An inspiring journey, full of motivations but also with solutions to the legal sector with the help of Artificial Intelligence, is the one that leads to Formulaw.
The co-founder of Formulaw, Violetta Skittidi, shared in a recent interview with The Future, her inspiring journey and the motivations behind the company’s inception and growth.
Formulaw, an AI-powered legal technology startup, was born out of a desire to simplify legal services for small businesses, a need she observed firsthand as friends and family struggled with legal complexities
Its mission is to democratize access to legal services, making them more affordable and user-friendly. The company addresses two major challenges in the legal industry: the high cost of legal services and the perceived complexity that discourages small businesses from seeking necessary legal help. By leveraging AI, Formulaw offers a comprehensive toolkit for legal needs
As a woman co-founder in a tech startup, she has faced unique challenges, including bias and scepticism about her expertise. However, with a supportive network and a determination to overcome these obstacles, she has become an advocate for women in tech, speaking at various panels and promoting gender diversity within her company.
Looking ahead, Formulaw has plans to continue innovating by enhancing its AI features and exploring new markets in the EU and Middle East. The co-founder envisions a future where AI significantly improves transparency and pricing in legal services, making them more accessible to small and medium-sized businesses.
Getting into legal tech
Can you tell us about your background, and what inspired you to co-found Formulaw?
I’ve always been a philomath and have always enjoyed learning and exposing myself to different challenges. I studied economics, philosophy, and politics at Northeastern London and I then moved to study law at the University of Law, London. I am now a qualified lawyer in Cyprus.
We got the motivation to start Formulaw when we saw countless friends and family struggling with the legal side of their business, forcing them to navigate the complexities alone or overspend for basic problems.
What experiences during your time at Northeastern University London influenced your decision to venture into legal technology?
I was lucky enough to have attended Northeastern London because they were very nurturing towards our creativity and encouraged us to think out of the box.
When at Northeastern, we had a business idea to start JetLink; an affordable, private-charter aviation. With the support of Northeastern, we were able to win university start-up competitions and receive recognition and awards from Warwick Business School for our idea.
I feel that this experience at JetLink was important for building my confidence to take on bigger and bolder challenges. Maybe it’s a false confidence, but we thought that we had something meaningful to contribute and could help address and modernise the way people look at legal services by making them affordable and easily accessible.
We built Formulaw on the vision that legal services should be more accessible and affordable for all.
A mission to fulfil
What is the mission of Formulaw, and how do you envision it transforming the legal industry?
We built Formulaw on the vision that legal services should be more accessible and affordable for all. We’re in a time where the general dissatisfaction of the legal industry is at an all-time high. I remember reading a statistic that around 55% of businesses surveyed are either dissatisfied or considering changing their legal advisors.
We believe that these challenges are twofold. Firstly, legal knowledge has a glass ceiling that discourages participation, and I feel that this is the biggest factor that turns away small businesses. The second part is that legal services have become too expensive even for small issues, meaning that smaller businesses cannot afford legal for tasks that are not business-critical.
We believe in a world where AI and other technologies can alleviate the perceived complexity and cost of legal services, thus empowering businesses to handle their legal needs with confidence and ease.
Formulaw is not a single AI tool that can help manage questions, but instead a legal Swiss army knife designed for all your legal needs.
How does Formulaw’s AI-powered assistant work to improve access to legal services for SMEs?
The best way to think about Formulaw is as a toolkit. Formulaw is not a single AI tool that can help manage questions, but instead, a legal Swiss army knife designed for all your legal needs. We have created different proprietary AI-focused tools that help you with the entire contract process from drafting, reviewing, executing and managing your contracts like a lawyer.
For example, our drafting tool understands the context of the contract you are drafting it from the ground up, turning your language into a business-ready contract.
Our review tools focus on giving you an extra set of eyes and are trained to analyse a contract like a lawyer, giving you fairness and giving you recommendations on how to reduce your legal risks.
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced when launching Formulaw, and how did you overcome them?
I think you are never really prepared for how much a start-up truly humbles you. We received hundreds of rejections for calls and have even been told that our business idea sucked to our faces.
