Big welcome to our newest member, LawHawk. Gene Turner is the Managing Director and has kindly provided the following info for the member showcase.
What does being a local NZ company mean to you?
A lot. I was born and raised in New Zealand, and most of my friends and family are here. My kids (7 to 12 years old) are growing up in New Zealand and I want them to have great opportunities while living here too.
How has technology changed our relationships in your everyday world?
Good and bad. It’s made it possible to meet, learn from and work with people from anywhere in the world which is amazing. I recently met someone who is in charge of a collaboration centre of excellent for a global bank, which she is able to do from a beach house in New Zealand! I wouldn’t have been able to create a business like LawHawk without cloud technology and the ability to work with people, wherever they are located.
However, it also creates a sense of urgency that’s unnecessary and unhelpful. There’s less time to think! And I struggle to get my kids away from screens to actually talk to us.
What’s the biggest business lesson you’ve learnt?
Be open to working with anyone, but do your own due diligence. People will promise things that they cannot deliver and it’s your own responsibility to check that they can. A signed contract is not what matters – only implementation.
Why did you get involved with NZRise?
I heard about it through meeting Ian Apperley after we wrote blogs on related topics around Government procurement, and it sounded like an organisation that could help me, and that I could contribute to.
What problem does your company solve and for whom?
LawHawk delivers automated legal documents via the internet, allowing highly customised drafts to be prepared 10x faster (minutes vs hours), which will help make quality legal services affordable. The explainer videos on www.lawhawk.nz explain it better than I can with words!
The main people who should be interested in document automation include lawyers (in firms or in-house) and procurement specialists who prepare RFPs, other tender documents and related contracts. I’m particularly hoping to help people in Government procurement where I think this could have a major impact, and am looking for early adopters to trial a range of the mandatory Government procurement documents that are already automated.
It can also be used for employment agreements, property documents, checklists and any other written documents which are prepared regularly and which require some degree of customisation.
If someone wants to know more about what you do, how can they contact you?
021 339 527 or [email protected]. I’m also on twitter @lawhawknz and LinkedIn: https://nz.linkedin.com/in/geneturnernz
What do you find most challenging about being a NZ company?
It’s not so much the form of the entity, as that I’ve chosen a very difficult market for a novel solution– lawyers (globally) have not typically been looking for technology solutions to help them work faster when they usually charge in six minute units!
Are you represented in the regions as well as the cities? Where?
LawHawk is based in Wellington, but is entirely online at www.lawhawk.nz so is effectively everywhere that has internet access.