Lawpath CEO Dominic Woolrych.

Dominic Woolrych, the CEO of Lawpath, is hoping to make the Australian legal platform the ubiquitous destination for small businesses seeking legal help as legaltech moves into what he sees as its second phase.

Just as small businesses are used to doing their accounting online, Woolrych expects they will also grow more comfortable with seeking legal services via the internet.

"Where we want to be in five years' time is just like what Xero or Intuit has done to accounting, where if you're a small business they've become synonymous with doing your accounting," Woolrych said. "We want to be that for law."

The Sydney-based startup generates legal documents for small businesses and connects them with lawyers, and Woolrych said there is huge potential to expand the business beyond its current 1% Australian market share.

The business will use some of the proceeds from its recent capital raising to market the site beyond its online business customers base to "mum and dad" and bricks-and-mortar-type businesses, with the aim of hitting a 10% market share by 2022.

"People are now used to doing their accounting and banking and their insurance online. There are platforms for all of those things. Lawpath will be the platform for your legals," he said.

The platform has been built so it can be internationalised and Lawpath is planning to expand in the next couple of years into Asia, where Woolrych said there is currently no significant platform offering the service.

There are two distinct types of legal technology, Woolrych said. The first creates efficiencies for lawyers, with document researching, document drafting and discovery. This is mostly where the legaltech boom has been concentrated as firms and lawyers have adopted the technology.

The second phase of legaltech growth creates efficiencies directly for clients, and this is only just beginning. "I think it's an extremely exciting time for legal," Woolrych said. "Whereas fintech went through its boom two or three years ago, I really think legaltech is now at the beginning of its boom."

Woolrych has witnessed the legaltech boom in Australia first-hand. He is a director of the Australian Legal Tech Association, which he and others founded two years ago with just 10 members. Now it has more than 160.

Earlier this month, Lawpath closed an A$4.4 million ($3 million) funding round from investors that included U.S. legaltech company LegalZoom, which was making its second investment.

In fact, the rise of LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer in the United States provided the inspiration for the founding of Lawpath in 2014. One of Lawpath's four founders is Nick Abrahams, global head of technology and innovation at Norton Rose Fulbright.

Having seen the rise of LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyers in the U.S., the founders decided to start a similar service in Australia, where none existed. Lawpath initially started as a connection service between lawyers and clients but the founders quickly realised that many small businesses couldn't afford lawyers and needed a way of completing legal tasks themselves, then finding a lawyer if they couldn't solve the problem.

The company helps businesses with the legal basics they need to get started, such as creating and registering a company and producing share certificates and constitutions. It is linked with regulators via APIs, enabling users to register a company and register with the Australian Tax Office in a few seconds.

From there, it helps with such tasks as the creation of employment agreements, generating them automatically from details entered by the client, who can customise it with confidentiality agreements or non-compete clauses. Users can also use the company to create website terms and conditions, trademarks and commercial leases.

If clients want a more specialised agreement, they can use the Lawpath marketplace, where they can post the job requirements, receive bids from lawyers and review ratings before picking a lawyer to carry out the work. Many of the platform's lawyers are stay-at-home mothers or retired practitioners seeking more flexibility, said Woolrych, formerly a lawyer with Australian firm MinterEllison.

Lawpath takes a 20% commission.

"What we're trying to do is bridge this gap between when you first start a business or when you are a small business and you can't afford to go to a lawyer every time you need a new contract," he said.

Earlier this month, Lawpath launched its Legal Advice Plan, where users pay a subscription of A$49.00 ($33.50) per month for access to all the online legal documents and unlimited calls with a lawyer who can provide advice, but won't do document review or drafting.

Woolrych conceded it might sound too good to be true, but Lawpath, he said, is "a volume play", which helps keep the costs down.

As for concerns that customers would take advantage of unlimited calls with a lawyer, he drew an analogy: "If the dentist said to you, 'I'm going to give you free unlimited visits', you're not going to go every day. You're going to go when you need a check-up and when there's a problem."

The business, which is yet to make a profit, is targeting companies with up to 25 employees but eventually plans more sophisticated offerings for larger companies.

Ultimately, it wants to make the platform more efficient for clients and less reactive.

"Legal services have always been really reactive, as in when there's a problem, you go and talk to a lawyer," Woolrych said. "But what if we could kind of flip that around and make legal proactive so that it catches problems before they even occur? And the reason that legal is not proactive at the moment is just because it's so expensive."

Woolrych believes software can be used to help anticipate legal issues. One useful feature can be rolled out to hundreds of thousands of clients, he said.

Lawpath is already offering what it calls a legal health check for clients – a programme that checks to ensure that companies have shareholder agreements in place and have protected their brands with trademarks.