But I would say all our challenges at their foundational level were due to our lack of credibility. The legal industry is rightfully traditional (because there are serious consequences if something goes wrong). We’re still trying to overcome it, but we feel we’ve come a massive way and can still go even further.
We focused on meaningful partnerships by working on partnership deals with reputable companies and demonstrating our values by openly discussing our algorithms and how we’ve built them. We believe that this approach has largely been successful and opened doors for us. We can’t speak too soon, but there’s an exciting partnership that we’re working on that we can hopefully share in a month.
AI enhances transparency
How does Formulaw plan to disrupt the traditional legal services market?
I truly believe in the concept that all industries to a certain extent are moving into a commodified services economy. When I say commodification of legal services, I mean the transformation of legal work into standardized, easily replicable products or services, facilitated by technology, increasing efficiency, accessibility and reducing costs.
This is not a radical concept; it has already happened in other industries and has also been happening in the legal industry but at a slower rate.
Think for example individuals/companies paying for contract templates, online signature tools and even hiring freelance lawyers on a marketplace for small tasks.
An interesting statistic by Gartner is that the commodified legal services market will hit $50 billion by 2027 due to the radical advancement of AI.
We would like to think that we are not pushing for a revolution like the Ubers in the world, but instead, an evolution into where we see the market is going.
We also wanted to focus on small to medium-sized businesses (a segment we’ve defined as 1 – 200 employees) because this industry is largely neglected in most markets, and they are the silent majority. Our goal is to shift them into proactive actors where they will willingly and actively participate and contribute to the legal system.
By leveraging AI, we can break down the entire contract process and guide SMBs through it, only consulting with a lawyer when necessary.
In what ways do you think AI can improve transparency and pricing in legal services?
I’m hesitant to say that AI is a miracle potion that can solve all issues of transparency and pricing in the legal industry. However, it plays a huge role in improving these issues.
We originally tested Formulaw as an AI company before OpenAI released ChatGPT. We created a custom triaging AI that can look at your desired legal service and give you a price for it. That went disastrously. The lawyers we trialled were not willing to have a closed model detail what a fair price (that version of the formula was subsequently abandoned).
When ChatGPT got released, we were willing to put our money where our mouths were and have another try at it.
Where we believe AI can improve transparency and pricing by removing the fog around legal services. We can break down the entire contract process and guide SMBs through it and only consult with a lawyer when necessary.
I strongly believe that AI can enhance transparency and pricing in legal services by providing clear, data-driven insights into the cost and value of legal work. By automating routine tasks, AI can significantly reduce the time and effort required for medial tasks such as drafting, and reviewing contracts, leading to more predictable and transparent pricing.
Encouraged not to give up
As a woman co-founder in a tech startup, what unique challenges have you faced, and how have you addressed them? Are there any challenges related to Cyprus?
I’ve faced a few challenges as a woman related to bias and scepticism about my expertise in the tech and legal sectors.
For example, during meetings with potential investors, I used to receive more rejections than my male business partner, and sometimes these investors would ask my business partner to explain areas of my expertise instead of me. Fortunately, I had a supportive network that stood up for me during such incidents, and I felt encouraged to not give up.
I also believe that since Cyprus has become a tech hub, it brought in diverse talent and has also made more people tolerable to female founders. I’d also like to mention what an amazing job TechIsland is doing, by offering great networking opportunities and support for founders and shedding light on women in leadership on the island.
What advice would you give to other women aspiring to enter the tech startup space?
I’m amazed at how many women have been engaged in STEM and the tech-sphere recently, and I hope it keeps growing.
What I wish I’d learnt sooner was having a stronger conviction in our product and not faultering when someone would give us criticism. This is because ultimately, the criticisms helped us improve and strengthen our product’s business model.
Other advice I would give is to try to find a mentor in the space who is an expert in your start-up’s field who can help supplement your knowledge and also introduce you to potential investors.
Start-ups are a mentorship game
You are known for advocating for women in tech and supporting other entrepreneurs. Can you talk about some of your initiatives in this area?
Flattered that you think of me as an influence in the area. But I think I try to help in multiple ways; the first one is that we have an internal quota when we have internships and hires that we should have some gender diversity.
