Episode 12 - Callum Murray

[00:00] so today on the your Law Firm success podcast I’m talking to Callum Murray the CEO and founder of Amiqus many of you will be aware of Amiqus it’s a essentially a of software as a service business which assists with the onboarding and money laundering requirements that law firms have to satisfy when taking on new clients it’s literally transformed that market callum’s been in a fairly Incredible Journey from painter decorator to the owner and operator of a SAS business in the legal Tech sector which is now employing nearly 70 people when turning over about 6 million with the objective of getting to 50 million I hope you enjoy this episode and callum’s views on legal Tech and the market in general thanks very much for coming and see me today we were meant to be chatting as well with Danae from Valla but unfortunately she’s had a my so we’ve had to sort of adapt things a little bit firstly can you tell me a little bit about Amiqus yes founding story founding story would be excellent I know it’s a long story because we met well not a lot it’s an exciting story H but we met a number of years ago I think for the first time just after it certainly wasn’t long after you’d begun to get it going yeah that’d be right so that there’s a condensed version no do it whatever so we can cut it afterwards the purpose and the reason for being like how it all came around was my own experience in trying to find and access legal services like how do you get help how do you solve a problem the problem I had was fundamentally a commercial one not a legal one but it was using the law to try and solve the problem so going to court to try and get money back that was due and I I didn’t know how complicated it was going to be how time consuming how expensive and ultimately the outcome so I was running a pain and decorating business it was financial crash time so 2007 is and what I was doing money from bigger companies that was a really small company about 10 people and we got set up with £1,000 from the prince Scottish business trust and we got going and we started to scale things were going well and then we were du money from much larger contractors who had their own cash flow issues and based on where we came in the overall contract cycle the end we were the last package to get paid out and in one case the main contractor went bust disappeared and then another one they just refused to pay us and I felt a bit hard done by we had done the job we done the work we did we said we would do we didn’t get paid so in one case there was an arbitration clause in the contract I didn’t know what arbitration was at the time I didn’t know that mediation existed I didn’t know what out Court dispute resolution mechanisms really were only when I went to look at the contract to find out why they’re not paying us what can we do about it so through my experience of trying to solve those problems that led to the challenges I’d faced at the time and thought surely you should be able to do this digitally you should be able to find a review of a law firm like who would be the law firm that I should find to do this outside of you know paid radio campaigns or whatever how could I find and qualify who I should work with and it was tough that you couldn’t do anything digitally then and through that experience that was we’re going to have to fix it the Judiciary isn’t going to fix it I couldn’t see law firms fixing it there wasn’t anything on the market at the time so I thought you going to do it myself and so that was the basis of how could you going do it and initially we had no funding no support really anything there so hold on a minute so you basically went from the situation of being in a commercial dispute because the work had been done you had sort of no leverage apart from your agreement in one case the person had gone out of business in the second case the company was just refusing to pay you but you’re running a painting and decorating business yeah and then you start thinking about how can I solve this access to justice issue now there must be a gap between that and then you what you were about to talk about was getting funding you know you must have had to do quite a bit of Preparatory work around what your idea actually was and fleshing it out yeah I didn’t understand at the time how broken up the process was all the problems to solve along the way but I knew that by pulling together the right mixture of people we would be able to go and tackle the problem so I had faced the issue myself individually but we need to find other people who had the right level of skills or expertise and the same way in the painting business was when I started that I had been at Uni studying business entrepreneurship but I was working as a laborer on building sites effectively filling Rubble bags doing whatever was required and then I spotted at the time that a lot of the admin and the project management was typically done by one trade but they would be fantastic at whatever they did um could be you know a cabinet maker would be on site building something inside a bar they would be amazing at delivering that part but they would then struggle to scale their business because they weren’t covering off the administration side of it or the sales side or the marketing side but they were brilliant at what they did so in the same way in the paint and the model was well we could get started I went and got the textbook from college about pain and decorating and it’s effectively chemistry like does this thing stick to this thing what’s the substrate what’s the product you’re putting on top and was able to apply that and do various kind of on the job training type stuff and then start to employ people who were very well qualified time served painters and decorators then I would take care of the the client care we would do all of the admin like look after the other side of the business so recognise the same thing that if I was to build this business and solve this problem we’re going to need a range of different people to help and support So tried to break the problem down into the different component parts and initially we got some support build a very basic prototype which was the initial search stage so when you have to triage and understand what kind of problem do you have what kind of area of the law would be applicable is there case law in relation to this we started to build out something to solve that part so the very initial stage of what is the problem I have and you know where should I go what should I do and to do that part we worked with Strathclyde University and I got a fellow ship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh so in effect I had a year’s salary I think it was paid 30 grand as a person employed by them it was part of their scheme so it was a fellowship scheme where I then had access to different researchers and bits of the universities to kind effectively work on the problem whilst you had the salary so I could still pay rent at that time like post the business the pain decorating business failed we had to pay back hmrc the banks various creditors so effectively we didn’t get any money from the following through in the court process we got a judgment but there were no assets to draw down on and on the arbitration one they counter claimed we couldn’t continue the arbitration process it was too expensive so in effect I was at that time living at a friend’s flat and had to pay rent so the job or the fellowship that I got was just enough to pay the rent and get the idea going so we had very early stages of that through the support from it was at the time the data lab which is now far more advanced than when we were one of the first applicants to get a grant from that they helped us cover off the cost that we had to work with the academics and the universities and we built out a basic search which would allow you to look at publicly available Court information so case law effectively to some extent and then legislation so what’s published online like open available legislation so we were looking at the consumer rights act which had recently been updated at the time so in effect you could say I bought a car within this in the last two weeks the gearbox failed it would then pull up the right area of the consumer rights act and say okay here’s what you know you’re entitled to or what the what the law says or the legislation says in relation to that and then using what we could get case law to say actually there have been a number of cases that I’ve set a precedent in this type of area here’s roughly where you were go now you need legal help so what we wanted to do was triage the stuff at the start to tell people well actually the stuff that the problem you’ve had is very common and you could follow this route so you could think about maybe commoditised areas like I don’t know claims against Airlines or there’d be various things that you could maybe tackle when we did that and we built the very basic thing at the very beginning we thought that was the way to go we would funnel out or create opportunities for law firms pass them to law firms and say Here’s a pre-qualified opportunity from Callum over here we know who he is here’s his scenario here’s a kind of brief pass on to them but all of the law firms that we then approached said well actually the cost to acquire these new clients is really high because we need to go through this risk-based process this

[10:00] anti-money laundering process this onboarding process and it’s paper based and you need to bring the client in and the risk is that this could be kind has caught up in some sort of fraud or organised crime the value is low we probably want couldn’t deal with it just at the volume so they effectively said like if you build a system that can help us do that and make that much more streamlined and better then we’ll buy that so we thought well maybe we’ll just build that and we’ll come back to the other stuff so we put all of the work that we had on hold in relation to supporting the open publishing of case law which is still a really difficult area it’s really challenging there’s loads of Ip around it there’s all sorts of entrenched kind of situations going on there how it’s managed how it gets published the data format and how can you do anything with it so we paused all of that and said we’ll come back to that but ultimately the intention with Amiqus is make it fast and easy for people to get access to legal help that was it and the problem that I had was I didn’t get it I didn’t get I didn’t speak to a solicitor early enough or know how much that was going to cost to get a little bit of advice early on and say you know what you’re probably really upset about this you were right but in fact what’s going to happen here is you’re not going to get anything you need to walk away now and you should seek advice and like you know wrap up the business do that you know manage that properly that ideally would have been the message that I got from someone in the very beginning but we didn’t and that then led into the whole process and the business failing the business likely would have failed anyway that was more of mistakes made along the way around concentration risk for like big clients didn’t pay us the painting and decorating business would have failed anyway I think ultimately because the financial crash had happened that was out with our control we had what we did control over who were the large clients we thought that the clients who we’d put in that were like big rocks like you would have lots of little job residential bits of work but the big kind of cash flow would come from the larger clients potentially naively thinking we would get paid all of that and get paid on time or get paid to contract that was the Assumption and that was wrong so the business yeah ultimately failed but the intention was if it failed for me someone who had lived here all my life with the network you know I’m not really coming from a disadvantaged background as such I speak the language like I’m from here and I couldn’t navigate my way to do that then there must be hundreds of thousands of other people who are in the same or a more difficult position not particularly in consumer rights or like in you know a dispute where you’re going to use litigation but just all sorts of things that go on and a lot of those things we’ve started to unravel or find as we’ve gone along the journey with amiqus yeah I think at that time that you’re talking about certainly the extent to which law firms were marketing themselves online and I know because we were right at the beginning of that is that it was a green field at that time and actually been able to find the type of Legal Information that now you could find very readily through searching on Google as to who might be the right company to help you what your likelihood what your likely chances of success we’re living in a sort of different world from that point of view and I also know how difficult it is to get into a situation where you are generating leads for lawyers and you’re able to arrange a commercial relationship on the back of that is quite a difficult thing unless it’s in very specific categories such as personal injury Etc but so you decided to Pivot your idea at that point on the basis of early feedback and you’ve drilled down more into the anti-money laundering aspect and removing that as an obstacle for from lawyers that’s in the way of lawyers taking on new clients who you told me a wee bit about how that started but a bit more information on your business plan getting some funding together and where you are now how many years later what was that like eight years ago yeah so how we actually got it going from that point we didn’t have anything so we had no funding there wasn’t as though I was coming from like a great exit from a previous business or anything like that I’d come from doing voluntary work