Two law students are trying to make lawyer-to-lawyer referrals easier.
L2L, a legal referral website co-founded by Parsa Pezeshki and Jonathan Bega, two University of Toronto students in the combined J.D./M.B.A. program, and Hamid Tavakoli, a computer science graduate from Dalhousie, will allow members to both post and be matched with referrals that suit their area of specialty. Membership to the website will be by invitation only, and a user’s history of referrals will be recorded online.
Other features of the website will include the ability to see the proportion of referrals sent and received to specific law firms and the integration of the users’ LinkedIn connections to the system.
While the concept of the website is more than a year old, the beta version of the site launched May 15. This tester website is currently being reviewed by about 25 lawyers.
“Our vision is for L2L is to be the first thing that pops into a lawyer’s head when it comes to lawyer-to-lawyer referrals,” says Jonathan Bega, a co-founder of the website who worked on it during the third year of his four-year joint degree.
Bega says when the website launches in December, most of its users will be in the GTA due to marketing constraints. Expanding to other markets, such as Vancouver and California, will be a priority for the website in the future.
Users of the website will pay a subscription fee only if they accept another member’s referral.
“For lawyers looking to expand their referral network, we provide the tools to facilitate trust and detect quality when finding colleagues through our matchmaking system,” says Bega. “For lawyers already busy with referral activity, we provide the tools to track, manage and streamline the process.”
Watch an explanation of L2L here: