This article is written by Ramanuj Mukherjee, CEO, LawSikho.
My first client was an IIT Kharagpur graduate, who founded a data protection software company. I was a 4th-year law student when he first started engaging me in drafting contracts. Soon, I drafted and negotiated an investment agreement for FDI involving investors from Hong Kong and the USA. It was an amazing learning experience for me, and being able to earn a handsome amount gave me much confidence at the time.
I later became friends with the founder, Vikram. But more importantly, he was an early adopter of iPleaders, and the legal risk management service I was trying to peddle at the time. This is when I began to understand how entrepreneurs can have great advantage from knowing the law. Beginning to create online courses for entrepreneurs and lawyers was not too far from that signpost.
I stopped practicing law after going full time with iPleaders in 2012. However, Vikram has always leaned on me for many legal needs of his, and I have taken out time for him to do his bidding, not because it was my line of work, but simply because he trusted me.
Friendship, mutual admiration and respect. These things define the relationship between early adopters and entrepreneur-innovators.
When we were still building LawSikho.com, we ran a crowdfunding program. We just wanted to raise 3 lakhs. This was kind of the seed money for LawSikho.com being set up. This money helped a lot with our initial technology development.
We also wanted to know if people wanted to buy our courses, under a new brand called LawSikho, without any university or government recognised certificates. Will this concept work?
We made things very attractive. If someone paid us INR 5,000, they could get courses worth 25,000 in the next 2 years. Similarly, if anyone paid INR 3,000 they would get course credits worth 10,000.
Around 50 people opted for this, and we overshot our target of 3 lakhs in a week.
Please realise that this was not a no brainer back then. LawSikho.com had only a rudimentary version up. We had no live classes. Compared to today, our material and methodology were primitive. We promised to launch a lot of new courses in the next one year, but people had to trust our word for that.
And people did. We had little proof to offer that we would deliver good courses. But over 50 people poured in money. And we had our target fulfilled super quick!
We knew we were on the right track. But we were incredibly grateful to these initial set of early adopters who helped us to get off the ground.
Many of these early backers came back later and bought more courses too.
You guys are the best, thank you!
So when we launch new products, we keep the prices low. Let the early adopters benefit. Very soon, we will have success stories. There will be word of mouth publicity, and more people will pour in. But all that can happen only because early adopters had the courage to try out a completely new thing!
For example, for the first time in India, or anywhere in the world as per my knowledge, we are launching three unique courses. These are very niche courses, and will appeal to lawyers who want to work in these areas only.
The first batch will definitely be early adopters.
To make it easy for them, we are keeping the price very low till 15th August. After that, prices go up to normal levels.
Normally, our 3 months executive certification courses cost 14,000 if you pay at once, and 15,000 if you pay in two installments.
For a change, you can pay just 12,000 for enrolling in the following 3 courses until 15th (one-time fee).
We never give discounts, but we favour our early adopters.
If you have any other ideas about how we could honor our early adopters, do tell me.
How do you do it? How do you honor early adopters in your practice? What would you like to do if you had your own business or practice?
In my opinion, the earlier you get into LawSikho, the better treatment you should get! Just like those who have bought Master Access or Litigation Library when we first launched them. These early adopters benefited from an incredible pricing, extra privileges. I personally scheduled Also, note that our groundbreaking Legal Practice Development and Management course is also launched and enrollment for the first batch is going on. This is not a recurring course, and we may not repeat it again, given that it is so hard to get time from top lawyers of the country to teach a course like this. If you want to grow your legal practice, as a solo lawyer or a law firm, this will be a gamechanger for you. Here is the landing page. Check out the syllabus for yourself, and you will know: https://lawsikho.com/course/legal_practice_development_and_management
We have just 15 seats for that course. So do not delay if you are interested. If you have any questions, just give us a call. My team can set up a call with me too, if you feel the need to speak with me.
Here are other courses you could enroll into:
Diploma
Diploma in Companies Act, Corporate Governance and SEBI Regulations
Executive Certificate Courses
Certificate Course in Real Estate Laws
Certificate Course in Arbitration: Strategy, Procedure and Drafting
Certificate Course in Legal Practice Development and Management
Test Preparation
Judgment Writing and Drafting Course for Judicial Services