for Citizens advice in the sheriff court so at the time I was trying to figure out what exactly is going on when people are going to court whether it’s small claims or otherwise and I had some knowledge around that so I kind of built up some expertise around you know what was going on and that was particularly around mediation so how were people resolving things what were they doing but we never had any Capital we had goodwill like so we had a network of people who were able to help or support Scotland is in a really positive position from an early funding kind of landscape for early stage businesses so grant funding early stage Angel syndicates that type of thing exist and they have done for a long time so we were able to tap into that and follow the well-trodden path which is Scottish Edge it’s a funding competition to support early stage businesses we got about £100,000 over a range of applications through that which was supported by Scottish government it was John Swinney at the time who backed at RBS and the hunter Foundation put that together and we benefited from that so it was a grant that we got there was a portion of loan which we paid back so having gone through and pitched through that process or various other things that exist like another one still goes on today so it’s a an investors’ conference that you present your business idea you know pitch what you’re doing get a six minute slot to do that on a stage did that picked up some early stage support there and really it was Angel investment type funding so people who were able to access tax breaks through hmrc a scheme called e where you can get some income tax written off against the risk of your investment so we raised some very early Angel money from others who are new and a couple of people who were involved in the princes trust originally princes Scottish youth business trust one of them had sold a business to Isel who make card point of sale product so when you’re paying contact list they’d sold the business to them and they then got bought by PayPal so a couple of the earliest investors had said I really like don’t really understand what you’re doing you think this is going to go somewhere and you know put in a little bit of money someone else had sold their business to a big kind of online fantasy sports business who are still around today in a different form but we got ear early support from individuals who were in that position who had either started sold their business that were doing technology type businesses and that was the basis of it to really get started we didn’t have any paying customers so we weren’t bringing in any Revenue initially and we had to get over that first maybe 18 months of really not having much in the way of overheads to actually start the business but we had very early support from when you say we were you doing it with somebody else when I set up there were there were others so there was myself Katherine who was our accountant at the time and had the painting business she came on and to the business we had Rick and Steve who were based in Cambridge who was an engineer one was a designer they had their own little agency in Cambridge building websites and different products for people we had Robie who was a product manager it’s now at meta he’s been there for a long time previously at free agent who were a fintech business accountancy business based in Scotland who had grown across the UK and got bought ultimately by RBS they had listed on him he was in there and had been through some of that journey and then someone who he knew dug he had been based in infrastructure and service side security and banking this sounds like a complicated initially set up it was so we had there were five others plus me and I basically went to the mall and said look we’re going to need a range of expertise to be able to get this going this is a complex problem we’re going to have to try and solve I’m not going to be able to do it myself then have an engineering background but to bring together product engineering design security and finance looked like that would be a good mix to begin with usually it’s CEO CTO that’s it like that’s just the usual model you got someone on technical side so Chief technical officer and then Chief exec but said well actually we’re going to need to do this differently so when we set it up we said right we’ll allocate 10% of all of the shares to that founding group they weren’t all able to give up what they were doing full-time so they all had various things going on commitments families jobs mortgages I didn’t have any of those things so I’d said well I’m going to go all in I’ll have 90% of the shares we’ll allocate 10% across you all so you all have 2% that will change over time but you need to trust that I’ll grow the business and I’ll bring in the external investment so the value of this will be exponentially different from today but you will always have your 2% so it’s quite common and early stage technology businesses that you have like an  

[20:00] Emi scheme or a share option scheme and that’s the most tax efficient way of doing that but you’ve got an option on those shares but instead we said well that might be the case but you could you know leave in six months and have nothing more to do with Amiqus but for this initial period like it’s really important that everyone’s incentivised to be involved you’re not going to be here all day seven days a week you know that I’m going to be putting in but you know that’s what how we’re going to run it and agreed and we allocated to 10% elsewhere and then we started to build from that point so we had the right type of people around who could guide and help us avoid making bad mistakes or doing stupid things early on and then we’ve grown from there now about 65 people at the moment and we’ll be growing a bit more this year as well and so tell me a bit more now about the Amiqus service what it helps law firms do H what the benefits are of it and also around the sort of Revenue growth and sort of share structure that you have now MH yeah so we effectively provide a software platform into lots of law firms there’s maybe about 600 law firms around the UK like nine out of 10 of the biggest ones in Scotland all have Amiqus sitting behind the scenes to some extent and we help them manage their compliance challenges whether that’s onboarding new clients so covering off all the AML challenges they’ll have whether that’s policies controls and procedures risk assessment and building that in typically will integrate with other case management systems or practice Management systems and we will help them cover off the field client Journey so when they’re doing the onboarding or client Inception client intake client on client opening like whatever terminology is applied in whichever firm that’s all the steps from capturing a document source of funds source of wealth it will cover off all of the pep sanctions and adverse media check so as the regulations evolve we stay ahead of that provide all the requirements that a law firm will need to meet whether they’re a so practitioner a High Street firm or a multinational and so we’ve got clients across the FI spectrum and it’s really important for us to be accessible for small law firms based on the amount of consolidation that’s going on it’s important that to be able to transact and the cost to transact shouldn’t be prohibitive through compliance because there a lot of things you now need to do so it’s important for us that smaller law firms can still do the right thing and typically small law firms are the ones that are at highest risk because if I was an organised crime gang or I was trying to commit fraud I’m not going to go to one of the largest law firms because you would assume they’ve got systems in place so typically smaller ones are at higher risk because they’re going to have people take a pop or have a go and think oh we’ll try and put this transaction through this smaller firm but so that’s in effect what we help them do make it faster and easier a great client experience is one side but on the other it’s significantly reduced the risk attached to taking on their new clients and making that viable through the software and so you said you’ve gone from 0 to 65 how’s your Revenue tracking or from that point of view yeah from a revenue point of view early on it was pretty tough it was really hard like we were selling into a difficult regulated market and initially there’s a lot of scepticism correctly to be like oh are you able to do this is this really the best way of doing it maybe we should get our clients to come in for a coffee and have a chat client doesn’t really want to come in for a coffee and a chat when they’re selling their flat or moving home or getting access to advice they want the face to- face advice they don’t want the admin so there was initially a bit of scepticism and like challenge to get past so early revenues were tricky probably for the first couple of years there wasn’t really so much going on Revenue wise is that tough is that hard yeah really difficult because you’ve set expectations with investors to say we’re going to go off and do all these things we’re going to grow and when you set a high expectation and you miss it you know that’s of your own making and that’s you know diff how were those conversations difficult yeah we’ve had loads of board meetings where it was like we’re going to turn the corner here how are we going to figure this out what you’re going to do you know the clocks ticking the amount of money that you’re using on a monthly basis you’re burning all this cash that’s not going to go on for forever in different places businesses are funded differently as well so the appetite to risk here and the amount of early-stage investment you’ll get is different if you’re in the US but there are pros and cons like there’s loads of reasons why being in the UK is a great place to be also in Scotland specifically for the D’angel network and there’s various other things that are really positive but there’s some things that are challenge the amount of cash you’ve got the amount of time you’ve got to prove you’re going somewhere is less so that was hard so that was probably the first little while when you’re proving yourself out and then after that like the last five years we’ve doubled Revenue every year so we’ve went double double double double and as we’ve been doing that that’s then proven well we are going somewhere and we are you know making progress so we’re the Delight do a ranking every year of Technology companies and we’ve been in the fast 50 the last two years so one of the fastest growing technology businesses in the UK 22 and 23 and then in Scotland we were the fastest and I think the third fastest the year just gone by and that’s based on a four-year Revenue growth so look at a point in time four years ago what was your base Revenue there and what’s the percentage growth to now and so for us it’s great because it’s not like a judging panel saying oh yeah you’re a nice company you’re a good company got be do the right thing and you know be seen as like an ethical well-run business but with the fast 50 for us that was a Line in the Sand to say we can behave and we’re Purpose Driven we behave in the right way we do the right thing we look after our clients and as a result we’re growing really quickly as well so that’s the last few years and in the Ft of financial times do a ranking of the EU and we’re in the top quarter of fastest growing companies of thousand fastest grown companies in EU and that one went across all sectors and we were like 45th I think across all sectors for the UK and so we know as a benchmark we’re doing well and more recently there’s a UK government program called future 50 and that’s the fastest growing or Highest Potential growth stage business that go a kind of cohort approach there’s a bunch of businesses like zla Skys scanner and to like a random mixture across sectors and we’ve just joined that so for us that was a great kind of Line in the Sand to say we’re making good progress in Revenue growth as part of it but ultimately the revenue comes as a result of lots of other work so it’s I I would always refer to it as being like a lagging indicator you need to do loads of good things before the revenue is going to catch up so there have been years where we still spend more money than we make it the moment so not yet profitable and that’s something we’re like really focused on right now so the external investment we’ve got the capital invested by other investors which now is like bigger funds and other people but the big push is be sustainable you know be at a point where we’ve got free cash flow as opposed to growing and using external investment to grow so we don’t use a lot now but revenue for this year should be about 6 million from an annual recurring basis and how’s that from a mindset point of view because you know I’ve always thought to a certain extent in Scotland and the UK one can have a mindset as you need to be making money from the word go whereas that’s not possible and imagine that was the same in your painting and decorating business you were like right I’m doing this because I want to make money I’ll pay the guys to do the job and hopefully there’s money left over the top that makes this all worthwhile for me the margin and the painting Decor was about 6% or 7% when you took into account everything and margin software is completely different and again we’re delivering a completely different thing so different service like a load of automation so the costs for us are primarily people so 85% of our cost although we provide software its implementation is onboard and it’s Engineers it’s user researchers designers so almost all of our cost is people so can to invest into our people growing the team that grows ahead of Revenue so we make investment into the product or platform different things we’re doing to make sure that we can provide a reliable secure service to all of our clients it’s critical to them so in addition to Legal we serve the UK government the Scottish government the NHS all of the National Health Service equivalent HSC and Northern Ireland runs on Amiqus so there’s a big responsibility for us to continue to invest into the platform and obviously our people and thinking about what they’re doing whether it’s summoning a risk and compliance role and at the moment we’re hiring for in-house Council so actually bringing in someone who is a solicitor into the business at this stage is as part of the plan so making those Investments are really important but that costs money so in effect getting that right from the perspective of you know being in Scotland and thinking you need to be profitable and you know that’s a big thing that’s different now than in the last few years  

