Interview with Kim Chan founder of DocPro: Accessible and Affordable Legal Solutions for Everyone

Kim Chan

Kim Chan is the Founder and CEO of DocPro , one of the fastest growing next generation legal tech platforms in the world.

DocPro provides quality and affordable legal documents to businesses and individuals around the world through

cutting-edge technology. Our members can create / request / pool / share / comment on documents,

with easy to use guidance through a few simple steps.

Kim is qualified in 5 common law jurisdictions and has over 20 years of legal experience in the legal industry,

including experience in a leading international law firm and senior legal and compliance

positions at major investment banks.

Interview with Kim Chan founder of DocPro: Accessible and Affordable Legal Solutions for Everyone

BD Mag - What is DocPro about?

DocPro is the leading online provider of automated documents to businesses and individuals. DocPro’s mission is to make legal documentation affordable and accessible to everyone. Currently, DocPro operates a legaltech platform (DocPro.com) by combining legal documentation services with cutting edge technology.

DocPro is known specifically for its document generation tool that helps users quickly and efficiently create automated documents and contracts. Users can choose from over 1,700 templates through DocPro’s advance search function, complete a questionnaire to customise the template, and a legal document is generated automatically. DocPro helps to simplify contracting and free up time and resources from documents generation, so that users can focus on strategic decisions to improve their businesses.

BD Mag - Tell us a little bit about your transition from a lawyer to a legaltech startup founder?

I graduated law in the late 90s, when the internet was just taking off, and I have always believed in bringing law online. At that time, I have been offered a job at a top international law firm and it would be an enormous opportunity cost to give up a highly paid job as a lawyer to pursue something uncertain.

I feel that I have sufficient legal experience and financial security to provide accessible and affordable legal solutions to startups and SMEs. At the same time, many of the boutique firms do not have a digital presence with clients generated purely by referral. I feel that I can bridge the gap between the two by helping the boutique firms with digital marketing and at the same time refer to them those SME clients that need further legal support.

It is tough to move from a high paying job to investing in a startup, and we need to be lean and flexible initially. We are very proud of DocPro’s growth in users less than one year after our official launch. We are very optimistic about the future since we are creating a virtuous cycle - the more documents we have would lead to more users, which in turn would lead to more law firms joining us.

BD Mag - What are your reasons for starting DocPro?

Contrary to popular belief, it is not easy to find good document templates online. Let’s say you are searching for a lease, you need to go through hundreds of ads and search results before you can find a suitable word template. What’s more, most of the documents online are under US law which may not be applicable in your jurisdiction. To make matter worse, you have downloaded a landlord friendly version which may put you at a disadvantage as a tenant. 

After having worked for 20 years, there has been little change in the legal industry. Law firms still charge by the hour in the same way, and are mainly targeting the same big clients who can afford their high rates. SMEs have on average 8 legal issues a year but are Ignored because they don’t have the legal budget. Legal tech has made very little dent to the legal industry and accounts for less than 3% of the market.

DocPro’s vision is to provide accessible legal solutions for everyone. We want to be the “go-to” site for SMEs with the best value legal solutions.

BD Mag - What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?

There was a movie in my generation called “The Field of Dreams” and the motto was “Build it and they will come”. DocPro was initially built on this premises with the creation of more than 1,000+ commonly used document templates, but the traffic never came. The motto certainly does not work for the internet with billions of webpages competing for visitors.

I then consulted my next door neighbour at the co-working space, Raymond, who was running a successful online digital marketing agency, and he guided me through the SEO process. Since then, we have been trying to produce the best document templates possible focusing on less competitive keywords, and it is working like magic! Since the launch of our revamped site in April 2020, traffic has been doubling every month, and our COVID related documents have been doing spectacularly well. Raymond has since sold his digital marketing agency and is now my partner in DocPro.

BD Mag - How do you separate yourself from your competitors?

DocPro is different from the competition in the following ways!

• Law firms are our Partners and not Competitors. We provide free digital marketing and lead generation for law firms, which could easily cost thousands of dollars per month. We refer SMEs from a blue ocean market, who would not otherwise use their services.
• Access to 1700+ Documents. We have one of the most comprehensive library for businesses and individuals online. We are getting more and more localised documents from our partner law firms.
• Low cost and scalable. We are not hiring teams of lawyers to keep our costs low. We are priced 90% lower than our competition without compromising on quality.
• Different Forms. We provide variations of document favouring different parties instead of a one size fits all approach.
• Jurisdiction Engine. We try to cater for all common law jurisdictions. We have a proprietary engine to select the right governing law and jurisdiction. For more localized documents, they are being provided by our partner law firms.

BD Mag - What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?

I would review comments and feedback from customers every morning.

“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” Bill Gates. 

Feedback is of fundamental importance for DocPro to improve. We are now getting the traffic, so our next step is to work on improving user experience to increase conversion rate. That is why it is so important to get user’s feedback.