HELLO DIVORCE: THE PLATFORM USING TECHNOLOGY TO DEMOCRATIZE DIVORCE
We at Lightbank are thrilled to welcome Hello Divorce, the latest addition to our portfolio!
HQ: Oakland, CA
Management Team: Erin Levine, Heather MacKenzie, Duncan Swezey, Mari Tanaka
The problem: Divorces are expensive, messy, and typically unfair. In the US alone, people spend $50B annually on divorces, with each person spending an average of $15,000 on the process. Many Americans, typically women, cannot afford to pay expensive retainers for lawyers (upwards of $10,000), and lack legal assistance during a very pivotal and stressful time in their lives. An estimate of 95% of divorces do not end in a contested trail (i.e. resolved by agreement) and do not require traditional full representation by a lawyer.
Hello Divorce’s solution: Hello Divorce is a consumer legal platform that gives users access to self-service and assisted tools to settle divorces at one-fifth of the typical cost and three times faster — empowering the 80% of people who try to self-represent during a divorce with the tools and information they need to get to fair outcomes quickly. The Hello Divorce team is following a thoughtful and meticulous process to customize the platform to fit each state’s and county’s requirements for divorce proceedings.
Why we invested:
Strong customer value proposition: Across sectors, we believe in the power of technology democratizing previously inaccessible services and products (e.g., FinTech for the 99%). 40–50% of the US population unfortunately gets a divorce. Most cases don’t actually require a lawyer, but people want to make sure they’re getting to a fair outcome. Hello Divorce’s technology makes this stressful process less painful by requiring less time and money wasted.
Deeply knowledgeable, thoughtful, and dedicated team: The founders have a deep understanding of the divorce ecosystem, and over a decade of experience in the family law space. They understand that divorce is one of the most painful life experiences and most significant inflection points for their users, and are very thoughtfully building a supportive product and feature set.
Online adoption of legal services has not kept up with many other sectors: Most legal services are still offline and opaque while other services industries have gone online. According to IBISWorld, approximately 8% of legal services in the United States were conducted online in 2020, compared to approximately 70% of financial services and, according to Ernst & Young, 30% — 45% of healthcare services. According to the American Bar Association, more than 40% of solo attorneys do not have a website.
Learn more through the press release here.