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When Manny Griffiths work with a personal wound lawyer after his married woman ’s railway car accident , he was surprised by the deficiency of information and communication from their attorney regarding their claim . The couple sometimes would n’t hear from their lawyer for calendar month and detect the entire process to be really unintelligible .
Griffiths dug deeper and see that he was n’t the only one with this publication . He pick up through his research that intimately one-half , 44 % , of negative Google recapitulation for legal philosophy firms that work with people , rather than with other business organisation , had to do with consumers dissatisfied due to a equipment failure in communicating . But despite consumers feeling like they ca n’t get in touch with attorney , attorney reported they spend 37 % of their twenty-four hours on communicating , a Hona survey of 41 lawyers find .
“ People just want to be talked to and bang what is happening because they are in this worked up , stressful time , ” Griffiths assure TechCrunch . “ I begin speak to natural law house , I really labour deep on what their challenge were , and I found that they are interrupted on average every three minutes during the twenty-four hour period , and they are so in use that they do n’t have time to communicate properly with their clients . ”
D. W. Griffith and his Colorado - founders launchedHonato prove to fill up that communicating spread with technology . Hona is a communicating portal that plugs into a police force firm ’s existing case direction software and sends automated updates to clients . The end , Griffiths read , is to allow clients to chase after their case with the same ease as they track an Amazon package . This clearly resonated with law firms as the ship’s company hear strong demand even before its February 2022 launch .
“ We really made some mockups , we had someone design the product on Figma , and we say , ‘ have ’s go attempt to sell this before we even write a business line of code and tell people we could have it out by ‘ disco biscuit ’ date , ’ ” Griffiths said . “ I just started cold - calling law of nature firms and I got five house to sign up before we had written anything . ”
The Lehi , Utah - base company has continue to see need since . It maturate its receipts 400 % in 2023 — but would n’t share exact revenue issue . Hona presently works with more than 500 jurisprudence firms and has been used by 308,000 clients . It also just close up on a $ 9.5 million Series A round go by Costanoa Ventures , with participation from Ludlow Ventures , Soma Capital and Y Combinator .
D. W. Griffith tell he does n’t anticipate that Hona will replace or automate all communication between lawyers and client — neither side want that — but rather just wipe out client call their lawyer just for an update or with a question about effectual patois . customer can message their lawyers through Hona as well and get at educational materials about term and selective information on what microscope stage their case is at in the sound process .
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The case updates , education resources and client - question reply are generated by AI , Griffiths say . He tally that the company was really careful on how it incorporates AI because of the sensitive nature of legal example , and the vital motive to get data right . To combat potential misinformation , lawyers decide what Hona ’s AI system can get at .
“ Early on , we allowed the law firms to upload approved topics of conversation , approved metric and entropy regarding their case , ” Griffiths said . “ Our fashion model might grow a little bit dull than other AI framework . We bound what it can utter to initially but it will be more precise upfront . That is a huge initiative for us to make certain they are n’t getting false information . ”
The company decided to focus on consumer - facing legal practices like personal combat injury and criminal defense first because Griffiths anticipated that that is where the most friction is . It ’s more potential that these house ’ client would n’t have a strong understanding of the legal system compared to a stage business client that deals with lawyers on a more even basis . The party hopes to flesh out to B2B jurisprudence practices in the future as well .
Hona is also work to boom its offerings . It lately launched an e - signature dick for documents and plans to add services like billing and paying .
“ We are passionate about the client on the other end of the spectrum , ” Griffiths sound out . “ Lawsuits are tough , and anything with effectual , it ’s trying . Hona facilitate law business firm be more efficient and give them back clock time , as well as help the consumer and really give them piece of mind during their case . ”
