Sacha Kirk is the Queensland female co-founder of Lawcadia, a unique end-to-end legal operations platform for in-house legal teams and law firms.
Sacha and her co-founder Warwick Walsh, a former corporate lawyer, wanted to improve the way in-house legal teams collaborated with law firms and improve communication and management of legal fees.
In 2015, Lawcadia was founded and solved these common pain points.
We recently spoke to Sacha about Lawcadia and her journey as a female founder.
What inspired you to start your business?
Lawcadia was founded in 2015 by myself and my co-founder Warwick who is a former corporate lawyer. The key pain points we were looking to solve with Lawcadia was the lack of transparency and structure in the way that in-house legal teams engaged their law firms as well as addressing poor communication and management of legal fees. We had a vision for creating a better legal market where performance as well as good communication and project management would be recognised and rewarded.
Over time our business has evolved to respond to new and emerging pain points which continues to keep us excited, energised and innovating.
What milestones have you reached?
We raised our first funding round in 2016 after receiving a strong response from the market for our solutions. We became ISO 27001 certified (an internationally recognised standard for an Information Security Management System) in 2017 and onboarded enterprise and government clients.
2020 was quite a pivotal year for us as we had the time and space we needed to build Lawcadia Intelligence, an intelligent automation engine that touches every aspect of the platform. This has enabled incredible innovation and capabilities for in-house legal and compliance teams as well as law firms.
In 2022 we expanded our operations to the United Kingdom, relocating our Chief Operating Officer from Brisbane to London!
What business achievements are you most proud of to date?
There are a few things that I am incredibly proud of. First, our diverse and innovative team of people at Lawcadia – we have an amazing team of dedicated, talented people who bring their best selves to work. Second, growing the business organically over the years – other founders know how hard that can be, but also how rewarding it is as well. Third, is receiving that highly sought-after industry recognition. This year we won our first big industry award – Legal Services Provider of the Year at the Australasian Law Awards – that was a big deal for us!
Have you participated in any Advance Queensland programs, or received any support from Advance Queensland to date?
In 2017 and 2018 Lawcadia was a successful recipient of Queensland Government's Business Development Fund which provided matched investor funding. This helped Lawcadia to expand the platform functionality, including enterprise-grade security, and successfully acquire and retain key clients in the domestic market.
What’s your advice for other female entrepreneurs and businesses starting out on their entrepreneurship journey?
Your business idea must solve a pain point, one that is a big enough problem that it will motivate your prospective customer to do something about it. If it is not painful enough or big enough, it will be tough to get them to change.
Starting a business is challenging and maintaining and growing a business can also be incredibly hard! Surround yourself with a support crew to push you forward, pick you up, give you a pep talk when you need it, and help you be resilient. For me, this is my kids, my co-founder and husband, friends and family who tell me what I need to hear – not always what I want to hear. Also, your ‘why’ will change over time, and that’s OK. It’s just important to have a strong ‘why’ as that is what will get you up every morning and give you the energy and drive to propel you and your business forward.