[30:00] so in the US or like you would typically hear grow grow grow grow grow at all costs we’ve never kind of gone for that Mantra it’s always been yeah we’re going to grow but not at all cost we’re going to grow and grow sustainably so we will use cash but we’ll use it to a point that we know it’s not going to run away from us that we’re going to be at the point where we’re just burning so much money that we’re going to have to do massive layoffs or like some big change internally to try and get back on track so we’ve never done things in that way but always conscious of the fact that there are others out there who have gone off and raised tens of millions or more and they’ve got a really high burn rate and they’re nowhere near getting to a sustainable point now the economy’s flipped and you know the interest rate scenario changed the funding environments changed e see and the particular in the US like a huge shift where there’s been massive layoffs and loads of large tech companies as well listed businesses got that same approach we’ve not been caught in that because of how we’ve been running the approach that we’ve had so thankfully it’s switched and it’s going to play in our favor where you know three or four years ago if you said you grown fast enough it would be maybe tripling or quadrupling or you’re not in that top quartile and that’s changed now to say you need to be growing but you need to be efficient as well so I think that’s because you’re from Edinburgh you’re a bit like Titan well I’m from Boness but about halfway in the middle so usually people maybe initially struggle to say where is where are you from like what’s going on there and are you are you from Glasgow like no clearly I don’t have a Glaswegian accent but equally I don’t have an Edinburgh accent but I think maybe there’s a blend of the just I am Scottish but the business is across the UK so we’ve got lots of clients doing different things in different sectors across the UK but yeah fundamentally we were started in Edinburgh we’ve got an office in Edinburgh and now I live there but there’s probably something built in that the I don’t know whether it’s feeling like the underdog or like the scepticism whether that’s maybe quite a healthy thing to think actually are you going to get this done you’re going to do it or the Assumption they probably won’t amount to much that’s maybe like an inbuilt Scottish psyche thing yeah I think that’s it’s something that’s can be helpful if understood but you know I understand that you work across different sectors now but the way that I viewed it was you started off as being a sort of legal Tech business as you’re addressing a legal issue and you’ve you know I started off in sort of legal Tech but in the same way that you describe I was I was too advanced at that time and actually the market and the mindset and the view of what technology you could do as far from what it is now what do you think of legal Tech in Scotland and the UK what impact do you think it’s going to have on lawyers going forward I mean you might not even care and you’ve also tied up with Valla recently so be nice to have a wee bit of a chat about that as well yeah so legal Tech in the UK I’d say has equivalence as anywhere like so might not have as big as budgets like applied to some of the companies so they won’t maybe get as much funding but there’s certainly a load of activity so LawTechUK  there’s a bunch going on Valla have been involved in that to some extent we’re involved with LawScot Tech and have been for a number of years so sit on that board to provide a as a participant or as a company who are a legal tech company supporting  hundreds of law firms and so we would able to give that you know sector specific view is opposed to coming from a primarily legal background although that board is really broad that there’s input from people across the whole profession so I think there’s a lot of activity there’s a lot in the past being a bit hype around or and again May the Scot scepticism there of like oh how is this actually going to change the practice of law but you could look at examples like Clio was probably the biggest one 60,000 maybe 70,000 law firms who run on their product that’s crossed like North America Amia moving in Asia Pacific as well they’ve got a presence across the UK so there are significant businesses who are within like the legal Tech space you’ve obviously got lots of big large incumbents who’ve been around for a long time doing things but smaller companies come along and saying well we could do that we could offer that service we could improve upon that or make something faster and easier for a Solicitor or for paralegals or for you know other areas there’s definitely software out there that’s pitched that and whether it’s barristers or Advocates there’s stuff now that should make life easier for people who are involved in practice of law whether you’re a solicitor or otherwise our side touches the be paralegals a lot of the time there’ll be partners who are involved in sign off for taking on new clients who will accept the risk of you we’re taking this client on here’s the background and they’re part of that process so people across a law firm whether if you’re a bigger Law Firm you’ll be in a risk and compliance role where maybe the money laundering reporting officer you’re going to be interacting with software to do that there’s a bunch of people who maybe pivoted towards what we are doing now who have done other things in the past in another area of like legal and or legal Tech so there’s certainly not a shortage this looks like just more and more and more and coming around whether it’s directly in relation to contract analysis tools there’s loads of things that have been around for a long time probably the shift now is the adoption that law firms are actually getting to go past a proof of concept or past a thinking about a few people involved in Innovation it’s more like Knowledge Management lawyers and bigger law firms who are proactively saying how can we better harness the value we’ve got of the senior people here who are not going to be here forever and as they pass on obviously there’s the model where you’re going to progress through from a trainee up into a partner level but how can we make more of the information as an asset what’s technology got to play in that and it seems to be a really big shift so people are now looking at what systems and processes they can put in that are valuable they’re going to add value either for them internally you know with from an efficiency point of view or what improvements can they make for their client you know making their client experience better and it really wide ranging there’s products right across the board and from all different aspects of when you’re going to interact with legal services the example so that’s may be a bit about like the market or how things have evolved I’ve certainly seen a huge change particularly maybe the last five years has been many many more companies around who are created specifically targeting like legal services or to support lawyers there’s probably been a few outliers that have come along and said oh yeah we are going to replace the law firm I think that’s going to happen I think the point being the trusted advisor is just always going to be there so like yeah we’re a technology company but if we want advice on like a particular topic we’re not going to get that online from our he you know clickable bit of content you’d maybe start there but you then want the yeah the senior person to come in afterwards and give you their experience and give you context and also to be able to ask you the right questions which I think sometimes you know that’s moves on this discussion of AI and replacing lawyers my experience of it is that when I’ve required legal advice is that you know I’ve had legal training and I understand a lot of it myself however you have to get asked the right questions because you could be going down a route in terms of your searches that you think is right but in fact you’ve missed out something quite fundamental that entirely changes the whole complexion yeah absolutely and I think that’s the challenge is that through years and years or Decades of experiencing seeing these types of problems people will be able to spot those types of scenarios so when else you could use a system whether it’s rules based or it’s an AI system or whatever it might be there’s always going to be that requirement for the human in the loop to be adding that level of expertise to say well actually that’s all good and well but this other element over here that’s not been taken into account because you need to ask the question and have the conversation or have the prior knowledge of like other scenarios to actually get involved so I think as things improve like the size of data sets get bigger like their access they training these systems is going to always just increase its I see more like the Microsoft model where they’ve intentionally come out and called their system co-pilot it’s that type of scenario where we more likely see a large whether it’s a magic circle from Silver Circle or like can it start coming down they’ll have their own systems that are trained upon all of their internal data they’re very very very unlikely to ever let that go anywhere outside the walls of their firm but you would see them having their own  

[40:00] proprietary systems that are trained up with their senior partners and whoever else that’s been around for however many decades that are adding in their you know insights to those system so you would access a system that you you’re probably going to pay more for a Slaughter in May example or you know you pick any number of Law Firm because you would know that well this has been trained upon on all of their internal processes and there’ll be certain areas of the law you know if you’re the world leading expert in shipping disputes then you know someone’s going to have that type of dispute that type of problem they’re going to come to your Law Firm because they know that those people are there and obviously the system will do some of the heavy lifting early on still don’t want to talk to the person you know we still speak to people when we are going through like different things like funding yeah you can automate out contracts review steps but ultimately there’s a range of questions that you need to ask and you’re going to go back to that partner who’s ran hundreds and hundreds of these transactions so you will see a lot or certainly there’s a segment of Il legal society that is very skeptical about the use of AI and particularly open AI now I completely get that because I think the opportunity for hallucination shared data Etc however what we’re talking about here which I think is the area that is going to be subject to biggest change and biggest opportunity for firms is actually the understanding that the vast majority of legal advice is actually given privately and never ends up in the public domain and the reasoning and the rationale behind that should exist on proprietary systems and it will really be the training of AI on those systems that will allow lawyers or practitioners to access recover regurgitate and exchange that information or format it into a way in which you can communicate with a client based on their prior experience where the biggest opportunity I think exists for law firms and will mean that they don’t end up becoming obsolete is that something you’d agree with yeah I think it’s hard to disagree I think that’s exactly how it is going to go the issues with some of the systems where you know they’ve just not been through the courts yet like this point about you’ve scraped all this information how much of its proprietary like question mark how much of its breaching copyright or and you know NDAs or stuff that’s going on like how has it been leaked or where have you got it from that’s just a huge unanswered question so for someone to jump in and start using insert AI product it’s really risky depending on what you’re using it for so if you’re using it as an internal Wiki to like find out what is our policy on XY Z or what’s the general approach to doing this thing fine if the chef in your Law Firm is using it to find recipes to make a nice brunch for your partners great this going be a good use and we have you know lawyers worried that AI is going to render them obsolete my view of it is that it actually might become the tool or the application that could end up freeing them from the Below scenario and that you are able then to price jobs on the basis of value and on the basis of existing information that you have within your system which would facilitate lawyers to be able to sort of interrogate using AI with some reasoning and thought based on the information that they hold in with all their case management systems to then be able to use that read that quite quickly and then be able to work out how they’re then going to apply it to the situation rather than spending all of