Interview with Yehor Melnykov, the CEO of Lawrina [2023]

It’s my pleasure to be here! I’m doing great, and so is my family. My son had taken up English studies while I kept busy with IT product development — something that started as a hobby when I was 14 years old but quickly became a passion of mine.

With an engineering background, programming experience & full-cycle project implementations, I focus on creating products people need, never straying towards projects steeped heavily in entertainment or frivolity. My primary expertise lies in product engineering — which brings immense personal satisfaction as creating projects tailored to people’s needs is my vocation. Similarly, right now, I’m working on what matters most: furthering humanity’s growth by developing a living ecosystem of Lawrina.

After the Unicheck, I was confident in my ability to develop powerful and impactful products. I wanted to push myself further and take on bigger projects in unfamiliar industries. Being well-versed in the educational sector due to our shared experience as students seemed like a perfect area for me, but a bit serene. So, when our team brought up the idea of legaltech —  an unexplored space —  it felt like just the challenge I was looking for! Thus, my goal became creating an impressive product or even an ecosystem of products in the legaltech niche from scratch.

So I can say that the previous achievements with Unicheck inspired us to realize our ambitions for Lawrina. This has set a new benchmark that we strive to exceed going forward.

Well, that’s actually one more point for motivation. Indeed, regularly facing legal issues is not an unfamiliar concept in our daily lives. This reality stands true for both individuals and companies. Solutions can seem daunting for “mere mortals” due to the lack of knowledge and education. And there’s no way of dealing with it except for turning to the lawyer (I thought so until Lawrina came along). 

On the other hand, we understand that lawyers often deal with monotonous work that limits them from showcasing their potential when providing value for customers. At Lawrina, our mission is to bridge the gap between those who have unique legal knowledge and their clients and assist both sides of this equation. 

Therefore, for non-lawyers, we offer solutions to legal matters without involving lawyers through our legal guides and contract templates. Easy, fast, convenient, and with a better user experience. At the same time, we understand some problems can be solved only with a qualified lawyer. Our products aim to give lawyers the tools to maximize efficiency and refine their skills. And here comes Loio, through which lawyers can say goodbye to tedious tasks and focus on higher-end work. Our software automates review & drafting processes — eliminating the need for proofreading contracts, copying/pasting clauses from previous ones, and spending hours on mundane work. So that legal professionals are free to focus on more complex matters.

That is, although Lawrina’s products are aimed at different audiences (in fact, at lawyers and their clients), they strive to achieve the same. By increasing access to legal information, legal aid, and fair trial, we move closer to our number one goal of improving human rights worldwide. We won’t stop on this, as we are committed to creating more tools to reduce routine work for lawyers while helping people solve simple everyday legal matters with confidence and support.

Of course, the main product that solves such a request is Lawrina Match, which helps to find a reliable legal team or an excellent independent lawyer. At the same time, since Lawrina is an ecosystem, we strive to make it a single flow that offers multiple solutions. From detailed explanations of law and regulations in our step-by-step guides, through templates that help you do the heavy lifting on contract creation, or through finding an experienced lawyer or legal team for personalized assistance — all according to specific needs. 

In fact, we have crafted the Lawrina ecosystem as a universal tool, mainly to give users access to reliable products that aid in finding solutions tailored just right for them.

As a follow-up to the previous question, different situations call for different sollutions. As confidentiality may be of the utmost importance, communicating with one of our carefully-selected lawyers via the Lawrina Match will keep it protected without any involvement from our side. Lawrina will not be involved in such communication directly, but we will create an excellent place for collaboration.

That’s just an awesome question for somebody combining the roles of co-founder, CEO&CTO, overseeing product and technical aspects of the business! But yeah, as Lawrina continues to grow and develop into a full-fledged ecosystem, we are concentrating on perfecting each component. Consequently, achieving work-life balance has become difficult for me — though it’s expected with such ambitious goals in mind and the stage of the project! Ultimately, this imbalance will be worth it when we reach our dream destination of an all-encompassing system.

We are dedicated to providing superior products, so there will be multiple releases to keep abreast of our customers’ needs. And since it is our mission for everyone to have access to legal assistance no matter what device they use, we have ambitious plans to enter the mobile app market.

Also, leveraging our long-standing expertise in machine learning (ML) and the growing popularity of extra-large language models, we want to incorporate these technologies into all our products for optimal strength from a technological perspective and maximize AI usage. Our product Loio is an example that demonstrates this concept; under the hood, it is wholly composed of combined ML technologies and methods. We are looking to apply these principles through templates with great potential ahead!

Indeed we have meetings here and there, every day with team leads, and every month the whole-company Q&A session. But essentially, our company is dedicated to cultivating an environment with a flat hierarchy and maximal communication, synchronized and asynchronized as well. We adapt communications and try not to do too many meetings. Unnecessary bureaucracy is minimized while we strive towards achieving our desired results without sacrificing efficiency in our processes. We are also genuinely proud of our culture — anyone can turn to anyone for help and easily get it.

My first advice would be to make your ideas come to life, it’s essential that you take the initiative and get started. Don’t sit around waiting for a sign; great opportunities don’t always present themselves immediately! I have experienced firsthand this — how my brilliant plan can be derailed by hesitation. As I was afraid to act, someone else came up with a similar idea and implemented it successfully while I was dismayed. So don’t miss out on your big break: jump in now to see where you go with it! Even if you end up only with experience, that’s great to achieve.

The second rule that I (again) learned through trial and errors is how essential it is to communicate and gain a thorough understanding of your users’ needs. By learning more about their daily routines and the problems they are trying to solve with or without software, you will be equipped with valuable insights on how best to develop a product that meets (or even exceeds) your customers’ expectations. 

And my final third tip would be to use your product, even if you don’t need it for personal or professional activities. When crafting Loio, even though I’m not an attorney, I engaged with our legal team and asked questions about how they draft and review documents, what should be 100% contained in them, and why things must be presented this way. Then afterward, I attempt to mimic their procedures to gain a behind-the-curtain understanding of lawyers’ jobs without any prior experience or training. Simulating situations is also great practice –- we recently attempted creating lease agreements among our team while utilizing these tactics!

As the legal technology sector evolves rapidly, Lawrina is focused on a two-year planning horizon to ensure our product meets the growing demands. But if we extend this framework a bit, I would say that after five years from now, we anticipate 1 million monthly active users (including lawyers and general audiences) solving their legal problems by using our legal ecosystem.