Ep 020 Interview with Stephen Lai, Founder & Managing & Director at Conventus Law and VP - Legal Sector Solutions at Zegal

In episode 20 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast (www.legaltechstartupfocus.com/podcast), your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, interviews Stephen Lai, Founder and Managing Director of Conventus Law and VP - Legal Sector Solutions at Zegal. Stephen, based in Hong Kong, is a keen observer of the market for legal tech solutions throughout Asia.

As Stephen explains, Conventus Law provides a digital media platform that focuses on the purchasers and vendors of legal tech in Asia. Conventus Law also encourages a conversation that speaks to expanding the set of skills that lawyers bring to their clients to include a deeper appreciation of the business issues those clients face, many of which can be better addressed with the use of legal tech. Stephen elaborates on his view that legal tech vendors would do well to emphasize that their law firm customers needn't "fear" legal tech as a massive disruptor of their business, but instead should understand adoption of legal tech as a necessary incremental change in how law firms approach serving their clients' needs.

Charlie and Stephen turn to how Conventus Law is partnering with Zegal, a contract management company operating chiefly in Asia. In its partnership with Zegal, Conventus Law will be rolling out Conventus Docs, which will provide private law firms with the tools to offer in-house lawyers with access to digitized standard documentation. As Stephen sees it, Conventus Docs will do the "heavy lifting" in enabling law firms to digitize documents and make them available those firms' enterprise clients on the Conventus Docs platform. And once made available on that platform, these documents can be expected not only to generate revenue for law firms, but also to provide firms with a new way to market their expertise and, thereby, win the opportunity to do more high-value work for new and existing clients.

Charlie asks Stephen to offer a birds'-eye view of the Asian legal tech market, including in his description of that view just how legal tech vendors can best promote actual use of their software by their customers. Stephen notes that avoiding the dreaded "shelf-ware" fate of underused software is best achieved by insuring ease of use, by offering timely and well-designed training (that, in addition to instruction, demonstrates how the software offers "critical services and information" at "critical times") and by leaving users with a "WOW" experience that can rival the experience those users have when using the best designed "consumer" apps on their mobile phones and home desktop computers.