“Today, India is rapidly moving towards hitting the century of the unicorns. I believe the golden era of India’s startups is starting now”, this was said by The Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi on 16th January 2022. The day which will now be celebrated as “National Startup day”. The startup movement was an initiative by our Prime Minister, it was inaugurated on 16th January 2016 by the former Finance Minister of India, Mr. Arun Jaitley. This movement was initiated for generation of employment and wealth creation. The goal of startup India was development and innovation of products and services and increasing the employment rate in India. This startup movement gave individuals, irrespective of their age and profession, a push to start their business and the confidence of making their business, howsoever small, a success. On 24th March 2020, our government ordered a nationwide lockdown for 21 days, which eventually went on for months. Where everyone was confused about the time and situation, people of India while maintaining their safety created means of being productive. The “corona period” saw rise in startups in our country like never before. Though people were baking and making dalgona coffees for the first few months, they drastically shifted at being able entrepreneurs in no time. From young to old, from students to home makers, everyone started recognising their own potential and wanted to start their own small business. People also wanted to be of some help to the society which at large was suffering and trying to survive the deadly and the unknown virus. People understood that if they don’t adapt they won’t survive. They started adapting to this new challenging life. There were many startups that provided for food to the patients, some that gave hospital details to people, home delivery of medicines and so on.
With things settling down and people accepting the new normal, many professionals came up with ideas that would not make their work life suffer and yet they would be at home and be safe. Tutors and teachers around the world started taking video classes where education was not affected because of schools being shut. Private and government companies also started “Work from Home” concept where in the employees could work from home and not attend the office physically, which resulted in them working without breaking the norms laid down by the government.
With all private and government sectors trying the new work from home concept, professionals like legal practioners also could not stay behind. Our country also saw a rise in legal startups across the country during these tough times. Lawyers set up websites where people could ask for basic legal advice and their queries could be solved by able lawyers in prescribed time. There were also some firms that started giving legal advice on phone calls or any other messaging applications. Everyone in their daily life need legal advice from time to time and visitng an advocate in his or her office for trivial queries was not possible in such times when even courts around the country were functioning via video conferencing mode to enable social distancing and avoid crowding in the court premises. So for providing solutions to one’s everyday legal questions there were advocates available to them on call or message. This practice is now getting popular among people, where they find it easy to talk to the lawyer over a call or message rather than crowding his or her office. Also the payement of fees quoted by an advocate could be paid electronically with the help of varied online payment applications.
With this practice being advantageous to a great extent comes with a small bag of disadvantages. Some legal issues involve a lot of paper work and discussion that is not possible over a call or text. There are a lot of advocates who may not be able to adopt this new method leaving behind their old school method which has proven to be a success to them all their lives. Also if a query of an individual turns into a situation where he or she has to approach the court of law to get the grievance redressed, one has to make rounds of the lawyer’s office from time to time for discussion of the case.
In my opinion, every situation is bound to have advantages and disadvantages attached to it. We as individuals should have a perspective to look beyond the disadvantages and make things work in one’s favour. We have to recognise the need of the hour, the present situation, the crisis that everyone is going through should not be ignored and steps should be taken to minimise the spread of the virus. Legal tech startups though are not as popular in the startup world as other fields, but as time passes this too shall become an integral part. The pandemic has created several challenges in the short-term but has also guided to a new way of working and adopting technology that is here to remain.
