now”, added Mr Rashid.