that time working through it yeah definitely and I think that type of example is exactly why we’re so excited to partner with Vala where they in the process of building a system along those lines to particularly help people who would be at the edge of ever accessing legal help because in their scenario predominantly at the moment it’s employment type disputes where someone’s been discriminated against specifically like that would be a scenario and they either don’t have the wherewithal the funds the cash to go away and seek kicking off a claim or actually understand what their rights are so the fact that they they’ve got a system that they’re developing which is helping people they’re not giving someone like legal advice they’ve got advisors and they’ve got their system and then ultimately they’re help guiding people who otherwise would be you know pursuing something without any help at all and they be going towards an employment tribe you know situation you know with one hand tied behind their back because they really don’t have a basis to start you know you know go from anywhere and that use case or scenario is like great you’re helping people out who otherwise would have very little Prospect or maybe it’s not even you know for them a conceivable like ideas like how am I going to deal with this you just accept oh I’ve been you know been cut out or whatever’s happened in the workplace just need move on and they’ll have the grievance but they wouldn’t know what to do and it’s not so much about oh well what’s this going to mean for any employer like this is a really bad thing for employer it’s like well employers should behave in the right way you’re not going to tribunal all the time why you behaving in such a way that someone feels like the grievance is so strong that they’re going to do that will you find scenarios that people may be trying to abuse it I’d imagine but same thing will apply like there’ll be a way to like work your way through that but overall for us it just fits in it perfect sense with our kind of values overall about how can we help people access legal help a section of the market that otherwise might not be available to you as well because they’re not they’re not entering it yeah it’s just it wouldn’t happen and there’s a huge unmet need when you think about what has going on within Legal Services people who would be potential users but they either don’t understand how they would interact with it or they wouldn’t have like the financial means to do it another example that we worked on with Glasgow University with Dr Dot Reid and it was in relation to succession and what happens in planning when you’re going through the process of someone is trying to deal with like the death of a friend family member how they actually working their way through the process to head towards court and then actually manage like what do you do and how do you deal with managing the process the formal process when you’re dealing with a well and the research that it was in relation to reform like of law like Reed’s been she’s been working on that  for maybe a decade maybe longer with other colleagues looking at how the process could be improved and simpler for people and what they found overwhelmingly was it was people from disadvantage or vulnerable backgrounds who would get into disputes and have problems because the assumption is you’ve someone’s passed away how we’re going to split up all these assets what we’re going to do what’s the tax position when does that kick in where’s the threshold and it’s a really complicated area but there are effectively like calculations that are done to like figure out like what would happen here where do the where do the numbers go there what happens for someone in that situation and we were contacted by the unit to says this a project you might be interested in we helped them out built something out it’s been a pilot for some time it’s not something it’s like a big public system but the intention there was well we could provide the engineering and the design resource help people create a self-served tool that would help them understand what their rights were and when you’re going through him the process of managing a death and there’s a bunch of other like legal tech companies around X’s are doing loads of great work with lots of law firms around that as well so we were helping people at the kind of triage stage there and it’s not something that’s been broadly adopted but the next step really is working with Scottish government to help publicise like here’s what you what you’re able to do in Scotland when you’re dealing with this tricky situation but again we would then just provide that to law firms to be like here’s a way that you can help people at the very front end to understand like what could they do like how do they navigate their way do when do you then need the support of a solicitor to actually manage this process and then actually go through the court so how do you submit all the information to court how do you get this dealt with and it’s um through a court clerk effectively so in summary the point the points for you are that one Amiqus was born from a desire to improve access to justice for all that the technology advances that we see currently and particularly around the deployment of AI is less about making lawyers obsolete in any way but is more about enabling um access to the legal system from those who otherwise  

[50:00] would have found it impossible and therefore and you in most cases there’s got to be a win-win you know and therefore you know from your tie up with Valor for example you’re able to then access a segment of the market that then has to go through the money laundering checks Etc in order to access the legal services that previously would have never gone through that because simply it was prohibitively expensive in the employment law situation you’re not really getting nowhere no fee you you’ve got to start paying from the bat so really the question is how can how as a sector can we deploy technology in such a way so that more people are able to protect their basic legal rights who would otherwise have found it impossible yeah and I think it’s an N Net win because if we can give the tools platforms products systems to law firms to be far more efficient and do things in a really robust way then that’s a great win for them and equally the other side of that if you think of a two-sided Market you then creating opportunities for people who otherwise wouldn’t be thinking about going and talking to a lawyer who would now be able to go and do that because we can support them like one example we’re partnered with the Scottish Refugee Council and we’re them financially with equipment so you imagine we work through a whole load of laptops like you got a bunch of Engineers who are running through things like they depreciate like to a point where it’s negligible like that asset has gone with a new laptop it’s on a lease so we’ll run through equipment like that it’ll get wiped it’ll get cleared and the Scottish Refugee Council will run a new Scots program so it helps people who recently arrived here and they’ll be highly qualified but they will have left somewhere and like they’re fled in danger like they’re at risk of persecution there’s like serious situation that they’re fleeing and they’ve arrived here to find safety for them and their family and they might well be a dentist and they AR here they can’t work they can’t do anything but they can’t connect with anyone they’ve got no means of communication so we were able to just practically help them out and so we can give that network of people who are new leaders for their communities like who are arriving here give them equipment like you can help them out they can get the setup that the basic things that you would need to help out so Finance bit there’s the equipment bit and then the other side’s the Practical side to say well how would we be able to support them like people someone who’s navigating the Asylum process how could they help prove who they are and the credentials they’ve got so for example every single time that you go and try and open a bank account or you going got a job you try and get yourself back into society as You’ know and like contribute be around like be part like get yourself back in your feet like you shouldn’t have to relive the whole thing of right can you tell me this situation that you know what you’re doing like we can provide the same technology that we’ve got that we help like law firms or investors or whoever like on board and engage we can flip that and give it to people who need it and they can create digital identity that’s meeting all the UK go standards they can access products and services there as well but they’re they need legal help and there’s a bunch of our clients who already provide pro bono legal help to Scottish Refugee Council and others so we can help make the connection to say well here’s what we can do so we’re a technology company we’re going to solve the world or you know but we can play a part in it do the right thing and we can help because we build and grow and can have an impact the bigger we are the more impact we can have and the more we grow the more we can do to solve problems like that whether it’s we can help Vala scale up what they are doing because we’ve got lots of law firms who already know who we are and we can help connect them in equally their product and services brilliant so there’s a big net benefit for us and with the Scottish Refugee Council or others it’s like we can help them out in ways because we’re just getting bigger and we can raise money for them we can give them money but predominantly we can help them help other people to access services including legal help so if they could get fast access to a solicitor and we can offset the cost if they’ve got cost because they need a system to triage stuff or do things and we can do that so it means that there’s a bit of a virtuous circle you can create overall and ultimately like the reason we set Amiqus up was to help people access legal help we need to build a scalable profitable successful business to do that but it’s a long-term thing it’s not you know it’s not something you can do within 6-12 month so but it’s definitely a bit of a longer journey and just finally what’s the next stage for Amiqus really I think the stuff we’ve just touched on there around the  two-sided marketplace where it’s critically important for us to be supporting the legal profession going forward it’s like the core of where we began that’s why we exist so we’re investing heavily in the platform we’ve got the support of our external investors to continue to do that so growing exponentially from where we are the point in the journey we’re talking about is from 5 to 50 So currently we’re turning over a bit more than 5 million but how do we accelerate past 50 million so 10 times bigger than we are today we can have 10 times more impact in doing that and doing so we then offer out support in other areas so we’ve won a contract with the UK government for the next six years to support all employees who are going to be vetted to go into government so it’s a huge opportunity for us to against that so that’s on the staff side so as we continue to develop relationships and build Partnerships on the staff on boarding side of the business that’s really big scale for us and huge opportunities that then Cycles back into the client side as well so law firms need to verify and manage and vet all other staff as part of the money laundering regulations they also need to take on other clients and run the same thing so building that out to a much larger scale but making things reusable and simple for people is a big bit of it so we’re working on a wallet capability just now that’s linked into our UK government work that we’ve got and we’re accredited by them as a provider for digital identity so in effect it’s providing a means and a way for a law firm to on board their client and manage all the compliance and when they need to refresh that and redo it they don’t have a massive admin exercise to do it and when a law firm wants to work with or have access to many more potential clients we’ve now got almost 70,000 people a month who are running through Amiqus from recruitment businesses from government contracts from various places and those people are looking for Legal Services products like different things that they can do online so working in partnership with their law firms to help them understand what things they want to do and help enable in a an online scenario or Marketplace or network so through the wallet capability that we’re building out and working with law firms to help them drive and grow their businesses as well it means we’ll grow at the same time so there’s a lot of like two-sided value that we can help deliver whether it’s from adding and functionality like Vala or being able to connect lawyers into for example here’s a potential person who’s looking for immigration support and we can make all the admin they like touch make sure they’ve covered all follower obligations and if it comes to a solicitor giving some advice to someone over the lunch break like we should make that happen like we should make it simple rather than oh God I’d love for the law firm to have a pro bono policy but actually there’s just so much work that we need to do to make it happen ideally we can you know join up all those dots all right Brilliant thank you very much and best of luck thank you very much so thanks very much for listening to today’s episode I hope you enjoyed it I hope you’re enjoying our content we’d be delighted to hear any feedback that you have you can find out more about the your Law Firm success podcast at MLT digital.co.uk/podcast Please Subscribe please share with your friends please share with anyone who you know that you think would be interested law firm success podcast I’m