The Business Concept – DigitLaw

Most Lawyers and law firms in Nigeria relied either on foreign software or use of Microsoft

Excel (MS-Excel) and sometime stick to physical filings of papers and folders to manage

their business activities. Many who value technology are hindered by the non-availability of

local solution, challenges of getting technical support (due to time difference), unstable

foreign exchange and initial cost of entry. In view of this, DigitLaw Solution is designed as a

fully customizable legal practice management solution to help Nigerian lawyers and law

firms to streamlines and automates scheduling of tasks and tracks cases and matters from the

initial interaction to final closure of the case or matter effectively through a dashboard that

cconsolidate all information into one master system, while positioning practitioner to

efficiently manage the lifecycle of client records and institute a workable retrieval, update

and retention policy on those records thereby eliminating delays and increase accountability

and productivity. To this end, we intend to use various workshops and major events

organized by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to showcase our solution, offering

subscribers three-months trial at no-cost while also advertising same on both social and

traditional media.
 Lean Canvas DigitLaw

Problem Solution Unique Value Unfair Advantage Customer

Top 3 features  Closely related to Law
Top 3 problems Proposition Segments
 Visualize and manage practitioners
 Difficulty in managing lawyers’ schedule with a  Expert in IT Product
 Taking Lawyers and Law management  Lawyers and Law firms in
and tracking lawyers’ click of button firms to the next level of Nigeria
schedule  Boost productivity and  Successfully deployed HR
digitize legal practice and solution for some law  Government department
 Problems with managing profitability through service delivery which in charge of law and
workflow and processes efficient workflow and firms
provides efficient  The quest for local justice
 Challenges in generating streamlining of process management at click of a  Legal department of
bills and reports in real- management solution among lawyers
button.  Choice between on- corporate companies
time  Track work done and
 Manual / Paper based generate bills on-the-go premise and cloud
work process / record  Customizable document deployment
keeping, record managements and  Low cost of adoption
referencing software.
Early Adaptors
processing & referencing Channels
man Metrics
Key  Attendance at NBA’s  Users of foreign software
 Number of Lawyers/ Law workshops and major  Firms that value
Existing Alternatives firm that subscribe events technology adoption
 Track cases attended to  Three months trial version  Subscribers to free trial
 Foreign software  Utilization & realization at no-cost  Selected lawyers and law
 Using MS-Excel to track rate  Advertisement on both firms in Lagos state (for
activities  Number of support ticket social and traditional pro bono deployment)
 Silo applications resolved media

Cost Structure Revenue Streams

 Staffing  Customization and Deployment cost
 One-time acquisition
 Trainings and Professional development  Yearly acquisition
 Marketing and Public relation cost  Annual support payment
 Attendance/Sponsorship of major Law events and workshop  Version Upgrade payment (as event unfold)
 IT infrastructure and tools  Retainership / Subscription based services.
 Research on legal trends and technology
PRODUCT MARKET
Research

This section doesn’t indicate the research that was carried out and also the research

methodology that was adapted.

Also the use of pronouns in the section is very pronounced.

This is an academic piece of work. You should avoid the use of personal pronouns (e.g. “this essay

critically reviews ...” is correct, “I review...” is incorrect).

In conducting the business research, the Mullins' Seven Domains Model is employed to

identify various impact of his seven key factors on the new Law solutions called DigitLaw.

Mullins (2017) opined that his seven domains model will help entrepreneur to do a feasibility

study to identify opportunities and envisage the success or failure of one’s idea. This model

helps us to break down our proposed solution into three elements comprises of markets,

industries and team. The Mullins seven domains has four parts focus on the micro and macro

aspects of the targeted market and industry, while the remaining three-part concentrate on the

team’s capability (Mullins, 2017; MindTools, 2018).

Mullins (2017) highlighted some reasons that may lead to failure or otherwise of a new

business, as given below:

 market reasons – the targeted market seems indifferent in the products/service being

offered

 industry reasons – competitors has already flooded the targeted market with similar

products/services

 entrepreneurial team reasons – the team could not match the what the competitors are

currently offering.
It therefore, becomes important to look inward and identify possible defect in one’s

innovative idea. Doing this helps to determine whether to proceed with the idea and adjust it

to compete favourably or jettison it at the early stage. While doing so, possible opportunities

could also be identified as this might further drives eventual launching of the business. The

outcome here provides us with an overview of whether our idea is likely to succeed or fail.

This is in addition to identifying unforeseen challenges that may render the solution

unachievable.

Source: Adapted from (Mullins, 2017)

Market Attractiveness

The DigitLaw solutions is intended for those in active Legal profession, either as a solo

practitioner, counsel in law firms or corporate and government establishment. With over

120,000 active practitioners spreading across the 36 states of the country and FCT (NBA,
2020). The Legal profession can be considered as a huge potential market for technology

driven solution aimed at taking the industry to be at par with their peers in the developed

nation. The market is ripe and their thirst for technological solutions that will help in

delivering excellent services while maintaining the integrity of client’s information in their

custody present us an opportunity to meet their demands.

Some of the targeted customers relied heavily on foreign software (because the local

providers could not meet demands), however, this has become unsustainable due to the

Nigeria economic situation, foreign exchange, inability to get support on time (due to

regional difference), localization to Nigeria practices code of ethics among others. While

there are few Nigerian providers coming up gradually, they are yet to meet the overall

demands hence create an opportunity for potential rival to venture into the industry. Our

solution brings forth a new approach that will help remodel the existing practices into a cost-

effective and localize alternative in the legal industry which have not being technological

driven before.

