9. LegalVision

Revenue: $7.8 million
Growth: 341%
Founders: Lachlan McKnight, 35, Evan Tait-Styles, 37, Ursula Hogben, 43
Head office: Sydney, NSW
year founded: 2012
Employees: 65
Industry: Legal
Website: legalvision.com.au

The legal sector is far from immune to the forces of disruption, and the founders of $7.8 million business LegalVision are aiming to ride the waves of these changes by offering new legal services to SMEs.

Co-founders Lachlan McKnight, Evan Tait-Styles and Ursula Hogben launched their primarily online firm five years ago, armed with the knowledge that small and medium businesses are increasingly looking for fixed rates, flat fees and fast service instead of the bill-by-the-minute law firms of old.

“Our team use technology to complete legal work faster, sharing the benefit of increased efficiencies — including competitive fees and responsive delivery — with our clients,” the co-founders explain.

The company’s 60-strong team have carved a niche in providing legal education and information to early stage businesses and startups, growing their client base by creating informative content for individuals in those businesses.

“Over the last year we’ve had each lawyer spend 1/20th of their working month creating content. We’ve hired a full-time head of legal content, and built an inbound client care team to deal with the huge number of queries coming through,” the founders say.

Business owners can access thousands of articles and Q&As around legal issues, with the LegalVision team able to provide initial free consultations within two hours of a potential client requesting one.

While there was no guarantee the company’s content strategy would pay off, the team says it has benefitted from taking that “leap of faith”.

Over the next year, the plan is to focus on broader investment in trends that will shape the legal industry as well as day-to-day client work.

“In the past year, LegalVision has seen phenomenal growth across not only its legal practice, but also in its innovation and legaltech development spearheaded by our newly formed growth and innovation team,” the founders say.

“Over the next 12 months, we plan to invest more in our growth and innovation to improve access to affordable, high-quality legal services in Australia.”