The Innovators: Themis Solutions wants to make legal services cheap and universal

Credit: Themis Solutions

Themis Solutions co-founder and CEO Jack Newton

Imagine paying $50 a year and filling out an online questionnaire to update your will

Developing Clio, the leading software platform for law firms to track billable hours, manage cases and invoice clients, helped Themis Solutions raise US$250 million–the most ever for a B.C. startup–from two American growth equity firms in 2019 for a minority stake in the company. But the Burnaby-based software-as-a-service provider with 500-plus staff has a loftier goal in mind. You can read all about it in co-founder and CEO Jack Newton’s newly published manifesto, The Client Centered Law Firm.

Newton wants to make legal services more accessible to the three-quarters of consumers who opt not to hire a lawyer in situations where their services might be beneficial. Through productivity improvements, saving on marble-accented office space and, most important, aligning the offering of legal services with what clients actually want (fixed fees, not billable hours), he hopes to bridge this access-to-justice gap. Imagine, as an example, filling out an online questionnaire to update your will for a $50 annual subscription fee.

The past year has presented a golden opportunity to effect this transition. “What we are starting to see, and this has been really accelerated by COVID-19, is that law firms are looking for ways to acquire clients online, ways to deliver legal services to those clients online and ways to maintain relationships with those clients over the long term online,” Newton says.