After a while, Danae shell I got tired of listening to the same story again and again.
“Something bad would happen to someone at work, and the story always ended in the same way,” he told TechCrunch. “They just left, because doing anything else was incredibly complex and expensive.”
One does not need to look far to notice that for many people, looking for a legal resource feels so discouraging and complex that many simply do not try. Even for someone with comfortable technological work, the possibility of going against your company is discouraging.
That bothered Shell so much that in 2022, Valla launched, which seeks to make legal support more accessible to workers.
The company focuses on the Employment Law, and since its launch, it says, more than 12,000 workers have successfully filed complaints against employers and negotiated agreements.
“Valla’s basic thesis was:” If we can build tools that allow someone to present their tax declaration of their mobile phone, we can surely build something that can help them manage their own legal problem, “Shell said.
The Valla platform allows users to collect their own evidence, generate documents and then talk to legal experts that “train them” through what would be the legal process for each stage of their case. For example, said Shell, a user can monitor a continuous problem at work, write a court claim and then buy a training package to prepare for the preliminary hearing.
Like almost any other startup these days, Valla uses AI to optimize knowledge transfer. “The Genai engine on our platform acts as a legal secretary in the background,” Shell said. “It does everything from informing the coach in the case, taking notes and actions during any call and picking up all administrators and reminders as the case progresses.”
Investors seem to like what they see in Valla: today, the company said it had raised a round of seeds of £ 2 million (about $ 2.7 million) directed by Ada Ventures. Active partners and portfolio companies, as well as investors returning Techstart and the Resolution Foundation, also invested.
Shell said Valla began using generative in early 2023 and combined with the early traction that his product received, which helped investors see the potential of their product.
The company will use the new capital to boost marketing, build relations with workers’ unions and insurers, and build more characteristics of ry within the platform. After the labor law, Shell said the company expects to expand to small claims and possession.
“Then we will expand to other geographies,” he said. “We are already looking for opportunities in the United States and Europe.”