ConfiAbogado, a Mexico City-based startup, raised $1.65 million in seed funding to provide better accessibility to legal services across Latin America.
Co-founder and CEO Emiliano Ruiz launched the company with his brother, Julián Ruiz, in 2020. Emiliano previously worked at a traditional law firm, while Julián’s background is as an analyst and processes coordinator.
It was while at the law firm that Emiliano Ruiz noticed that many of the firm’s clients were big corporations and high net worth individuals because of the cost involved, noting to TechCrunch via email that legal services being expensive is why only one in 11 individuals in Latin America seek legal council when they need it.
“I wanted to find a way to make legal help more efficient and accessible to reach more clients,” Ruiz said. “We started to reach out to law offices about acquiring our technology, but they were reluctant to change their old ways, so we focus on providing value, not to the lawyers, but to the people with legal needs in a novel manner combining our background of law and automation.”
ConfiAbogado focuses on providing legal solutions on volume rather than high costs. Here’s how it works: Clients enter information about their case into the ConfiAbogado system, and the company’s proprietary technology taps into a network of validated lawyers, and over 100,000 legal possibilities, to produce the best strategy and automatically creates the necessary legal documents. All in about 20 minutes. Clients are then kept informed on the status of their cases.
The company provides legal services in the areas of civil, commercial, labor and family litigation. Since its launch two years ago, it has grown its client base to more than 250 new clients each month. In the past year, revenue grew over 10x.
“ConfiAbogado offers to finance the litigation cost to its customers until the case is won and then split the wins to make legal aid accessible to everyone,” Ruiz said. “This solves the problem for regular people of not having enough money to hire lawyers as well as forces us to be more efficient and look for the best way to get a good result for a client since both interests are aiming to the same place.”
Meanwhile, Tuesday Capital led ConfiAbogado’s seed round and was joined by a group of investors that includes DTB Capital, Seedstars International Ventures, 500 Global, Invariantes, Goodwater, GAIN Capital and Side Door Ventures.
The new funding will support ConfiAbogado’s expansion to new verticals and cities, with a plan to more than triple its current geographic footprint, and to develop new AI tools. In addition, just 8% of people with a legal problem in Latin America hire an attorney, and one of Ruiz’s goals is to double that in the next seven years.
“We are focused on creating the best option for our customers when it comes to solving a legal problem,” Ruiz said. “ConfiAbogado will not only give legal solutions but allow persons to lay back and relax while the whole process happens, we call this extraordinary legal care for ordinary people.”
Originally published at techcrunch.com