Person of the Week: Katie Richards

Katie Richards is a lawyer, innovator and entrepreneur that has identified an unfortunate reality in the legal industry: basic legal assistance is simply too expensive. Most Australians can’t afford it, and Katie saw this a major opportunity for disruption. In 2013, Katie started her own firm called Virtual Legal, driving a high-energy team of lawyers to provide quality legal services through an online platform. Her firm uses specialised technology such as DISC behavioural profiling to cut costs and provide a more affordable service. Despite successfully cutting costs by 40-60%, Katie still believed that Australians may still find the fees too costly.

She is also the CEO/Founder of Law On Earth, a public self-service legal platform that launched just this week. Similarly to Virtual Legal, Law On Earth mainly uses an online platform. However, the difference is that Law On Earth uses AI and algorithms to create tailored documents and agreements depending on the client’s needs before they even talk to a lawyer for review. Saves valuable time for the lawyers to do more work for others, while making legal fees more reasonable for Australians.

Despite being a recent entrant in the RegTech industry, Katie has a multitude of legal experience which she can draw from. She has been the legal adviser to Domino’s Pizza, National Australia Bank, GE Mining and Ecowash Mobile amongst other big projects.

Katie is truly an innovative mind that we need to keep improving the world we live in. Definitely a worthy Person of the Week!