Outside internal policy, I try to speak at Women Innovator panels as much as I can. I’ve spoken multiple times at my Alma mater and have also had the honour of speaking at the British Kazakh Law Society. I believe that representation is important to show others thinking of participating that it’s not just a ‘boy’s club’ and that working in tech is an amazing and hospitable space for all.
Finally, I think we were given 2 ears and one mouth for a reason. I try to attend as many seminars and speaking engagements as a spectator to even learn and grow in my professional career and get a bit more motivation from others who are further along than me.
How important is mentorship in the startup ecosystem, and who have been your mentors or role models in your journey?
Start-ups are a mentorship game; you either have a mentor or are looking for one. I wish I had reached out to one sooner.
On a strategic side, having a mentor can help open doors in the industry for you and hold you accountable for deadlines and strategy. On the personal side building your own business is an intimidating and lonely ordeal so it’s amazing to just have someone to talk to and empathise with you at the end of the day.
When choosing a mentor, I would say to look at someone who has been in your industry or parallel and don’t be afraid to reach out to them even if you don’t know them personally
We’ve had and still have a few mentors, one being Mark Beer OBE – an expert in legal technology and a renowned professional in the international legal space. Eliza Loucaidou is another mentor who has been the manager of Deloitte’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre and is helping us navigate the complexities of the start-up space. In addition, Andreas Savvides – partner at PKF, mentors us on our product’s financial and business strategy.
The best part is really seeing a vision come to life and watching it grow as a product.
A surreal process
You launched your MVP in April and have already won several awards. Can you share more about these achievements and what they mean for Formulaw?
Honestly, the entire process has been surreal, and we can’t even begin to put into words how much this means to me the Formulaw team.
So, in order of what we have won is: Deloitte Fast 50 awards in Cyprus and Middle East in two categories, and we have also won in 2 categories for Northeastern University’s Women Who Empower Innovator awards.
The awards are not just nice mantle pieces but have also materialised in tangible benefits; the obvious one is the grant money we received from Northeaster’s awards which is helping a lot. The second way is that the awards have brought us new users, partnerships, and credibility and acted as an acid test for our product.
What has been the most rewarding part of your journey with Formulaw so far?
While the awards are amazing piecemeal, I would say that they are not the best part. The best part is seeing a vision come to life and see it grow as a product. It amazes me that a product we just took a ‘gamble’ on has gained as much legitimacy as it has.
We have had the amazing opportunity to meet with Fortune 500 companies and go into the meeting as equals, we are even called at times to give consulting advice on AI strategy for companies.
I am optimistic about the future and look forward to what it brings, we have ambitious goals and can’t wait to look forward to 6 months from now and have the same feeling of retrospective appreciation.
My biggest hope for the future is that another young company will make our product look like a dinosaur product.
Looking forward
What are the future plans for Formulaw? Are there any new features or markets you are looking to explore?
Managing a startup is a balance exercise between your vision and your budget. We are proud of what we’ve built, but we are far from the vision. We want to continue to build our advanced AI features on our product side, and additionally want to start integrating our document automation tools to help contracts self-govern.
We are working on some key strategic partnerships which will help distribute our product, giving more users access to it.
Finally, regarding geographic expansion, we aim to extend our services to additional markets in the EU and Middle East regions. Until now, we have operated discreetly in Cyprus, focusing on small, local companies without advertising. However, we are now confident that our product has the potential to resonate with a broader audience.
We have been invited to Dubai at the end of the month to look at raising capital to expand in the region and to explore what the regulatory constraints are.
How do you see the legal technology landscape evolving in the next 5–10 years, and what role do you envision Formulaw playing in that future?
My biggest hope for the future is that in 5–10 years, another young company will make our product look like a dinosaur product.
I already mentioned the commodification of legal services and how I believe every separate aspect of the law will inevitably have a service market associated with it.
I believe that there is a huge space for innovation in the contract automation space. I believe that low-level contracts in the late future can be self-governed and self-triggering in case of a breach. This could also be true for automated wills.
But in the short-term future (5 years) I believe that we will see advancements in justice tech that would give access to legal aid through GPTs to help reduce the burden on strained pro-bono systems.
Overall, I’m excited about the bright future of the industry. As a lawyer, I don’t see these advancements as threatening but instead revitalising the industry.
