Member Article

Legal research website scoops £60,000 investment

Manchester legal research website My Learned Friend has secured £60k funding from a ‘Business Angel’, thanks to the Business Growth Hub’s Access to Finance service.

The web-based service is aiming to dominate the online legal research market, saving legal professionals valuable time and money by enabling them to do their legal research quickly; something that they say currently takes on average 30 minutes to two hours per client enquiry.

The website and free app do this by providing lawyers with an enquiry specific starting point for their research so they can go directly to the case law and legislation they need, instead of trawling though hundreds of search results.

Subscribers to the service, which starts at £9.99 per month, also become part of the Learned Friend community, allowing them to create a personal profile, offer their own starting point contributions, build a professional contact network and contribute to a live and relevant database for the industry.

‘My Learned Friend’ Directors Rick Yates and Chelsea Bond had already built the initial website when they were introduced to the North West Business Angels network by the Hub’s Access to Finance Specialist Graham Niven.

After pitching their idea to the Angels in December, they immediately attracted £60k investment from Manchester entrepreneur Divyesh Lakhani, whose illustrious career includes the sale of his advanced computer technology company Codework Limited to Altimate Group in 2010. Divyesh has now gone on to become a Director in My Learned Friend and is working closely with the company to grow the website’s capability and reach.

Rick Yates says: “We created My Learned Friend because we wanted to make the task of legal research quicker and easier and to bring the legal community together to create a great research resource.

“When we pitched to the Angels we had already invested £12k ourselves and had worked with eight law schools around the UK to create the starting point database. We were looking for additional investment to bring My Learned Friend to market and to allow us to fund a full launch programme this year.

“We were enormously lucky to meet Divyesh Lakhani at the North West Business Angels event and his investment, faith in us and knowledge of our market, has been invaluable and will continue to be as we grow.”

Access to Finance Specialist Graham Niven said: “My Learned Friend is a great example of how A2F can help businesses. Rick and Chelsea already had a fantastic business that was ready to go live and a very attractive investment opportunity.

“It has low overhead costs, a current position of first mover advantage and really taps into the thirst for tech based innovation and money saving solutions in the legal sector. We were able to introduce them to Divyesh at a North West Business Angels pitch event and are delighted that they are now working closely together to bring My Learned Friend to the audience it deserves.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .