When Manny Griffiths worked with a private injury lawyer after his wife’s automobile accident, he was surprised by the lack of understanding and communication from their lawyer regarding their claim. The couple sometimes wouldn’t hear from their lawyer for months and located the complete process to be really opaque.
Griffiths dug deeper and learned that he wasn’t the just one with this issue. He discovered through his research that almost half, 44%, of negative Google reviews for law firms that work with people, quite than with other businesses, needed to do with consumers dissatisfied on account of a breakdown in communication. But despite consumers feeling like they’ll’t get in contact with lawyers, lawyers reported they spend 37% of their day on communication, a Hona survey of 41 lawyers found.
“People just need to be talked to and know what is going on because they’re on this emotional, stressful time,” Griffiths told TechCrunch. “I began talking to law firms, I actually dug deep on what their challenges were, and I discovered that they’re interrupted on average every three minutes through the day, they usually are so busy that they don’t have time to speak properly with their clients.”
Griffiths and his co-founders launched Hona to attempt to fill that communication gap with technology. Hona is a communication portal that plugs right into a law firm’s existing case management software and sends automated updates to clients. The goal, Griffiths said, is to permit clients to trace their case with the identical ease as they track an Amazon package. This clearly resonated with law firms as the corporate saw strong demand even before its February 2022 launch.
“We actually made some mockups, we had someone design the product on Figma, and we said, ‘Let’s go attempt to sell this before we even write a line of code and tell people we could have it out by ‘x’ date,’” Griffiths said. “I just began cold-calling law firms and I got five firms to enroll before we had written anything.”
The Lehi, Utah-based company has continued to see demand since. It grew its revenue 400% in 2023 — but wouldn’t share exact revenue numbers. Hona currently works with greater than 500 law firms and has been utilized by 308,000 clients. It also just closed on a $9.5 million Series A round led by Costanoa Ventures, with participation from Ludlow Ventures, Soma Capital and Y Combinator.
Griffiths said he doesn’t anticipate that Hona will replace or automate all communication between lawyers and clients — neither side wants that — but quite just eliminate clients calling their lawyer only for an update or with a matter about legal jargon. Clients can message their lawyers through Hona as well and access educational materials about terms and data on what stage their case is at within the legal process.
The case updates, education resources and client-question answers are generated by AI, Griffiths said. He added that the corporate was really careful on the way it incorporates AI due to the sensitive nature of legal cases, and the critical must get information right. To combat potential misinformation, lawyers determine what Hona’s AI system can access.
“Early on, we allowed the law firms to upload approved topics of conversation, approved metrics and data regarding their case,” Griffiths said. “Our model might grow a bit of bit slower than other AI models. We limit what it might speak to initially but it’ll be more accurate upfront. That could be a huge initiative for us to be certain they aren’t getting false information.”
The corporate decided to concentrate on consumer-facing legal practices like personal injury and criminal defense first because Griffiths anticipated that that’s where probably the most friction is. It’s more likely that these firms’ clients wouldn’t have a powerful understanding of the legal system in comparison with a business client that deals with lawyers on a more regular basis. The corporate hopes to expand to B2B law practices in the long run as well.
Hona can be working to expand its offerings. It recently launched an e-signature tool for documents and plans so as to add services like billing and paying.
“We’re captivated with the client on the opposite end of the spectrum,” Griffiths said. “Lawsuits are tough, and anything with legal, it’s stressful. Hona helps law firms be more efficient and provides them back time, in addition to help the patron and really give them piece of mind during their case.”
