Border Shutdowns Not an Impediment to Legal Tech Companies Selling Overseas

A couple years ago I was sitting in the audience at a legal technology and innovation conference in Amsterdam.

With people from all over the world seated around me, it dawned on me just how myopic we can be in the States.

Like other companies, I realized I’ve always been measuring LexBlog’s market success and penetration against the U.S. market.

But look how shorted this is.

• The U.S. is not even in the top two countries, by population.
• The U.S. only represents four percent of the world’s population.
• 95% of consumers live other than in the United States.
• Though U.S. purchasing power is higher than other countries, 80% of the purchasing power lies elsewhere.

Add to this the greater opportunity for rapid growth in the legal market in other countries.

The U.S. has had a robust legal system, including courts and published laws and cases for over a hundred years. Not so in other countries.

Technology, where not internationally hindered by governments to curtail social rights and access to the law, can drive new legal systems and access to legal information, worldwide.

Almost all of Facebook’s 139 million users are on mobile.

A continent, without access to the law before now, could reach legal information and access to legal services via a smartphone – assuming legal technology companies with solutions that scale get to work.

Just take a look at the legal tech work already taking place in Africa through the effort of local entrepreneurs.

Certainly there are legal tech companies in the States, which by their very nature, cannot move internationally. They’ve built solutions tied to U.S. laws and procedures.

But that’s not the case for most companies. Their solutions are very portable.

LexBlog’s SaaS publishing solution is being used in multiple countries and in multiple languages.

Just this morning, in our all hands meeting, the success of operating our platform, including its integration with our MailChimp email delivery, in Hebrew for lawyers and legal consumers in Israel was highlighted.

Dan Mintz, our head of sales, and I got together on my patio on Saturday morning to discuss strategic opportunities. Without any prompting on my part, Dan suggested we pursue international markets.

Dan knows we can’t travel overseas, but knows that I can network through Internet to build relationships with potential customers, influencers and referral sources.

For U.S. legal tech companies, networking the Internet is going to be the key.

CEOS and business leaders who know how to shake hands and line up conversations without “selling” are operating at a level others cannot see nor understand.

Also helpful is having a product that’s a good for the pandemic. Cloud solutions and online business development solutions come to mind.

We’ve talked international for quite a while. Now, knowing that border shutdowns are not an impediment, seems the time to test the waters.