On the matter of management technology, Lawyer Monthly is pleased to introduce Pekama, a legal management technology platform that links lawyers and clients, emails and documents, tasks and deadlines, all from one screen.
Here to explain how it works, its benefits and how it fills the voids the technology industry is missing, is Zeev Fisher, CEO & Co-Founder of Pekama.
Can you describe briefly how you came to found Pekama?
I was trying to improve my private practice and at some point, it occurred to me that using technology is the most sustainable way to do that. It started with going completely paperless about 10 years ago, when it was almost unheard of, adopting the cloud very early on and continuing on a constant journey to automate as much as possible.
At some point, I realized that we simply can’t get the legacy products to do what we wanted, so we started building our own. The improvement to my own firm’s workflows was so overwhelming that I started asking people about it; I was repeatedly told we should spin it out and have others enjoy it as well. I was introduced to a first potential investor who said he wishes to invest straight away and subsequently introduced me to three more investors, all of whom agreed to invest. This was then followed by another 10, including a prominent law firm, so it seemed quite clear that we had something good going.
What are the top assets that set Pekama apart from other management systems for law firms, making it a thought leader in its field?
Pekama solves the single biggest issue that lawyers are facing – communicating internally and externally with clients. The average lawyer receives about 120 emails a day and spends over 50% of its time dealing with them – filing them, searching for relevant information, dealing with attachments, responding etc. This is the single biggest problem that lawyers have and none of the existing tools remotely touch on this problem. Big firms have legacy document management systems that also deal with email, but these tools are slow, manual and expensive. Small firms don’t even have that.
We managed, without a modern interface, both on desktop and mobile, to solve this problem completely, in an efficient and easy-to-use solution. Beyond that, Pekama integrates modern tools such as Xero and Box for document management, allowing its customers to build its secure and compliant tool set of best-of-kind applications. As a cloud and fully mobile solution, Pekama allows lawyers to be completely infrastructure independent and operate in a full scalable environment.
In the particular context of patents trademarks, Pekama also comes with the added benefit of data services automatically connecting to patent and trademark databases and fetching data automatically. Normally this type of work is done by expensive support staff.
How does the successful use of Pekama’s services logistically translate into increased profitability and efficiency?
The research shows that in other industries, similar project management tools saved over 30% of the time, and often 50% of the time, of the relevant parties. Beyond the profitability and efficiency, Pekama also delivers a modern and impressive client experience.
As a thought leader in the use of cloud services, what challenges would you say this technology sector is currently facing and what are the solutions ahead, or which Pekama provides?
With the issue of compliance recently resolved, there is no doubt that we will see lawyers, as accountants before them, moving to the cloud in increasing numbers. Early adopters will likely benefit from a higher market share and an increase in profit.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
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