talking to Callum Murray the CEO and founder of Amiqus many of you will be aware of Amiqus it’s a essentially a of software as a service business which assists with the onboarding and money laundering requirements that law firms have to satisfy when taking on new clients it’s literally transformed that market callum’s been in a fairly Incredible Journey from painter decorator to the owner and operator of a SAS business in the legal Tech sector which is now employing nearly 70 people when turning over about 6 million with the objective of getting to 50 million I hope you enjoy this episode and callum’s views on legal Tech and the market in general thanks very much for coming and see me today we were meant to be chatting as well with Denny from Vala but unfortunately she’s had a my so we’ve had to sort of adapt things a little bit firstly can you tell me a little bit about Amiqus yes founding story founding story would be excellent I know it’s a long story because we met well not a lot it’s an exciting story but we met a number of years ago I think for the first time just after it certainly wasn’t long after you’d begun to get it going yeah that’d be right so that there’s a condensed version no do it whatever so we can cut it afterwards the purpose and the reason for being like how it all came around was my own experience in trying to find and access legal services like how do you get help how do you solve a problem the problem I had was fundamentally a commercial one not a legal one but it was using the law to try and solve the problem so going to court to try and get money back that was due and I I didn’t know how complicated it was going to be how time consuming how expensive and ultimately the outcome so I was running a pain and decorating business it was financial crash time so 2007 is and what I was doing money from bigger companies that was a really small company about 10 people and we got set up with £1,000 from the prince Scottish business trust and we got going and we started to scale things were going well and then we were du money from much larger contractors who had their own cash flow issues and based on where we came in the overall contract cycle the end we were the last package to get paid out and in one case the main contractor went bust disappeared and then another one they just refused to pay us and I felt a bit hard done by we had done the job we done the work we did we said we would do we didn’t get paid so in one case there was an arbitration clause in the contract I didn’t know what arbitration was at the time I didn’t know that mediation existed I didn’t know what out Court dispute resolution mechanisms really were only when I went to look at the contract to find out why they’re not paying us what can we do about it so through my experience of trying to solve those problems that led to the the challenges I’d faced at the time and thought surely you should be able to do this digitally you should be able to find a review of a law firm like who would be the law firm that I should find to do this outside of you know paid radio campaigns or whatever how could I find and qualify who I should work with and it was tough that you couldn’t do anything digitally then and through that experience that was we’re going to have to fix it the Judiciary isn’t going to fix it I couldn’t see law firms fixing it there wasn’t anything on the market at the time so I thought you going to do it myself and so that was the basis of how could you going do it and initially we had no funding no support really anything there so hold on a a minute so you you basically went from the situation of being in a commercial dispute because the work had been done you had sort of no leverage apart from your agreement in one case the person had gone out of business in the second case the company was just refusing to pay you but you’re running a painting and decorating business yeah and then you start thinking about how can I solve this access to justice issue now there must be a gap between that and then you what you were about to talk about was getting funding you know you must have had to do quite a bit of Preparatory work around what your idea actually was and fleshing it out yeah I didn’t understand at the time how broken up the process was all the problems to solve along the way but I knew that by pulling together the right mixture of people we would be able to go and tackle the problem so I had faced the issue myself individually but we need to find other people who had the right level of skills or expertise and the same way in the painting business was when I started that I had been at Uni studying business entrepreneurship but I was working as a laborer on building sites effectively filling Rubble bags doing whatever was required and then I spotted at the time that a lot of the admin and the project management was typically done by one trade but they would be fantastic at whatever they did could be you know a cabinet maker would be on site building something inside a bar they would be amazing at delivering that part but they would then struggle to scale their business because they weren’t covering off the administration side of it or the sales side or the marketing side but they were brilliant at what they did so in the same way in the paint and the model was well we could get started I went and got the textbook from college about pain and decorating and it’s effectively chemistry like does this thing stick to this thing what’s the substrate what’s the product you’re putting on top and was able to apply that and do various kind of on the job training type stuff and then start to employ people who were very well qualified time served painters and decorators then I would take care of the client care we would do all of the admin like look after the other side of the business so recognise the same thing that if I was to build this business and solve this problem we’re going to need a range of different people to help and support So tried to break the problem down into the different component parts and initially we got some support build a very basic prototype which was the initial search stage so when you have to triage and understand what kind of problem do you have what kind of area of the law would be applicable is there case law in relation to this we started to build out something to solve that part so the very initial stage of what is the problem I have and you know where should I go what should I do and to do that part we worked with Strath C University and I got a fellow ship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh so in effect I had a year’s salary I think it was paid 30 grand as a person employed by them it was part of their scheme so it was a fellowship scheme where I then had access to different researchers and bits of the universities to kind effectively work on the problem whilst you had the salary so I could still pay rent at that time like post the business the pain decorating business failed we had to pay back hmrc the banks various creditors so effect we didn’t get any money from the following through in the court process we got a judgment but there were no assets to draw down on and on the arbitration one they counter claimed we couldn’t continue the arbitration process it was too expensive so in effect I was at that time living at a friend’s flat and had to pay rent so the job or the fellowship that I got was just enough to pay the rent and get the idea going so we had very early stages of that through the support from it was at the time the data lab which is now far more advanced than when we were one of the first applicants to get a grant from that they helped us cover off the cost that we had to work with the academics and the universities and we built out a basic search which would allow you to look at publicly available Court information so case law effectively H to some extent and then legislation so what’s published online like open available legislation so we were looking at the consumer rights act which had recently been updated at the time so in effect you could say I bought a car within this in the last two weeks the gearbox failed it would then pull up the right area of the consumer rights act and say okay here’s what you know you’re entitled to or what the what the law says or the legislation says in relation to that and then using what we could get cas law to say actually there have been a number of cases that I’ve set a precedent in this type of area here’s roughly where you were go now you need legal help so what we wanted to do was triage the stuff at the start to tell people well actually the stuff that the problem you’ve had is very common and you could follow this route so you could think about maybe commoditised areas like I don’t know claims against Airlines or there’d be various things that you could maybe tackle when we did that and we built the very basic thing at the very beginning we thought that was the way to go we would funnel out or create opportunities for law firms pass them to law firms and say Here’s a pre-qualified opportunity from Callum over here we know who he is H here’s his scenario here’s a kind of brief pass on to them but all of the law firms that we then approached said well actually the cost to acquire these new clients is really high because we need to go through this risk-based process this anti- money laundering process this  

[10:00] onboarding process and it’s paper based and you need to bring the client in and the risk is that this could be kind has caught up in some sort of fraud or organised crime the value is low we probably want couldn’t deal with it just at the volume so they effectively said like if you build a system that can help us do that and make that much more streamlined and better then we’ll buy that so we thought well maybe we’ll just build that and we’ll come back to the other stuff so we put all of the work that we had on hold in relation to supporting the open publishing of case law which is still a really difficult area it’s really challenging there’s loads of Ip around it there’s all sorts of entrenched kind of situations going on there how it’s managed how it gets published the data format and how can you do anything with it so we paused a all of that and said we’ll come back to that but ultimately the intention with Amiqus is make it fast and easy for people to get access to legal help that was it and the problem that I had was I didn’t get it I didn’t get I didn’t speak to a solicitor early enough or know how much that was going to cost to get a little bit of advice early on and say you know what you’re probably really upset about this you were right but in fact what’s going to happen here is you’re not going to get anything you need to walk away now and you should seek advice and like you know wrap up the business do that you know manage that properly that ideally would have been the message that I got from someone in the very beginning but we didn’t and that then led into the whole process and the business failing the business likely would have failed anyway that was more of mistakes made along the way around concentration risk for like big clients didn’t pay us the painting and decorating business would have failed anyway I think ultimately because the financial crash had happened that was out with our control we had what we did control over who were the large clients we thought that the clients who we’d put in that were like big rocks like you would have lots of little job residential bits of work but the big kind of cash flow would come from the larger clients potentially naively thinking we would get paid all of that and get paid on time or get paid to contract that was the Assumption and that was wrong so the business yeah ultimately failed but the intention was if it failed for me someone who had lived here all my life with the network you know I’m not really coming from a disadvantaged background as such I speak the language like I’m from here and I couldn’t navigate my way to do that then there must be hundreds of thousands of other people who are in the same or a more difficult position not particularly in consumer rights or like in you know a dispute where you’re going to use litigation but just all sorts of things that go on and a lot of those things we’ve started to unravel or find as we’ve gone along the journey with amiqus yeah I think at that time that you’re talking about  certainly the extent to which law firms were marketing themselves online and I know because we were right at the beginning of that is that it was a green field at that time and actually been able to find the type of Legal Information that now you could find very readily through searching on Google as to who might be the right company to help you what your likelihood what your likely chances of success we’re living in a sort of different world from that point of view and I also know how difficult it is to get into a situation where you are generating leads for lawyers and you’re able to arrange a commercial relationship on the back of that is quite a difficult thing unless it’s in very specific categories such as personal injury Etc but so you decided to Pivot your idea at that point on the basis of early feedback and you’ve drilled down more into the anti-money laundering aspect and removing that as an obstacle for from lawyers that’s in the way of lawyers taking on new clients who you told me a wee bit about how that started but a bit more information on your business plan getting some funding together and where you are now how many years later what was that like eight years ago eight years ago eight years ago yeah so how we actually got it going from that point we didn’t have anything so we had no funding there wasn’t as though I was coming from like a great exit from a previous business or anything like that  I’d come from doing voluntary work for Citizens advice in the sheriff court so at the