Anne-Marie Cade

Legalpreneur, Founder, DivorceRight

Melbourne

I began my practice, Le Mercier Legal & Conveyancing in 2006 while at home with a three year old. I then took over the practice of South Yarra lawyer Daniel Lew in 2013, and have since expanded by putting my practice online. It was this year the only sole practitioner firm to be named a finalist in the 2015 Lexis Nexis Legal Innovation Index.

I have a Bachelor of Laws as well as Master of Laws and I consider myself a "Legalpreneur" as I aim to demystify legal services for clients and I do this by incorporating the latest advances in technology to make legal services more accessible to clients who were previously unable to get help for legal issues they have. I have a particular interest in technology and the law.

I founded DivorceRight and this platform aims to focus on healing instead of legal wrangling. I want to make the divorce process cheaper, more efficient and more amicable by keeping families out of court. The startup does this by completing as much of the divorce process online – clients lodge forms and interact with each other and their lawyers and mediators online through a client portal. The idea for the platform came from watching families tear themselves apart during the divorce process.

I feel that the court process and the traditional adversarial approach does little to help families through the healing process and sometimes makes their problems worse. No matter what the status of your relationship is with your ex-partner, you will always be parents together which is why a different approach to divorce is so necessary. Some might say that divorce is far too complicated and emotional a legal process to be conducted online but I believe that this platform removes the barriers people often face when looking to access legal services delivered via a traditional approach because many people can feel intimidated working with lawyers. Hence clients prefer to use this this approach.