Openlaws is demystifying the legal world for businesses and citizens
Bio
- Age of business: 1 year
- Name of business: openlaws gmbh
- Location: Salzburg, Austria
- Team: co-founders Clemens Wass and Christian Sageder
- ODINE funding: €100,000
What does openlaws do?
We help companies to achieve legal compliance and create better access to justice for citizens. The company provides personalised legal information via the online platformwww.openlaws.com.
How did you meet?
The founders have been working together successfully for several years in two large international companies – one in the legal department, the other in the IT department.
Where did the business idea come from?
This came from an actual problem that Clemens has encountered as head of the legal department: how can a large international company deal with a large amount of regulatory and contractual obligations? How can the directors and officers reduce balance sheet risks as well as the risk of personal liability?
Are you working with any other partners?
Openlaws is the spin-off of the EU research project openlaws.eu, co-funded by the European Commission (DG Justice). Partners of the consortium are the University of Amsterdam, the London School of Economics, the University of Sussex, the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, the Italian SME Alpenite and the Austrian SME BY WASS GmbH. The Austrian angel investor AC&Friends has joined openlaws and provides start-up expertise, a broad business network and financial support.
How has ODINE helped you so far?
ODINE enables openlaws to connect additional data sources, such as German legislation and case law. In addition, the funding will be used to build a legal knowledge graph.
What advice would you give to other companies pitching to ODINE?
Solve a real problem. Use open data as a great free resource. Create a sustainable and innovative business model around your idea. Show them that you can do it, ideally with a first proof of concept.
How would you encourage big business to buy into the open data movement?
Open innovation is already world-famous and successful. Big businesses will sooner or later realise that open data is part of open innovation. Like all companies, big businesses have to innovate or die. Here is my data, what can we do with it?
What’s the key trend in open data at the moment?
Aggregating and linking different open data sets is a big trend. One plus one is three.
(This story first appeared on The Guardian)