time I was trying to figure out what exactly is going on when people are going to court whether it’s small claims or otherwise and I had some knowledge around that so I kind of built up some expertise around you know what was going on and that was particularly around mediation so how were people resolving things what were they doing but we never had any Capital we had goodwill like so we had a network of people who were able to help or support Scotland is in a really positive position from an early funding kind of landscape for early stage businesses so grant funding early stage Angel syndicates that type of thing exist and they have done for a long time so we were able to tap into that and follow the well-trodden path which is Scottish Edge it’s a funding competition to support early stage businesses we got about £100,000 over a range of applications through that H which was supported by Scottish government it was John swinney at the time who backed at RBS and the hunter Foundation put that together and we benefited from that so it was a a grant that we got there was a portion of loan which we paid back so having gone through and pitched through that process or various other things that exist like e another one still goes on today so it’s a an investors’ conference that you present your business idea you know pitch what you’re doing get a six minute slot to do that on a stage did that picked up some early stage support there and really it was Angel investment type funding so people who were able to access tax breaks through hmrc a scheme called e where you can get some income tax written off against the risk of your investment so we raised some very early Angel money from others who are new and a couple of people who were involved in the princes trust originally prin Scottish youth business trust one of them had sold a business to Isel who make card point of sale product so when you’re paying contact list they’d sold the business to them and they then got bought by PayPal so a couple of the earliest investors had said I really like don’t really understand what you’re doing you think this is going to go somewhere and you know put in a little bit of money someone else had sold their business to F and a big kind of online fantasy sports business who are still around today in a different form but we got ear early support from individuals who were in that position who had either started sold their business that were doing technology type businesses and that was the basis of it to really get started we didn’t have any paying customers so we weren’t bringing in any Revenue initially and we had to get over that first maybe 18 months of really not having much in the way of overheads to actually start the business but we had very early support from when you say we were you doing it with somebody else when I set up there were there were others so there was myself Katherine who was our accountant at the time and had the painting business she came on and to the business we had Rick and Steve who were based in Cambridge who W was an engineer one was a designer they had their own little agency in Cambridge building websites and different products for people we had Robie who was a product manager it’s now at meta he’s been there for a long time previously at free agent who were a fintech business accountancy business based in Scotland who had grown across the UK and got bought ultimately by RBS they had listed on him he was in there and had been through some of that journey and then someone who he knew dug he had been based in infrastructure and service side security and banking this sounds like a complicated inal set up it was so we had there were five others plus me and I basically went to the mall and said look we’re going to need a range of expertise to be able to get this going this is a complex problem we’re going to have to try and solve I’m not going to be able to do it myself then have an engineering background but to bring together product engineering design security and finance looked like that would be a good mix to begin with usually it’s CEO CTO that’s it like that’s just the usual model you got someone on technical side so Chief technical officer and then Chief exec but said well actually we’re going to need to do this differently so when we set it up we said right we’ll allocate 10% of all of the shares to that founding group they weren’t all able to give up what they were doing full-time so they all had various things going on commitments families jobs mortgages I didn’t have any of those things so I’d said well I’m going to go all in I’ll have 90% of the shares we’ll allocate 10% across you all so you all have 2% that will change over time but you need to trust that I’ll grow the business and I’ll bring in the external investment so the value of this will be exponentially different from today but you will always have your 2% so it’s quite common and early stage technology businesses that you have like an Emi scheme or a share option scheme and that’s the most tax efficient way of doing that but you’ve got an option on those shares but instead we said well that might be the case but you could you know leave in six months and have nothing more to do with Amiqus but for this initial period like it’s really important that everyone’s incentivised to be involved you’re not going to be here all day seven days a week you know that I’m going to be putting in but you know that’s what how we’re going to run it s and agreed and we allocated to 10% elsewhere and then we started to build from that point so we had the right type of people around who could guide and help us avoid making bad mistakes or doing stupid things early on and then we’ve grown from there now about 65 people at the moment and we’ll be growing a bit more this year as well and so tell me a bit more now about the Amiqus service what it helps law firms do H what the benefits are of it and also around the sort of Revenue growth and sort of share structure that you have now MH yeah so we effectively provide a software platform into lots of law firms there’s maybe about 600 law firms around the UK like nine out of 10 of the biggest ones in Scotland all have Amiqus sitting behind the scenes to some extent and we help them manage their compliance challenges whether that’s onboarding new clients so covering off all the AML challenges they’ll have whether that’s policies controls and procedures risk assessment and building that in typically will integrate with other case management systems or practice Management systems and we will help them cover off the field client Journey so when they’re doing the onboarding or client Inception client intake client on client opening like whatever terminology is applied in whichever firm that’s all the steps from capturing a document source of funds source of wealth it will cover off all of the pep sanctions and adverse media check so as the regulations evolve we stay ahead of that provide all the requirements that a law firm will need to meet whether they’re a so practitioner a High Street firm or a multinational and so we’ve got clients across the FI spectrum and it’s really important for us to be accessible for small law firms based on the amount of consolidation that’s going on it’s important that to be able to transact and the cost to transact shouldn’t be prohibitive through compliance because there a lot of things you now need to do so it’s important for us that smaller law firms can still do the right thing and typically small law firms are the ones that are at highest risk because if I was an organised crime gang or I was trying to commit fraud I’m not going to go to one of the largest law firms because you would assume they’ve got systems in place so typically smaller ones are at higher risk because they’re going to have people take a pop or have a go and think oh we’ll try and put this transaction through this smaller firm but so that’s in effect what we help them do make it faster and easier a great client experience is one side but on the other it’s significantly reduced the risk attached to taking on their new clients and making that viable through the software and so you said you’ve gone from 0 to 65 how’s your Revenue tracking or from that point of view yeah from a revenue point of view early on it was pretty tough it was really hard like we were selling into a difficult regulated market and initially there’s a lot of scepticism correctly to be like oh are you able to do this is this really the best way of doing it maybe we should get our clients to come in for a coffee and have a chat client doesn’t really want to come in for a coffee and a chat when they’re selling their flat or moving home or getting access to advice they want the face to- face advice they don’t want the admin so there was initially a bit of scepticism and like challenge to get past so early revenues were tricky probably for the first couple of years there wasn’t really so much going on Revenue wise is that tough is that hard yeah really difficult because you’ve set expectations with investors to say we’re going to go off and do all these things we’re going to grow and when you set a high expectation and you miss it you know that’s of your own making and that’s you know diff how were those conversations difficult yeah we’ve had loads of board meetings where it was like we’re going to turn the corner here how are we going to figure this out what you’re going to do you know the clocks ticking the amount of money that you’re using on a monthly basis you’re burning all this cash that’s not going to go on for forever in different places businesses are funded differently as well so the appetite to risk here and the amount of early stage investment you’ll get is different if you’re in the US but there are pros and cons like there’s loads of reasons why being in the UK is a great place to be also in Scotland specifically for the D’angel network and there’s various other things that are really positive but there’s some things that are challenge the amount of cash you’ve got the amount of time you’ve got to prove you’re going somewhere is less so that was hard so that was probably the first little while when you’re proving yourself out and then after that like the last five years we’ve doubled Revenue every year so we’ve went double double dou double double and as we’ve been doing that that’s then proven well we are going somewhere and we are you know making progress so we’re the Delight do a ranking every year of Technology compan companies and we’ve been in the fast 5050 the last two years so one of the fastest growing technology businesses in the UK 22 and 23 and then in Scotland we were the fastest and I think the third fastest the year just gone by and that’s based on a four-year Revenue growth so look at a point in time four years ago what was your base Revenue there and what’s the percentage growth to now and so for us it’s great because it’s not like a judging panel saying oh yeah you’re a nice company you’re a good company got be do the right thing and you know be seen as like an ethical well-run business but with the fast 50 for us that was a Line in the Sand to say we can behave and we’re Purpose Driven we behave in the right way we do the right thing we look after our clients and as a result we’re we’re growing really quickly as well so that’s the last few years and in the face of financial times do a ranking of the EU and we’re in the top quarter of fastest growing companies of thousand fastest grown companies in EU and that one went across all sectors and we were like 45th I think across all sectors for the UK and so we know as a benchmark we’re doing well and more recently there’s a UK government program called future 50 and that’s the fastest growing or Highest Potential growth stage business that go a kind of cohort approach there’s a bunch of businesses like  Skyscanner and to like a random mixture across sectors and we’ve just joined that so for us that was a great kind of Line in the Sand to say we’re making good progress in Revenue growth as part of it but ultimately the revenue comes as a result of lots of other work so it’s I would always refer to it as being like a lagging indicator you need to do loads of good things before the revenue is going to catch up so there have been years where we we still spend more money than we make it the moment so not yet profitable and that’s something we’re like really focused on right now so the external investment we’ve got the capital invested by other investors which now is like bigger funds and other people but the big push is be sustainable you know be at a point where we’ve got free cash flow as opposed to growing and using external investment to grow so we don’t use a lot now but revenue for this year should be about 6 million from an annual recurring basis and how’s that from a mindset point of view because you know I’ve always thought to a certain extent in Scotland and the UK one can have a mindset as you need to be making money from the word go whereas that’s not possible and imagine that was the same in your painting and decorating business you were like right I’m doing this because I want to make money I’ll pay the guys to do the job and hopefully there’s there’s money left over the top that makes this all worthwhile for me the margin and the painting Decor was about 6% or 7% when you took into account everything and margin software is completely different and again we’re delivering a completely different thing so different service like a load of automation so the costs for us are primarily people so 85% of our cost although we provide software it’s implementation is onboard and it’s Engineers it’s user researchers designers so almost all of our cost is people so can to invest into our people growing the team that grows ahead of Revenue so we make investment into the product or platform different things we’re doing to make sure that we can provide