{"id":20614,"date":"2017-08-09T10:04:35","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T10:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.legalgeek.co\/?p=20614"},"modified":"2017-08-09T10:04:35","modified_gmt":"2017-08-09T10:04:35","slug":"legal-geek-week-abdou-diallo-legalsoba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.legalgeek.co\/legal-geek-week-abdou-diallo-legalsoba\/","title":{"rendered":"Legal Geek of the Week \u2013 Abdou Diallo (LegalSoba)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>LegalSoba Founder Abdou Diallo is 24 (although his friends say he looks more like 18) and he readily admits he doesn\u2019t dress up smartly on a day-to-day basis.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s no surprise that when Legal Geek sits down with Diallo to profile him for our new and dashingly smart column \u2013 the Legal Geek of the Week \u2013 Diallo can recall several recent meetings when he and his company haven\u2019t been taken seriously by their host, or as Diallo more politely puts it: \u201cwhere there is a professor and student atmosphere in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an atmosphere which is unlikely to last however, as LegalSoba have made rapid progress since launching three months ago in May and are catching the eye of the LawTech industry, especially in their target markets of France and Africa.<\/p>\n<p>LegalSoba provide French-language legal document templates for businesses operating in the 17 west and central African countries that are part of the African Organisation for the Harmonisation of Business Law in Africa (OHADA). The site\u2019s target client base is start-up African businesses and French companies looking to do business in OHADA member countries, which include Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Niger and Diallo\u2019s home country of Mali.<\/p>\n<p>The pace of progress at LegalSoba is rapid \u2013 just the day before Legal Geek spoke with Diallo, LegalSoba started charging for its documents for the first time after significant interest in their free services over the first three months of its start-up life. LegalSoba now offer 10 legal templates, with costs for downloading them ranging between \u20ac5-15.<\/p>\n<p>Diallo believes it\u2019s not too early to start monetising his services, citing the way LegalSoba\u2019s name has spread without any central marketing campaign: \u201cIt\u2019s all been by word of mouth, which is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yet the biggest sign that Diallo has found a niche within a niche market lies in the potential arrival of a competitor to his space. Up until now, LegalSoba has been the only company offering its services to the French and African markets but Diallo says he has heard that \u201csome people are going to launch in the upcoming days\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Whilst competition may provide challenges in the future, it could help Diallo with what he describes as his most pressing challenge in the short term: changing the mindset amongst the African market about the importance of using legal documents in business.<\/p>\n<p>Diallo says: &#8220;In sub-Saharan Africa, approximately\u00a055% of the region\u2019s gross domestic product is generated through an informal\u00a0economic system where companies are not registered, and\u00a0employees do not have contracts. There is such a dissonance towards the government when you tell people that you have to register a company in order to be a good business and receive finance. Changing this approach is our biggest challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Diallo\u2019s perception of the African market has been earned the hard way, by stationing himself outside business centres in Bamako, Mali, and asking business men and women what they know about the legal obligations of their business, and what legal support they think they need.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cYou can\u2019t do things how you would in Europe,\u201d Diallo explains. \u201cI go up to people outside business centres and company registration offices and I ask if they will answer my questions. They normally agree.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This quest for feedback has only just started with Diallo soon to be travelling from Mali to two of the biggest markets for legal services within OHADA: Ivory Coast and Senegal.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Diallo\u2019s expectation of how long this will take is refreshingly honest: \u201cI\u2019m going for between a month and 2 months, but if I need more time I will stay longer, it\u2019s the information about the market which is the most important.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Legal Geek Founder Jimmy Vestbirk added: \u201cAbdou is a true Legal Geek. His approach to building LegalSoba is unbelievably hands on and the services and products he has developed are, at this moment in time, unique to the market. Plus, we had a great video interview in Betty on our tour, more to follow shortly!&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>More: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.legalsoba.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">www.legalsoba.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LegalSoba Founder Abdou Diallo is 24 (although his friends say he looks more like 18) and he readily admits he doesn\u2019t dress up smartly on a day-to-day basis. So it\u2019s no surprise that when Legal Geek sits down with Diallo to profile him for our new and dashingly smart column \u2013 the Legal Geek of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal-geek-of-the-week","category-read"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Legal Geek of the Week \u2013 Abdou Diallo (LegalSoba) - Legal Geek<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.legalgeek.co\/legal-geek-week-abdou-diallo-legalsoba\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Legal Geek of the Week \u2013 Abdou Diallo (LegalSoba) - Legal Geek\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"LegalSoba Founder Abdou Diallo is 24 (although his friends say he looks more like 18) and he readily admits he doesn\u2019t dress up smartly on a day-to-day basis. 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