Qanoon — Shortening the Cliff (aka how to get more clients and close deals faster)
From the last episode
There was a challenge: How to answer mundane legal questions accurately in least time and effort?
Our first guess is … a chatbot.
A chatbot is a service, powered by rules and sometimes artificial intelligence, that you interact with via a chat interface.
A chat interface seems a natural fit for the challenge:
- It would have a question-answering capability, akin to one that legal clients would expect to have in writing or consultation.
- It is powered by some knowledge base, hopefully consistent and up-to-date as an incorporation lawyer strives to maintain.
In collaboration with our partner, we charted out the incorporation process. However, one piece is missing:
Who should be the one asking questions?
Either:
- The bot drives the conversation, where it marches down scenarios as the user responds… or
- The user freely inquires based on their situations.
As a technologist, I would easily jump over to 2. where the latest and most exciting Natural Language Processing (NLP) research resides. How cool is that if we can build a machine that could answer all relevant legal questions with a certain confidence?
However, as we dig deeper in the customer acquisition process with our research partner, we see a clear analogy between legal client relationship and a patient visiting a clinic. The patient might rant for a minute or two on the symptoms, then the physician would take over as the inquisitor and drive the conversation.
At this moment, a revelation kicks in…
The Cliff
There are two phases in an incorporation pipeline:
- Fact-finding (identify relevant regulations and formulate options)
- Implementation (process the actual legal requirement)
Only 50% of their clients completed the fact-finding phase moved on to implementation
And upon further grilling, we learned that:
- Time-to-implementation is often delayed by prolonged back-and-forth consultation
- This leads to client indecision over time.
In sum…
A quick yes or no with a clear proposition of viable legal positions could eliminate the cliff and close deals sooner.
Stay tuned on our next episode, where we craft the next iteration of our legaltech solution with our research partner.
BTW, we demo’ed a question-answer based solution and everyone was happy. But we felt more joy in discovering where the behavioral block really lies in their current process and look forward to shortening the cliff.