Sector Market Benefits and Attractiveness

Not all the practitioners are tech-savvy and currently using technology-driven

solutions, those that are tech-savvy are critical of deploying foreign software to

address Nigeria legal situation. With Lagos being the most populous state in Nigeria

and possibly with highest number of lawyers, we intend to start our penetration from

there and transit to Abuja (the capital city), Kano and Rivers states respectively. Most

practitioners in the states above have at least basic IT infrastructure and are gradually

moving away from over-reliance on paper for their service delivery. Our participation

during the last NBA’s conference held in Abuja in 2019 revealed that most
practitioners are ready to take their legal service delivery to technology driven, in

addition to the identified gaps that our solution could readily fill.

Competitive Environment (Industry Attractiveness)

(Lominé and Edmunds, 2007) defined competition as an act contending and offering

of a better services/product that surpass what others are currently doing and

eventually drives maximum revenue.

Our main competitors are the foreign providers and few local providers. The odds

favour us against the foreign competitors as we will be offering fully localize solution

backed by local support 24/7 and payable in local currency. As for the Local

contenders, we understand the terrain better, we understand their limitation and

continue from where the features stopped. we have co-opted expert practitioners in

our product design and trial with a view to understanding core-practice logics that

will aid us in product development that meet the industry requirement.

<30%

Case management, scheduler,

invoicing, reporting, expense,
Document management

Productivity, efficiency, secure

data, tech-enable service
delivery

None

NBA Code of ethics

Foreign and
local providers
Source: Self-illustration

Competitor classification

S/N Foreign Local

1 PracticePanther NextCounsel
2 Clio CaseFee
3 Filevine LawPavilion
4 Amicus Attorney
5 Time Matters
6 BQE Core Suite
7 Tabs3
8 MyCase
9 App4Legal
10 Rocket Matter

Sustainable advantage

Our unique value proposition is “Taking Lawyers and Law firms to the next level of

digitize legal practice and service delivery which provides efficient management at click of a

button” and our marketing tagline is “Committed to offering lawyers an advance solution at

local price”.

In our team are lawyers, experienced product managers, developers and project manager, we

hope to continue to maintained our value proposition and become market leader delivering

quality service to our legal professionals that surpass what the foreign competitors are

offering over a long period. We understand the terrain, have the insider’s knowledge and

have identified the limitation of both the foreign and local competitors and we are with them

at every of their major events and workshops. The current foreign exchange and the mantra

Nigerian government to “patronize locally to grow the economy” is at our advantage and we

will build forward on this.

The identified weakness of our approach is the targeted time to fully penetrate the market
especially for the client’s outside Lagos.

Mission, Aspirations, Propensity for Risk: Our mission is to be the leading provider of quality

software solutions within the legal industry, we aspire to maintain the lead by internally

building our team of professionals in knowledge development and keep them abreast of

happenings in the legal professional in and outside Nigeria and to identify how technology

could better be use to deliver quality service. We understand the risk that comes from the

regulators as according to NBA technology as not yet being fully embraced by Nigeria Legal

Council

Ability to Execute on Critical Success Factors: we will be strategic in our internal planning

and management, rewarding excellence performance as we meet client’s demand (service

offering) and ensure excellent client relations, aggressive marketing and harvesting of

testimonials from our clients to help push us forward.

Connectedness Up, Down, Across Value Chain: We understand the importance of

relationship management and in this regard, we seek to continue to maintained positive

relationship with the legal practitioner body – The Nigeria Bar Association. We shall sponsor

some of their event to propagate the acceptance of our solutions by inviting them to test run

the application for a trial period and give their feedback. We propose that prospective client

host the solution on-premise (if they have the required infrastructure) or in the cloud for more

robust availability (this will achieve by recommending tested and trusted platform cloud

service providers). In addition, quality internet service provider (in the region of operation)

will also be recommended to ensure effective functionality of the solution.

The Customers (segment)

Our targeted customers range from solo practitioners, law firms, corporate establishment to

government agencies. Legal practices has advanced from the usual practices where only those

in law firms are actively involved, nowadays, every legal department in a corporate

establishment and government agencies needs tools to help them deliver optimally especially

now that our courts are begin to accept digital evidence and preservation.

To achieve desire result, we are starting from Lagos (considering the market size) and three

law firms will be selected to run our solution for a period of 90 days free of charge. These

were selected based on their interest shown during the last NBA conference where we

showcase our future-proof DigitLaw Solutions exclusively for Nigerian law practitioners.

Questions were asked and answered then and we have since maintained communication with

them in the course of putting final touches to our solution. We shall build sustainable

customer acquisition into our service offerings and continue to use the client’s feedback to

perfect our solution in response to the market demand.

Cost & Revenue Structure

Our initial cost will include the following:

 Staffing

 Trainings and Professional development

 Marketing and Public relation cost

 Attendance/Sponsorship of major Law events and workshop

 IT infrastructure and tools

 Research on legal trends and technology

Our target revenue is expected to come from:

 Customization and Deployment cost

 One-time acquisition

 Yearly acquisition

 Annual support payment

 Version Upgrade payment (as event unfold)

Go/No Go Decision

Assessing Opportunities

Opportunities bar
Investment None High
Risk Low High
Return None Great
Change None Great
Time Now Future
Red: = Growth cover
Blue: = Available Growth
Critical Reflection on learning