First Austrian LegalTech Hub Launches in Vienna
A number of law firms in Austria have come together to launch Austria’s first legalTech hub in Vienna. Technomancers spoke with Philip Dudsky of Herbst Kinsky to find out more about the initiative.
Can you tell us more about the new initiative?
This is actually the first legaltech hub in Austria. It is sponsored by seven leading law firms and has working space and strong funding behind it.
We started the initiative because we felt that each firm individually would not be have the resources needed in order to build their own legaltech. The idea of the hub is to attract tech partners in order to build and create the tools we need in order to digitise our legal services. At the same time we want to provide a platform for more legaltech companies to come to Austria.
We believe our approach will benefit not only the founding firms but the whole legal market. We hope to support our clients better and generate new business using the legalTech coming out of the hub.
We only founded last week and we hope to have a lot of applicants very quickly. We are looking forward to getting as many legal tech companies to join us as soon as possible.
What makes Vienna good choice for legalTech startups?
Vienna is a fantastic city to live in. We have great universities and infrastructure, which enables startups to more easily attract talent and skills. Geographically, Vienna has good transport links to both Eastern and Western Europe, which means we have easy access to software developers in Eastern Europe, which is very helpful for companies.
Vienna is a great city to live in, working space isn’t very expensive, we have a lot of government support for startups so the initial funding environment is excellent for startup businesses.
Who are you hoping will join the hub?
Our focus is on legaltech that makes life easier for our clients and our firms. We are also branching out into affiliated tech spaces in order to compliment legaltech, so we are not trying to narrowly focus on legaltech but rather to be open to all sorts of other technology that might be applicable to legal.
How do you intend to foster a culture of innovation and growth between firms and tech providers?
I think by working together. The tech providers need us in order to know what’s viable in the market, otherwise they build something which no one needs. At the same time we don’t have the technical expertise — we know what we need, we can think of what our clients need, but we need tech partners to make it happen.
I believe that legal tech startups joining our hub will see that time the typical time for developing a product that is ready to go to market will be reduced significantly by working with us. For us the time it takes to create a working service is significantly reduced and hopefully the cost too, as we have everything we need in our hub.
Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash
Originally published at Technomancers — LegalTech Blog.
