The Lawntrepreneurs is a series where we chronicle the journeys of lawyers who have left the profession to start their own business ventures..On graduating from National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Bangalore in 2016, Sapan Parekh worked with Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas for two years, after which he joined forces with his batchmate Shivam Singla and Prakhar Agrawal to build and scale a document infrastructure platform..In this interview, he shares the challenges he faced while building a startup and raising funds, the unique selling point of Leegality, and much more..Edited excerpts follow..When did you first flirt with the idea of becoming an entrepreneur?.The thought of becoming an entrepreneur started during law school, maybe third or fourth year...This is the time when Swiggy and OLA were really coming on stage…We were in Bangalore then and surrounded by like-minded people in the startup capital of India. So, a bunch of us got together at the end of every day after classes, sat down and brainstormed a few ideas…Some of the discussions we had later on came to fruition..Did your experience as a lawyer help when helping build Leegality?.I joined Leegality as the third employee of the company and the co-founder and head-of-business. Leegality existed before me.Coming to the specific challenges we faced at that stage as lawyers - when pitching to non-lawyers, the challenge is mostly the lack of network… We had our network of our alumni and other lawyers, but we were primarily not pitching to them because this solution is used by the business and operations teams…The challenge was we didn’t have that network going for us at that stage where people would already trust us to start with. We had to build that trust from day one..What were the initial challenges you faced after leaving a tier 1 law firm job to build a start up?.In a law firm, the process is sort-of set. The complete structure of the law firm exists to help you excel at your work. In a start-up, especially in a very early-stage start-up, you generally have no one to rely on but yourself. You have to use all the tools that are freely available to you, you have to look up things, learn new things on the fly and compress what would’ve taken five years to learn, into six months. If you don’t do it, you’d die an early death in terms of your business. Definitely, the existence of a law firm’s structure helps people excel at their work, but when you’re starting a business, you work to sort-of build the backbone of the company. That is of course something you really don’t get too much help on..What was the thought process behind creating an organization that helps with document infrastructure?.During our internship days, in our interaction with our peers and fellow lawyers, we realized the amount of paperwork that is created, processed, and managed by lawyers. The idea was - if creation of paperwork is a problem, is there anything that we can do to help reduce the paperwork that exists in the legal context? When we started looking into it, we realized there is a lot of paperwork created even in the non-legal context. While these are not documents you engage lawyers for, these definitely are legal contracts...There was so much to solve, given the variety of context, sectors, use cases and people that interact with paper on a day-to-day basis..How did the three of you come together as co-founders?.One thing which is always said when you’re looking for co-founders is that you should first see whether you can gel well together. A lot of startups fail just because the co-founders or management can’t work together. Getting the right set of people who have the same level of trust, comfort and commitment is key to starting your journey as an entrepreneur.Prakhar was known to Shivam through a family friend. They were at the same level in terms of commitment and trust. That’s where we picked up. Shivam and I, of course, knew each other back from college days...When the time came for me to move on from the law firm, my first thought was, 'Let me just see what Shivam is up to.'This sort of market was picking up in India because of digitization. That became my default and first choice. .What are the challenges that come before and after a round of funding?.If I contextualize it in Leegality’s sense, we faced some issues because whenever you go for a round of funding, the first thing they see is how much ‘grey hair’ you have, because that’s suddenly a metric for wisdom. We didn’t check that box. Of course, we brought passion, context and commitment to the table, but a lot of people would not take young founders seriously. That’s the unfortunate truth.The second challenge is that young founders don’t have the benefit of the network, specifically if they are from the legal domain, because most of the funding comes from people who are not from the legal domain. Finding them is hard enough, but once you find them, relating them to the problem you’re trying to solve is also equally challenging. Pre-funding, the challenge was that you have to show some kind of revenue before it’s validated so that angel investors find it trustworthy, repeatable and scalable. They will not fund you just because they know you from before, which is what happens in a lot of other alumni networks. That wouldn’t happen for lawyers unfortunately. Post-funding comes a new set of challenges like how do you optimize the money that you’ve been trusted with, how to