Leading the way in legal tech
Despite beginning his legal career in a very traditional way, Dominic Woolrych is a firm advocate of the alternative path.
Securing a coveted clerkship and then graduate role while completing his Juris Doctor, the young UTS Law alumnus was well on his way to realising his dream of becoming a top-tier lawyer. “It was something I was initially very focused on – this idea of working at a traditional top-tier firm,” he says.
But several years into the graduate program; and with some prestigious experiences under his belt – including an internship at the International Court of Justice in The Hague – Woolrych was itching to shake things up.
Namely, he was finding it hard to ignore the industry’s resistance: to change, to innovation and to technology.
“I became interested [in legal tech] when I was working at the Court of Justice. I saw they weren’t using much technology… and the processes were just incredibly slow,” he explains. “Then when I was working at the firm, I started to loosely monitor legal tech developments in Australia. There wasn’t much happening, but legal technology was really successful in America so I knew it was just a matter of time before it came here.”
He was right. Just a few years after his initial observations at the Court of Justice, legal tech companies started popping up in Sydney. Woolrych didn’t waste any time. “I sent an email to two companies that basically just said, ‘look, I’m really interested in what you’re doing – lets chat’.”
That was two years ago. Today, he is Head of Legal at LawPath; an online legal service that connects lawyers with clients. According to their ‘About Us’ section, the company provides “technology powered legal services at a fraction of the time, cost and complexity of the traditional system”.
With a role that straddles tech and sales – “I kind of sit between those two departments and create the products we’re going to sell” – and requires an in-depth knowledge of the law, Woolrych admits he was incredibly well-positioned for the job.
A graduate of the UTS Bachelor of Business (BBus) and Juris Doctor (JD) programs, he says having a dual skillset has been crucial to his success at LawPath.
“Having those two degrees, especially the prior experience in marketing, set me up really well. A lot of skills I learnt really early on [in the BBus] and now I find they are constantly coming into play.”
And as the legal industry continues to undergo a period of major transition, Woolrych is adamant that the most successful law graduates will be those that are multi-skilled.
“I don’t think you can expect to be a commercial lawyer with just legal skills anymore. I would say it’s necessary to have those commercial skills; they’re vital.”
An innovator at heart, Woolrych was named an Individual Winner in the 2015 Australian Legal Innovation Index for his commitment to “thinking more deeply about how clients can get the best value out of legal document automation”.
It was a big win for his younger self.
“When I was first working as a graduate at the firm, I noticed they did have some good technology – though [the technology] was always directed at making lawyers more money, rather than saving the clients value,” he says. “So I kept an eye on this idea of providing tools to consumers so they could do some of their own legal work… or at least enable them to find a lawyer online.”
Woolrych’s most recent brainchild at LawPath includes a quoting system that generates three fixed price legal quotes within four hours. “The demand from the client’s side was that they needed quick, transparent pricing. The lawyers also wanted to provide quick, accurate quotes to their online clients.”
He said the company had developed “five or six” similar products; all with the intention of bridging the gap between lawyer and client.
Though he may be paving the way for an ever-expanding pack of Australian legal tech disrupters, he doesn’t think robots will rob lawyers of their jobs. Nor does he want them to.
Appearing as part of a panel of Sydney based ‘thought leaders’ in legal tech disruption for the UTSpeaks Future of the Legal Profession event earlier this year, Woolrych said the advent of technology-based legal services was, at its core, all about creating efficiency.
“When we started out, our whole goal at LawPath was to replace lawyers,” he laughed on the night. “But we’ve definitely learnt over the last three years – and it’s definitely our opinion now – that you’re never going to be able to replace a lawyer!”
“In the next five to ten years, however, the role of the lawyer will change. Technology will allow lawyers to more efficiently do their work – and this efficiency will benefit the client.”
But does Woolrych worry for the next generation of law graduates; many who, like his younger self, will be working hard to secure themselves a competitive clerkship?
No he doesn’t – not at all. Rather, he advises, they’ve just got to “think outside the box a little”.
“It’s a very exciting time to be a law student. There are many different paths to take. There’s still obviously that narrow, traditional path that only 300-400 law students will get to take; and that is the path of leaving and going and doing a clerkship.”
“But if they don’t get that, they absolutely haven’t missed out. There are so, so many alternative things for law graduates to do out there. It’s all changing.”
Story by: Tess Gibney
Image by: Dom Woolrych
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