Lawrify

In 2022 we were hired to find out whether the market existed, in three months.

Not every engagement is a growth programme. Some are a question, and this one was asked properly: does the UAE have enough in-house legal teams reviewing enough contracts to justify a country strategy.

We took the question at face value and built a target list of the organisations that generate contracts by the hundred: developers, banks, holding groups and the law firms who serve them.

What we did

Three months in the UAE. 49 meetings booked with 47 organisations.

Developers and property: Emaar, Damac Properties, Sobha Realty, Eagle Hills, Ellington, Omniyat, RAK Properties, Diamond Developers, Harbor. Banking and finance: ADCB, Ajman Bank, Bank of Sharjah, National Bank of Fujairah, Abu Dhabi Finance, Salama. Law firms including Al Tamimi & Company and Bird & Bird. Groups and industrials: Al Ghurair, Landmark, GMG, Ducab, Redington Gulf, Al Khaleej Sugar, Masafi.

The question that told us where we actually were

In the middle of that quarter one of our reps came back to the client with a question from a prospect. Can the tool proofread handwritten amendments made in the documents.

It is a wonderful question. In a market where a negotiated contract still comes back from the other side with pen marks in the margin, the boundary of what legal software can do is not the model. It is the document. Every serious conversation we had that quarter eventually arrived at some version of it: what happens to the paper, the scan, the annexe somebody signed in a meeting room.

A short engagement with a clear brief has one advantage over a long one. Nobody has to pretend. We reported what the market told us, on the schedule we had agreed, and the client made a decision with evidence instead of a hunch.

The postscript is the part we are proudest of. The people behind this engagement went on to recommend us to other founders, unprompted, as the agency to talk to about the region. Word of mouth from a client whose answer was "not yet" is worth more than a testimonial from one whose answer was easy.

What it shows

A market test is a legitimate product, and it should be sold and run as one. Agree the question, agree the window, report the answer including the inconvenient half. The client who gets an honest no in three months tells other people about you; the one who gets an encouraging maybe for a year does not.