Recent months have seen a flurry of activity among legal startups in the Asia-Pacific region. In late 2015, Hong Kong-based legal startup Dragon Law expanded into Singapore, while Australian Cloud-based legal services start-up LawPath closed a $1.3m bridge funding round. Anna Zhang, writing in The Asian Lawyer, chronicled the rise of no fewer than 6 legal startups in mainland China. And this month, the rise of Locum Legalis, Malaysia’s “Uber for lawyers”, was detailed in The Star Online.
Also this month, Singapore-based Law Canvas, a contract management startup based in Singapore, announced it will expand into three more countries – Australia, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
The basis for expansion
In an announcement about its planned expansion, Law Canvas detailed that it has worked with three thousand local Singaporean businesses to generate legal documents, shorten processing time, and save legal costs. Hastened by a tripling of the number of documents in their template library, the company decided to expand regionally, offering contracts and agreements that are relevant to local businesses.
LawCanvas Founder & CEO Daniel Leong, in explaining the decision to expand, said “it feels like a natural progression given that there are a higher number of businesses with an online presence in these countries.”