Consumer technology company Crediverso, based in Pasadena, has a new product the company’s founder touts as being a “democratizing tool” for the handling of legal documents.
My Pocket Lawyer, a software platform that utilizes generative AI technology to analyze legal documents and translate the “legalese” into layman’s explanations, was launched last month, and comes in English and Spanish versions.
Crediverso founder and Chief Executive Carlos “Charlie” Hernandez said he was motivated by a combination of growing up in East Los Angeles and being in a family of lawyers who eventually pivoted to become entrepreneurs.
“What we’re really trying to address here is the ‘justice gap,’” he said. “For people who can’t afford lawyers, we want to give them this tool that gives people access to legal information at as little cost to them as possible.”
My Pocket Lawyer is designed to assist people with relatively mundane legal documents – lease agreements, contracts, business forms – not substitute for an attorney in lawsuits. Hernandez said he believed there was a large market of people who need small amounts of help understanding legal documents but don’t have the means to pay for an attorney to do that.
According to Crediverso, 75% of low-income households have experienced a civil legal issue within the past year. Additionally, a third of small businesses have experienced a civil legal issue, and more than 40% of counties in the U.S. have one or fewer working attorneys for every 1,000 residents.
“The observation that it all rested on was that there aren’t enough lawyers to solve everybody’s problems in the country,” Hernandez said. “There are ton of legal problems and lawyers are never going to solve all of those problems.”
To launch the product, Crediverso raised $3.5 million in pre-series A funding, bringing its total funding to $6.6 million. Recent investors include Bel Air-based Act One Ventures and Clocktower Technology Ventures in Santa Monica. Hernandez would not disclose engagement or use figures, but did claim that the company’s servers nearly crashed from product use on launch day.
One user, Dr. Michael Kezian, told Crediverso that the product has helped streamline working on administrative paperwork for his dental practice.
“Navigating through the complex web of contracts and legal documents can detract from my primary focus – patient care,” Kezian wrote to the company. “My Pocket Lawyer has become an indispensable tool, offering immediate clarity on legal documents and safeguarding my practice from potential contractual pitfalls.”
While My Pocket Lawyer is not yet generating revenue, Hernandez said the team is working on two sources for that. One is offering different levels of premium services, for a fee – something Hernandez admitted he would like to minimize, to keep the product consumer-friendly. The second is courting law firms to buy into networking through the software, to be linked with prospective clients who choose to be introduced to an attorney if their legal issue requires it.
One key appeal for the firms that would buy into that, Hernandez said, is that the clients would already have their intake information collected and provided.
“The reason why that is good for lawyers is, rather than getting a cold phone call off a bench, they get a fully packaged client,” he said. “If people are self-servicing and getting information to understand their legal issues, that’s a huge pool of people who are ultimately going to need a lawyer. If we can give (law firms) a bunch of clients – obviously with the clients’ buy-in – and help them intake those clients, I think that’s a good thing.”
