After hunting 214 apps on Product Hunt and gathering them in the Epic Collection, here are some new theories on what a legal app really is. Or should be.
Two years ago I had 3 insights:
- The top voted legal apps are least likely to come from legal professionals;
- Practical is popular with hunters;
- Blockchain is an epic technology;
About 143 apps later, I’ve noticed some other trends.
Contracts & Taxes
One of the 27 tax apps I saw was literally called Death & Taxes. Ironically, it has since died. Nonetheless, the most hunted apps help you run your startup and deal with..contracts. Since most apps help you generate contracts, I was a little disappointed in the number of apps that actually help you understand them. Nevertheless, I was charmed by the simple beauty of some generators like this homegrown one: Docontract.com
Privacy & Harmony
With just 30 apps totaling over 11,000 votes, Privacy and Civictech seem to be dear to our hearts. To illustrate this strange struggle: Arrest SOS can be classified as a Marketplace but it feels more like CivicTech. Because our reality of increased risk, surveillance, and scrutiny, shouldn’t diminish our right to a fair treatment by those in power.
In another spectrum, I discovered examples where privacy was exposed by choice to ensure safety. Apps like Citizen, Watcher or Companion literally help you navigate your city like a Redzone or be a Vigilante.
Patterns & Warnings
If you visit the Epic collection you’ll see the top 3 mirror the pattern described above: first is a curated source for founders, and the third is a payment app called Privacy.com. However, it is the second on the list that had my attention. A message for the Legal Industry: #FinTech is here.
Btw, if you are a little confused by the methodology of tagging legal startups e.g. isn’t Patents part of Intellectual Property? Or when is FinTech a legal app? It’s tough and you can read here some of the challenges of classifying legal. Ultimately, tagging legal apps according to legal principles may not make any sense in the real world. Besides our lives are already complex, we don’t need legal to make it worse.
So the rationale is to capture the apps that seek to reduce complexity and restore harmony in society. I believe that is what the legal industry was trained and hired to do.
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