Exciting news from Lawyers Hub! Applications for this year’s Startup Law Accelerator are now open! We extend a warm invitation to pre-seed and early-stage legal and tech startups (0-2 years) to submit their applications. The deadline for applications is December 1, 2023. Apply now at http://bit.ly/ASLA2023
Motivated by the missing link between legal-tech innovators and legal practitioners targeted to benefit from developed legal technologies, the access to legal support gap for startups seeking affordable legal services, and the access to justice gap for ordinary Africans seeking user-friendly justice services, the accelerator endeavors to bridge these gaps. The Africa Startup Law Accelerator will, therefore, bridge the gaps by providing a tailor-made 12-week virtual program designed to accelerate the business growth, legal setup & compliance, operational capacity, and impact of early-stage and growth-stage startups working on legal-tech and justice innovations.
Programme Benefits
Training Programme Features
The 12-week virtual training program of the Africa Startup Law Accelerator focuses on the following among others:
- Business Structuring & Legal Compliance: How to structure your business to avoid legal risks and to achieve legal compliance in the sector your startup operates in.
- Product Development: How to refine your product using human-centred design to improve the user experience.
- Commercial Strategy: How to identify the market opportunity, navigate operational bottlenecks, create growth strategies and explore new business models & revenue streams.
- Marketing & Branding: How to define your target audience, create marketing goals & strategies, digital marketing and build a brand.
- Business Development, Sales & Partnership Building: How to build sales strategies, how to build and manage partnerships, business presentation and negotiation skills.
- Financial Modelling & Analysis: How to prepare financial statements, build financial models, forecasting, revenue assumptions and analyze financial outcomes.
- Investor Readiness & Fundraising: How to prepare investor decks, storytelling, understanding the different types of funding, and the basics of valuation calculation.
Expected Outcome
Eligibility Criteria
The 12-week virtual training program of the Africa Startup Law Accelerator focuses on the following, among others:
- The startup provides legal-tech solutions that enhance legal practice for legal practitioners or enhance access to justice and legal services for ordinary citizens and small businesses in Africa.
- The startup has a working solution with traction that provides evidence for the potential for the product to be a fit for its market.
- The startup has a strong team with complementary skills and shared vision, driven by making impact, and led by inspiring founder(s)
- The startup has a strong sustainability and revenue model that shows potential and evidence for the startup to become financially sustainable within a reasonable timeframe, whether a non-profit or for-profit.
- The startup has ambition and sound plans to scale into different markets beyond the immediate target market (depending on how far along the startup is in its growth journey).
The startup operates in East Africa, West Africa, South Africa or North Africa.
Who Are We Looking For?
The Africa Startup Law Accelerator is looking for early and growth-stage startups in East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa and North Africa regions providing innovative tech solutions to:
- Enhance legal practice for legal practitioners through automated contracts management, matter management, governance, risk, and compliance technologies, E-billing, collaboration tools, digital legal information and case law access tools, cloud services, legal data insights and A.I or blockchain registries
- Enhance access to legal services for small businesses in Africa through digital legal self-service platforms, affordable legal advisory platforms, online dispute resolution or legal assurance solutions.
- Enhance access to access to justice for ordinary citizens through affordable legal self-service platforms, legal information and advice platforms, government document processing, online dispute resolution or legal assurance solutions.
Does your startup fall within this categories? Apply here
