Gene Turner co-founded a legaltech startup because he knew "legal work could be done a lot better" with tech
LawHawk co-founder Gene Turner always knew that technology could help bolster legal service delivery. The corporate and finance lawyer, who used to be a partner with Buddle Findlay, simply “didn’t know how to do it for most of [his] career.”
When he launched LawHawk with Allen Li, the two of them focused developing automation and process improvement solutions they would have wanted for themselves as lawyers. In the process, Turner mastered legal document automation “to a standard that lawyers within a top-tier firm could use.”
Over the course of enhancing legal processes for law firms and the in-house legal market, LawHawk eventually changed course, concentrating on in-house departments.
“There are a lot of factors making in-house legal teams more interested in legal automation, including an inflationary environment and higher costs of recruiting, training and retaining staff; an increasingly complex regulatory environment that manual processes are not fit for; a need for more timely and accurate data; and a greater understanding of the need for legal teams to support their overall business performance and deliver better outcomes,” Turner told NZ Lawyer in the recently released Service Providers 2022 report.
“The inability for non-legal staff and legal staff to meet face-to-face also meant that there was a greater need for legal services to be more readily accessible.”
LawHawk is among the 2022 Service Provider Awards winners. The full list of winners was announced this week.