hire, how to fire, how to retain, how to manage while at the same time keeping the lights on, planning for future growth..How does streamlining document work help businesses scale and leverage their growth?.When you move from physical paperwork to digital paperwork, the changes are stark. There is no cost of printing, there is no cost of storage, there is no indirect cost of maintaining your operations, be it for printers, scanners, storehouses and so on. One of our clients has massive lending operations in the country, which means they have 10,000 employees. A large chunk of them are just managing paper or moving paper from one place to another. Because it’s on paper, they also have to ensure that things they are filling manually are done correctly, which means mistakes happen, which means they have to correct those mistakes, which means some mistakes will not even be corrected, which means it will come up for audit later. The most important benefit once you digitize with Leegality is that the turnaround time for any document becomes close to 2-3 minutes, compared to the week you have to wait for, when it comes to physical documents. That’s key because it helps you remove bottlenecks for your business growth. If you want to hire an employee, it could happen within minutes instead of waiting for days.The percentage of return on investment on our solutions is in the thousands. If you invest ₹1 in Leegality, you’re making ₹100 in savings at the very least. .What is Leegality’s USP? How does it stand out from its well-known competitors like DocuSign?.Given how large and complicated the Indian market is, Indian regulators are super active. That may not be the case across the globe which is where a lot of these global solutions are focused on. Indian regulators, be it the RBI, the CCA, the Ministry of IT, the IRDAI are very active regulators. So frameworks have been created specifically in the Indian context. When you adopt a solution like Leegality, you ensure that you are within the regulatory framework in India. You’re complying with all the regulatory requirements in India.Second, as lawyers, we understand that there are some things which are not written in law, but are followed as a matter of legal practice. Signing every page on the document, ensuring there’s a rubber stamp on the document, those are very small things that Indian practice. We’re super mindful about Indian practice where lawyers, in-house or external, would really value a solution like this. Third, the Indian context also requires mandatory payment of stamp duty. We’ve also digitized the payment of stamp duty, which really helps businesses, because otherwise, managing stamp inventory itself was a massive cost, both on the regulatory side and on the operational side. Building custom solutions for India is the way we differentiate (from the competitors) and being based here, we’re just more available to our customers..Any advice you’d like to give law students and graduates who want to enter the world of entrepreneurship?.It is definitely a very personal choice that people have and there may not be a perfect time to do it. What I’ve seen and what has worked well is first, you should practice law for a few years, not only because you’ve trained as a lawyer, but because the skills practicing law can teach you - the rigor, the discipline that it can teach you, will really help you later. It will help you come up with solutions, it will help you understand the legal nuances which will help you build businesses later. If you see Aditya Ghosh’s example, he was earlier at JSA, then moved to IndiGo, then OYO, and now is the Founder-CEO of Akasa. His journey is similar and he was a very big inspiration for all of us who were shifting from law at that stage. So, I would suggest people should spend a few years honing their skills as lawyers, gain that context, gain a bit of network in the industry and then think about how they can solve a different challenge. Even when you’re switching, you should think about what problem you’re trying to solve. You should not try solving a problem which does not exist. Definitely get your ‘problem statement’ validated by talking to more and more people. Try solving a big problem which people would be willing to pay for.Something which probably does not get said enough is that one should also see if they are financially and emotionally ready for a journey as an entrepreneur, because it comes with a lot of financial and emotional stress. You need to ensure you have a family backing you up or a partner backing you up. Give yourself at least two years to give that a bet, because within six months, nothing will happen..What are some of the transferable skills as a lawyer that have helped you as an entrepreneur?.One thing is communication. Not to say that people outside the legal domain don’t have communication skills. For lawyers, it is their bread and butter, whether written or oral. You should definitely hone that skill and use that to your advantage when you move forward.Second, as lawyers, you’re also supposed to be very good at research, you’re supposed to be able to get into details without getting lost. The third skill would be that lawyers never shy from hard work. They have done a lot of hard work at university, post-university. So, nothing looks too challenging to them when they move into entrepreneurship, and they have to put in those hours or they have to spend their weekends building the core of their business in the beginning.
The Lawntrepreneurs is a series where we chronicle the journeys of lawyers who have left the profession to start their own business ventures..On graduating from National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Bangalore in 2016, Sapan Parekh worked with Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas for two years, after which he joined forces with his batchmate Shivam Singla and Prakhar Agrawal to build and scale a document infrastructure platform..In this interview, he shares the challenges he faced while building a startup and raising funds, the unique selling point of Leegality, and much more..Edited excerpts follow..When did you first flirt with the idea of becoming an entrepreneur?.The thought of becoming an entrepreneur started during law school, maybe third or fourth year...This is the time when Swiggy and OLA were really coming on stage…We were in Bangalore then and surrounded by like-minded people in the startup capital of India. So, a bunch of us got together at the end of every day after classes, sat down and brainstormed a few ideas…Some of the discussions we had later on came to fruition..Did your experience as a lawyer help when helping build Leegality?.I joined Leegality as the third employee of the company and the co-founder and head-of-business. Leegality existed before me.Coming to the specific challenges we faced at that stage as lawyers - when pitching to non-lawyers, the challenge is mostly the lack of network… We had our network of our alumni and other lawyers, but we were primarily not pitching to them because this solution is used by the business and operations teams…The challenge was we didn’t have that network going for us at that stage where people would already trust us to start with. We had to build that trust from day one..What were the initial challenges you faced after leaving a tier 1 law firm job to build a start up?.In a law firm, the process is sort-of set. The complete structure of the law firm exists to help you excel at your work. In a start-up, especially in a very early-stage start-up, you generally have no one to rely on but yourself. You have to use all the tools that are freely available to you, you have to look up things, learn new things on the fly and compress what would’ve taken five years to learn, into six months. If you don’t do it, you’d die an early death in terms of your business. Definitely, the existence of a law firm’s structure helps people excel at their work, but when you’re starting a business, you work to sort-of build the backbone of the company. That is of course something you really don’t get too much help on..What was the thought process behind creating an organization that helps with document infrastructure?.During our internship days, in our interaction with our peers and fellow lawyers, we realized the amount of paperwork that is created, processed, and managed by lawyers. The idea was - if creation of paperwork is a problem, is there anything that we can do to help reduce the paperwork that exists in the legal context? When we started looking into it, we realized there is a lot of paperwork created even in the non-legal context. While these are not documents you engage lawyers for, these definitely are legal contracts...There was so much to solve, given the variety of context, sectors, use cases and people that interact with paper on a day-to-day basis..How did the three of you come together as co-founders?.One thing which is always said when you’re looking for co-founders is that you should first see whether you can gel well together. A lot of startups fail just because the co-founders or management can’t work together. Getting the right set of people who have the same level of trust, comfort and commitment is key to starting your journey as an entrepreneur.Prakhar was known to Shivam through a family friend. They were at the same level in terms of commitment and trust. That’s where we picked up. Shivam and I, of course, knew each other back from college days...When the time came for me to move on from the law firm, my first thought was, 'Let me just see what Shivam is up to.'This sort of market was picking up in India because of digitization. That became my default and first choice. .What are the challenges that come before and after a round of funding?.If I contextualize it in Leegality’s sense, we faced some issues because whenever you go for a round of funding, the first thing they see is how much ‘grey hair’ you have, because that’s suddenly a metric for wisdom. We didn’t check that box. Of course, we brought passion, context and commitment to the table, but a lot of people would not take young founders seriously. That’s the unfortunate truth.The second challenge is that young founders don’t have the benefit of the network, specifically if they are from the legal domain, because most of the funding comes from people who are not from the legal domain. Finding them is hard enough, but once you find them, relating them to the problem you’re trying to solve is also equally challenging. Pre-funding, the challenge was that you have to show some kind of revenue before it’s validated so that angel investors find it trustworthy, repeatable and scalable. They will not fund you just because they know you from before, which is what happens in a lot of other alumni networks. That wouldn’t happen for lawyers unfortunately. Post-funding comes a new set of challenges like how do you optimize the money that you’ve been trusted with, how to