DIYlaw

Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges Nigeria faces and despite the dynamism and entrepreneurial nature of the economy with over 41 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), job creation is still low. This is because majority of businesses remain informal. A lot of the obstacles they face are legal and business-support related and many businesses with growth potential are trapped by this barrier.

DIYlaw seeks to solve this problem with technology, by providing automated, affordable, simplified and accessible legal and business-support services to MSMEs through a digital platform, thereby reducing their costs and enabling them to focus on their businesses and to grow.

DIYlaw at scale will mean more thriving micro and small businesses in Africa and globally, more jobs being created by these businesses thereby reducing unemployment and increased financial independence, inclusion and economic growth.

Unemployment is at an alarming rate in Africa. In Nigeria alone, there are over 21 million unemployed young people and with the number of businesses that exist, the private sector is poised to solve the problem of unemployment.

However, the growth of the private sector and its ability to create jobs is stunted as most MSMEs find it difficult to register their businesses and to access other related legal services. Setup and compliance processes such as business and tax registrations can be cumbersome; some others such as trademark registrations require professionally authorised agents. Pricing of law firms and other professionals make these services unaffordable for a lot of entrepreneurs.

DIYlaw is a technology platform providing business registration services, automated legal documents and free legal information.

The value we provide and our differentiating factors are simple, convenient and affordable automated legal services. Users can access our services in the comfort of their homes, places of business or on-the-go via smartphones, tablets, laptops and personal computers. 

Because we have eliminated the need for personal service by replacing it with smart and simple forms on our platform, our users do not have to pay professional fees or time-based costs for lawyers' services. Our cheapest form of business registration costs a third of the average lawyer’s fees and legal documents cost nominal amounts thereby saving users on legal consultation fees, transportation time and costs. It also encourages entrepreneurs to give their businesses a good chance of success by formalising it and proper legal documentation.

We also provide free legal and business related information in simplified and easy-to-understand formats such as animations, listicles, short articles, 1-minute explainer videos and Q&A sessions with lawyers. With this, we demystify legal jargon and make legal issues less confounding for entrepreneurs.

DIYlaw’s end users are all entrepreneurs who are starting businesses as a means of livelihood or to solve a problem and ultimately want to be better off financially. Our customers are broadly categorised into retail (B2B) and institutional customers (B2B and B2B2C).

Retail customers are individuals starting businesses or existing entrepreneurs who want to formalize their ventures. They are mainly individuals within the ages of 18-55 with access to digital technology. We also serve offline retail customers who are under-educated, low-income, micro business owners and they include farmers and traders in the market.

Our institutional customers are organisations with access to large clusters of entrepreneurs and cut across financial institutions, government entrepreneurial support agencies, incubators and accelerators.

DIYlaw's solution provides our users with simplified, accessible and affordable legal services and we carried out customer validation by launching a lean version of our platform for public testing for over a year. In that period, we attracted over 2,000 registered users and utilised their feedback to build an enhanced version of the platform. We send periodic surveys out to customers to not only understand their additional legal needs for product development but to measure the impact of our activities.

Informal enterprises are unable to grow and scale as they are limited by being unregistered. They cannot be financially included and cannot access funding in forms of loans, grants or investments. With these limitations, the potential of MSMEs to contribute to job creation and the reduction of unemployment remains untapped.

DIYlaw has registered over 900 businesses and provided over 8,000 other legal services. These business have gone on to create 124,000 jobs. Our free legal information has reached over 700,000 entrepreneurs who have been able to make more informed choices to keep their businesses protected and in existence.

11 full time staff