Anthony Rhodes, a legal start-up is one of the several new “disrupters” changing the face of legal service for businesses. The online start-up is looking into the future of the industry and the opportunities entrepreneurs should be exploring, writes DANIEL ESSIET.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are bracing for a better year with a fledging legal sector.
Anthony Oisaghie, co-founder, Anthony Rhodes, and Co, a firm of legal practitioners, said the SMEs and middle class Nigerians are sure to accelerate technology in that sector.
Working with an organised community of forward-thinking lawyers and technologists, the online legal tech start up matches SMEs and entrepreneurs with lawyers.
After posting a job, businesses receive quotes from screened lawyers with expertise in the relevant legal area. The co-founders, Oisaghie has engineering and IT background, while Rhoda Obi has a background in law and trust and a brief history with IT as well.
Oisaghie said the country’s legal services market is feeling the the disruptive impact of the digital revolution, creating the demand for online services.
According to him, the company supplies lawyers with relevant expertise online for Nigerians.
He explained that SMEs’ legal needs remain unmet by legal services providers.
For him, the significance and growing importance of small firms to the economy in terms of employment, output and innovation is widely acknowledged.
According to him, this continues to be a huge section of the business community whose legal needs are not being catered for. This, he noted, is an opening which the legal sector should be addressing.
Anthony Rhodes last year, won the “Hill Innovating Justice Award” from The Hague, Netherlands. They were the only Nigerian co-founders to win this award.
How it all started: Oisamoje said the co-founders were colleagues at a multinational company and worked together for years. In the course of their work, they realised they both shared a vision to help families and individuals plan for their estate so their loved ones could have easy access to them in the future. They both decided to use technology as the tool to simplify the process of estate planning by creating an online and offline platform where people could go to, to prepare their wills, trust, power of attorney, name change among other services. This service is the first of its kind in Nigeria.
They formed the company after the demise of a close colleague, whose wife and children had difficulty in identifying and claiming his assets. This triggered to implement their plan.
“ Our colleague did not have any legacy instrument to protect his loved ones, a trust, will, power of attorney if these tools were available at the comfort of his space he would have done what was necessary for them to have access to his assets at his demise,” he said.
Anthony Rhodes has six major services in its grasp, online legal platform, data management, knowledge sharing, asset management, elderly care and real estate.
For him, the battle ground for clients has never been so competitive and complicated with the rapid adoption of technology.
Consequently, businesses and their customers are adopting technology at a rapid pace. Taken together, he believes these trends are creating business opportunities.
The firm is hosting a one-day forum to assist Nigerians to take a deliberate and broad approach to financial planning, including personal wealth and various business success and succession scenarios. Discussions will cover a wide variety of investment topics including direct investing, assets, and family’s wealth among others.
With its unique combination of legal experience and IT skills, the firm prides itself on being a forward-thinking group of consultant professionals who help with everything from strategic planning to project management.
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