hire, how to fire, how to retain, how to manage while at the same time keeping the lights on, planning for future growth..How does streamlining document work help businesses scale and leverage their growth?.When you move from physical paperwork to digital paperwork, the changes are stark. There is no cost of printing, there is no cost of storage, there is no indirect cost of maintaining your operations, be it for printers, scanners, storehouses and so on. One of our clients has massive lending operations in the country, which means they have 10,000 employees. A large chunk of them are just managing paper or moving paper from one place to another. Because it’s on paper, they also have to ensure that things they are filling manually are done correctly, which means mistakes happen, which means they have to correct those mistakes, which means some mistakes will not even be corrected, which means it will come up for audit later. The most important benefit once you digitize with Leegality is that the turnaround time for any document becomes close to 2-3 minutes, compared to the week you have to wait for, when it comes to physical documents. That’s key because it helps you remove bottlenecks for your business growth. If you want to hire an employee, it could happen within minutes instead of waiting for days.The percentage of return on investment on our solutions is in the thousands. If you invest ₹1 in Leegality, you’re making ₹100 in savings at the very least. .What is Leegality’s USP? How does it stand out from its well-known competitors like DocuSign?.Given how large and complicated the Indian market is, Indian regulators are super active. That may not be the case across the globe which is where a lot of these global solutions are focused on. Indian regulators, be it the RBI, the CCA, the Ministry of IT, the IRDAI are very active regulators. So frameworks have been created specifically in the Indian context. When you adopt a solution like Leegality, you ensure that you are within the regulatory framework in India. You’re complying with all the regulatory requirements in India.Second, as lawyers, we understand that there are some things which are not written in law, but are followed as a matter of legal practice. Signing every page on the document, ensuring there’s a rubber stamp on the document, those are very small things that Indian practice. We’re super mindful about Indian practice where lawyers, in-house or external, would really value a solution like this. Third, the Indian context also requires mandatory payment of stamp duty. We’ve also digitized the payment of stamp duty, which really helps businesses, because otherwise, managing stamp inventory itself was a massive cost, both on the regulatory side and on the operational side. Building custom solutions for India is the way we differentiate (from the competitors) and being based here, we’re just more available to our customers..Any advice you’d like to give law students and graduates who want to enter the world of entrepreneurship?.It is definitely a very personal choice that people have and there may not be a perfect time to do it. What I’ve seen and what has worked well is first, you should practice law for a few years, not only because you’ve trained as a lawyer, but because the skills practicing law can teach you - the rigor, the discipline that it can teach you, will really help you later. It will help you come up with solutions, it will help you understand the legal nuances which will help you build businesses later. If you see Aditya Ghosh’s example, he was earlier at JSA, then moved to IndiGo, then OYO, and now is the Founder-CEO of Akasa. His journey is similar and he was a very big inspiration for all of us who were shifting from law at that stage. So, I would suggest people should spend a few years honing their skills as lawyers, gain that context, gain a bit of network in the industry and then think about how they can solve a different challenge. Even when you’re switching, you should think about what problem you’re trying to solve. You should not try solving a problem which does not exist. Definitely get your ‘problem statement’ validated by talking to more and more people. Try solving a big problem which people would be willing to pay for.Something which probably does not get said enough is that one should also see if they are financially and emotionally ready for a journey as an entrepreneur, because it comes with a lot of financial and emotional stress. You need to ensure you have a family backing you up or a partner backing you up. Give yourself at least two years to give that a bet, because within six months, nothing will happen..What are some of the transferable skills as a lawyer that have helped you as an entrepreneur?.One thing is communication. Not to say that people outside the legal domain don’t have communication skills. For lawyers, it is their bread and butter, whether written or oral. You should definitely hone that skill and use that to your advantage when you move forward.Second, as lawyers, you’re also supposed to be very good at research, you’re supposed to be able to get into details without getting lost. The third skill would be that lawyers never shy from hard work. They have done a lot of hard work at university, post-university. So, nothing looks too challenging to them when they move into entrepreneurship, and they have to put in those hours or they have to spend their weekends building the core of their business in the beginning.