a reliable secure service to all of our clients it’s critical to them so in addition to Legal we serve the UK government the Scottish government the NHS all of the National Health Service equivalent HSC and Northern Ireland runs on Amiqus so there’s a big responsibility for us to continue to invest into the platform and obviously our people and thinking about what they’re doing whether it’s summoning a risk and compliance role and at the moment we’re hiring for in-house Council so actually bringing in someone who is a solicitor into the business at this stage is as part of the plan so making those Investments are really important but that costs money so in effect getting that right from the the perspective of you know being in Scotland and thinking you need to be profitable and you know that’s that’s a big thing that’s different now than in the last few years so in the US or like you would typically hear grow grow grow grow grow at all costs we’ve never kind of gone for that Mantra it’s always been yeah we’re going to grow but not at all cost we’re going to grow and grow sustainably so we will use cash but we’ll use it to a point that we know it’s not going to run away from us that we’re going to be at the point where we’re just burning so much money that we’re going to have to do massive layoffs or like some big change internally to try and get back on track so we’ve never done things in that way but always conscious of the fact that there are others out there who have gone off and raised tens of millions or more and they’ve got a really really high burn rate and they’re nowhere near getting to a sustainable point now the economy’s flipped and you know the interest rate scenario changed the funding environments changed e see and the particular in the US like a huge shift where there’s been massive layoffs and loads of large tech companies as well businesses got that same approach we’ve not been caught in that because of how we’ve been running the approach that we’ve had so thankfully it’s switched and it’s going to play in our favour where you know three or four years ago if you said you grown fast enough it would be maybe tripling or quadrupling or you’re not in that top quartile and that’s changed now to say you need to be growing but you need to be efficient as well so I think that’s cause you’re from Edinburgh you’re a bit like Titan front but about halfway in the middle so usually people maybe initially struggle to say where is where are you from like what’s going on there and are you are you from Glasgow like no clearly I don’t have a Glasweigan accent but equally I don’t have an ed accent but I think maybe there’s a blend of the just I am Scottish but the business is across the UK so we’ve got lots of clients doing different things in different sectors across the UK but yeah fundamentally we were started in Edinburgh we’ve got an office in Edinburgh and now I live there but there’s probably something built in that the I don’t know whether it’s feeling like the underdog or like the the scepticism whether that’s maybe quite a healthy thing to think actually are you going to get this done you’re going to do it or the Assumption they probably won’t amount to much that’s maybe like an inbuilt Scottish psyche thing yeah I think that’s it’s something that’s can be helpful if understood but you know I understand that you work across different sectors now but the way that I viewed it was you started off as being a sort of legal Tech business as you’re addressing a legal issue and you’ve you know I started off in sort of legal Tech but in the same way that you describe I was I was too advanced at that time and actually the market and the mindset and the view of what technology you could do as far from what it is now what do you think of legal Tech in Scotland and the UK what impact do you think it’s going to have on lawyers going forward I mean you might not even care and you’ve also tied up with Valla recently so be nice to have a we bit of a chat about that as well yeah so legal Tech in the UK I’d say has equivalence as anywhere like so might not have as big as budgets like applied to some of the companies so they won’t maybe get as much funding but there’s certainly a load of activity so Autec UK there’s a bunch going on Valla have been involved in that to some extent we’re involved with LA Scot Tech and have been for a number of years so sit on that board to provide a as a participant or as a a company who who are a legal tech company supporting  hundreds of law firms and so we would able to give that you know sector specific view is opposed to coming from a primarily legal background although that board is really broad that there’s input from people across the whole profession so I think there’s a lot of activity there’s another May in the past being a bit hype around or and again May the Scot scepticism there of like oh how is this actually going to change the practice of law but you could look at examples like Clio was probably the biggest one 60,000 maybe 70,000 law firms who run on their product that’s crossed like North America AMIA moving in Asia Pacific as well they’ve got a presence across the UK so there are significant businesses who are within like the legal Tech space you’ve obviously got lots of big large incumbents who’ve been around for a long time doing things but smaller companies come along and saying well we could do that we could offer that service we could improve upon that or make something faster and easier for a solicitor or for paralegals or for you know other areas there’s definitely software out there that’s pitched that and whether it’s barristers or Advocates there’s stuff now that should make life easier for people who are involved in practice of law whether you’re a solicitor or otherwise our side touches the be paralegals a lot of the time there’ll be partners who are involved in sign off for taking on new clients who will accept the risk of you we’re taking this client on here’s the background and they’re part of that process so people across a law firm whether if you’re a bigger Law Firm you’ll be in a risk and compliance role where maybe the money laundering reporting officer you’re going to be interacting with software to do that there’s a bunch of people who maybe pivoted towards what we are doing now who have done other things in the past in another area of like legal and or legal Tech so there’s certainly not a shortage this looks like just more and more and more and coming around whether it’s directly in relation to contract analysis tools there’s loads of things that have been around for a long time probably the shift now is the adoption that law firms are actually getting to go past a proof of concept or past a thinking about a few people involved in Innovation it’s more like Knowledge Management lawyers and bigger law firms who are proactively saying how can we better harness the value we’ve got of the senior people here who are not going to be here forever and as they pass on obviously there’s the model where you’re going to progress through from a trainee up into a partner level but how can we make more of the information as an asset what’s technology got to play in that and it seems to be a really big shift so people are now looking at what systems and processes they can put in that are valuable they’re going to add value either for them internally you know with from an efficiency point of view or what improvements can they make for their client you know making their client experience better and it really wide ranging there’s products right across the board and from all different aspects of when you’re going to interact with legal services the example so that’s may be a bit about like the market or how things have evolved I’ve certainly seen a huge change particularly maybe the last five years has been many many more companies around who are created specifically targeting like legal services or to support lawyers there’s probably been a few outliers that have come along and said oh yeah we are going to replace the law firm I think that’s going to happen I think the point being the trusted advisor is just always going to be there so like yeah we’re a technology company but if we want advice on like a particular topic we’re not going to get that online from our he you know clickable bit of content you’d maybe start there but you then want the yeah the senior person to come in afterwards and give you their experience and give you context and also to be able to ask you the right questions which I think sometimes you know that’s moves on this discussion of AI and replacing lawyers my experience of it is that when I’ve required legal advice is that you know I’ve had legal training and I understand a lot of it myself however you have to get asked the right questions because you could be going down a route in terms of your searches that you think is right but in fact you’ve missed out something quite fundamental that entirely changes the whole complexion yeah absolutely and I think that’s the challenge is that through years and years or Decades of experiencing seeing these types of problems people will be able to spot those types of scenarios so when else you could use a system whether it’s rules based or it’s an AI system or whatever it might be there’s always going to be that requirement for the the human in the loop to be adding that level of expertise to say well actually that’s all good and well but this other element over here that’s not been taken into account because you need to ask the question and have the conversation or have the prior knowledge of like other scenarios to actually get involved so I think as things improve like the size of data sets get bigger like their access they training these systems is going to always just increase it’s I see more like the the Microsoft model where they’ve intentionally come out and called their system co-pilot it’s that type of scenario where we more likely see a large whether it’s a magic circle from Silver Circle or like can it start coming down they’ll have their own systems that are trained upon all of their internal data they’re very unlikely to ever let that go anywhere outside the walls of their firm but you would see them having their own proprietary systems that are trained up with their senior partners and whoever else that’s been around for however many decades that are adding in their you know insights to those system so you would access A system that you you’re probably going to pay more for a Slaughter in May example or you know you pick any number of Law Firm because you would know that well this has been trained upon on all of their internal processes and there’ll be certain areas of the law you know if you’re the world leading expert in shipping disputes then you know someone’s going to have that type of dispute that type of problem they’re going to come to your Law Firm because they know that those people are there and obviously the system will do some of the heavy lifting early on still don’t want to talk to the person you know we still speak to people when we are going through like different things like funding yeah you can automate out contracts review steps but ultimately there’s a range of questions that you need to ask and you’re going to go back to that partner who’s ran hundreds and hundreds of these transactions so you will see a lot or certainly there’s a segment of Il legal society that is very skeptical about the use of AI and particularly open AI now I completely get that because I think the opportunity for hallucination shared data Etc however what we’re talking about here which I think is the area that is going to be subject to biggest change and biggest opportunity for firms is actually the understanding that the vast majority of legal advice is actually given privately and never ends up in the public domain and the reasoning and the rationale behind that should exist on proprietary systems and it will really be the training of AI on those systems that will allow lawyers or practitioners to access recover GGY and exchange that information or or format it into a way in which you can communicate with a client based on their prior experience where the biggest opportunity I think exists for law firms and will mean that they don’t end up becoming obsolete is that something you’d agree with yeah I think it’s hard to disagree I think that’s exactly how it is going to go the issues with some of the the systems where you know they’ve just not been through the courts yet like this point about you’ve scraped all this information how much of it’s proprietary like question mark how much of it’s breaching copyright or and you know NDAs or stuff that’s going on like how has it been leaked or where have you got it from that’s just a huge unanswered question so for someone to jump in and start using insert AI product it’s really risky depending on what you’re using it for so if you’re using it as an internal Wiki to like find out what is our policy on XY Z or what’s the general approach to doing this thing fine if the chef in your Law Firm is using it to find recipes to make a nice brunch for your partners great this going be a good use and we have you know lawyers worried that AI is going to to render them obsolete my view of it is that it actually might become the tool or the application that could end up freeing them from the Bellow scenario and that you are able then to price jobs on the basis of value and on the basis of existing information that you have within your system which would facilitate lawyers to be able to sort of interrogate using AI with some reasoning and thought based on the information that they hold in with all their case management systems to then be able to use that read that quite quickly and then be able to work out how they’re then going to apply it to the situation rather than spending all of that time working through it yeah definitely and I think that type of example is exactly why we’re so excited to partner with Vala where they in the process of building a system along those lines to particularly help people who would be at the edge of ever accessing legal help because in their scenario predominantly at the moment it’s employment type disputes where someone’s been discriminated against specifically like that would be a scenario and they either don’t have the the wherewithal the funds the cash to go away and seek kicking off a claim or actually understand what their rights are so the fact that they they’ve got a system that they’re developing which is helping people they’re not giving someone like legal advice they’ve got advisors and they’ve got their system and then ultimately they’re help guiding people who otherwise would be you know pursuing something without any help at all and they be going towards an employment tribe you know situation you know with one hand tied behind their back because they really don’t have a basis to start you know you know go from anywhere and that use case or scenario is like great you’re helping people out who otherwise would have very little Prospect or maybe it’s not even you know for them a conceivable like ideas like how am I going to deal with this you just accept oh I’ve been you know been cut out or whatever’s happened in the workplace just need move on and they’ll have the grievance but they wouldn’t know what to do and it’s not so much about oh well what’s this going to mean for any employer like this is a really bad thing for employer it’s like well employers should behave in the right way you’re not going to tribunal all the time why why you behaving in such a way that someone feels like the grievance is so strong that they’re going to do that will you find scenarios that people maybe trying to abuse it I’d imagine but same thing will apply like there’ll be a way to like work your way through that but overall for us it it just fits in it perfect sense with our kind of values overall about how can we help people access legal help a section of the market that otherwise might not be available to you as well because they’re not they’re not entering it yeah it’s just it wouldn’t happen and there’s a huge unmet need when you think about what has going on within Legal Services people who would be potential users but they either don’t understand how they would interact with it or they wouldn’t have like the financial means to do it another example that we worked on with Glasgow University with Dr Dot Reid and it was in relation to succession and what happens in planning when you’re going through the process of someone is trying to deal with like the the death of a friend family member how they actually working their way through the process to head towards court and then actually manage like what do you do and how do you deal with managing the the process the formal process when you’re dealing with a well and the research that it was in relation to reform like of law like Reed’s been she’s been working on that  for maybe a decade maybe longer with other colleagues looking at how the process could be improved and simpler for people and what they found overwhelmingly was it was people from disadvantage or vulnerable backgrounds who would get into disputes and have problems because the assumption is you’ve someone’s passed away how we’re going to split up all these assets what we’re going to do what’s the tax position when does that kick in where’s the threshold and it’s a really complicated area but the there are effectively like calculations that are done to like figure out like what would happen here where do the where do the numbers go there what happens for someone in that situation and we were contacted by the unit to says this a project you might be interested in we helped them out built something out it’s been a pilot for some time it’s not something it’s like a big public system but the intention there was well we could provide the engineering and the design resource help people create a self-served tool that would help them understand what their rights were and when you’re going through him the process of managing a death and there’s a bunch of other like legal tech companies around X’s are doing loads of great work with lots of law firms around that as well so we we were helping people at the kind of triage stage there and it’s not something that’s been broadly adopted but the next step really is working with Scottish government to help publicise like here’s what you what you’re able to do in Scotland when you’re dealing with this tricky situation but again we would then just provide that to law firms to be like y here’s a way that you can help people at the very front end to understand like what could they do like how do they navigate their way do when do you then need the support of a solicitor to actually manage this process and then actually go through the court so how do you submit all the information to court how do you get this dealt with and it’s through a court clerk effectively so in summary the point the points for you are that one Amiqus was born from a desire to improve access to justice for all that the technology advances that we see currently and particularly around the deployment of AI is less about making lawyers obsolete in any way but is more about enabling access to the legal system from those who otherwise would have found it impossible and they for service and you in most cases there’s got to be a win-win you know and therefore you know from your tie up with Valla for example you’re able to then access a segment of the market that then has to go through the money laundering checks Etc in order to access the legal services that previously would have never gone through that because simply it was prohibitively expensive in the employment law situation you’re not really getting nowhere no fee you you’ve got to start paying from the bat so really the question is how can how as a sector can we deploy technology in such a way so that more people are able to protect their basic legal rights who who would otherwise have found it impossible yeah and I think it’s an net net win because if we can give the tools platforms products systems to law firms to be far more efficient and do things in a really robust way then that’s a great win for them and equally the other side of that if you think of a two-sided Market you then creating opportunities for people who otherwise wouldn’t be thinking about going and talking to a lawyer who would now be able to go and do that because we can support them like one example we’re partnered with the Scottish Refugee Council and we’re them financially with equipment so you imagine we work through a a whole load of laptops like you got a bunch of Engineers who are running through things like they depreciate like to a point where it’s it’s negligible like that asset has gone with a new laptop it’s on a lease so we’ll run through equipment like that it’ll get wiped it’ll get cleared and the the Scottish Refugee Council will run a new Scots program so it helps people who recently arrived here and they’ll be highly qualified but they will have left somewhere and like they’re fled fled in danger like they’re at risk of persecution there’s like serious situation that they’re fleeing and they’ve arrived here to find safety for them and their family and they might well be a dentist and they AR here they can’t work they can’t do anything but they can’t connect with anyone they’ve got no means of communication so we were able to just practically help them out and so we can give that network of people who are new leaders for their communities like who are arriving here give them equipment like you can help them out they can get the setup that the basic things that you would need to to help out so Finance bit there’s the the equipment bit and then the other side’s the Practical side to say well how would we be able to support them like people someone who’s navigating the Asylum process how could they help prove who they are and the credentials they’ve got so for example every single time that you go and try and open a bank account or you going got a job you try and get yourself back into society as You’ know and like like contribute be around like be part like get yourself back in your feet like you shouldn’t have to relive the whole thing of right can you tell me this situation that you know what you’re doing like we can provide the same technology that we’ve got that we help like law firms or investors or whoever like on board and engage we can flip that and give it to people who need it and they can create digital identity that’s meeting all the UK go standards they can access products and services there as well but they’re they need legal help and there’s a bunch of our clients who already provide pro bono legal help to Scottish Refugee Council and others so we can help make the connection to say well here’s what we can do so we’re a technology company we’re going to solve the world or you know but we can play a part in it do the right thing and we can help because we build and grow and can have an impact the bigger we are the more impact we can have and the more we grow the more we can do to solve problems like that whether it’s we can help Vala scale up what they are doing because we’ve got lots of law firms who already know who we are and we can help connect them in equally their product and services brilliant so there’s a big net benefit for us and with the Scottish Refugee Council or others it’s like we can help them out in ways because we’re just getting bigger and we can raise money for them we can give them money but predominantly we can help them help other people to access services including legal help so if they could get fast access to a solicitor and we can offset the cost if they’ve got cost because they need a system to triage stuff or do things and we can do that so it means that there’s a bit of a a virtuous circle you can create overall and ultimately like the reason we set Amiqus up was to help people access legal help we need to build a a scalable profitable successful business to do that but it’s a long-term thing it’s not you know it’s not something you can do within 6 12 month so but it’s definitely a bit of a longer journey and just finally what’s the next stage for Amiqus really I think the stuff we’ve just touched on there around the the two-sided marketplace where it’s critically important for us to be supporting the legal profession going forward it’s like the core of where we we began that’s why we exist so we’re investing heavily in the platform we’ve got the support of our external investors to continue to do that so growing exponentially from where we are the point in the journey we’re talking about is from 5 to 50 So currently we’re turning over a bit more than 5 million but how do we accelerate past 50 million so 10 times bigger than we are today we can have 10 times more impact in doing that and doing so we then offer out support in other areas so we’ve won a contract with the UK government for the next six years to support all employees who are going to be vetted to go into government so it’s a huge opportunity for us to against that so that’s on the staff side so as we continue to develop relationships and build Partnerships on the the staff on boarding side of the business that’s really big scale for us and huge opportunities that then Cycles back into the client side as well so law firms need to verify and manage and vet all other staff as part of the money laundering regulations they also need to take on other clients and run the same thing so building that out to a much larger scale but making things reusable and simple for people is a big bit of it so we’re working on a wallet capability just now that’s linked into our UK government work that we’ve got and we’re accredited by them as a provider for digital identity so in effect it’s providing a a means and a way for a law firm to on board their client and manage all the compliance and when they need to refresh that and redo it they don’t have a massive admin exercise to do it and when a law firm wants to work with or have access to many more potential clients we’ve now got almost 70,000 people a month who are running through Amiqus from recruitment businesses from government contracts from various places and those people are looking for Legal Services products like different things that they can do online so working in partnership with their law firms to help them understand what what things they want to do and help enable in a an online scenario or Marketplace or network so through the wallet capability that we’re building out and working with law firms to help them drive and grow their businesses as well it means we’ll grow at the same time so there’s a lot of like two-sided value that we can help deliver whether it’s from adding and functionality like Valla or being able to connect lawyers into for example here’s a potential person who’s looking for immigration support and we can make all the admin they like touch make sure they’ve covered all follower obligations and if it comes to a solicitor giving some advice to someone over the lunch break like we should make that happen like we should make it simple rather than oh God I’d love for the law firm to have a pro bono policy but actually there’s just so much work that we need to do to make it happen ideally we can you know join up all those dots all right Brant thank you very much and best of luck thank you very much so thanks very much for listening to today’s episode I hope you enjoyed it I hope you’re enjoying our content we’d be delighted to hear any feedback that you have you can find out more about the your your Law Firm success podcast at MLTdigital.co.uk/podcast Please Subscribe please share with your friends please share with anyone who you know that you think would be interested.