Closing the legal knowledge gap
APRIL 22, 2020
Making the judicial system accessible for professionals and modern citizen. Not the simplest challenge. If it’s not for the law books filled with incomprehensible lines of text, then it will be the complex procedures with technical terms with which the untrained public will struggling. However, images speak a thousand words and that is just what the solution to this complex problem is about: Visual Contracts.
Since 2017, Visual Contracts has been making a successful effort to transfer the complex material that the average consumer receives for their contract into legible information. All of it under the watchful eye of founder Lieke Beelen, who won the The Hague Innovator Award in 2015.
Offering help on all sides
With Lieke Bellen at the wheel there’s no lack of innovation and creativity. Visual Contracts has been founded to form partnerships with companies who struggle to have customers and employees truly understand the contracts they are signing. Something that is an even more relevant problem for those who have a low literacy.
This is a very good starting point. When everything is clear for all parties involved, trust is build and this positive impact is exactly what Visual Contracts strives for. “We’re focusing on visual employment contracts in the first place”, goes Lieke Beelen. “The project we just started with CSU, a cleaning company, where we address employment contracts for cleaners (the biggest group of illiterate people in the Netherlands), is a project we are very proud of and which we use to start our impact measurement approach.”
Collaborations with employers, like with CSU, go in-depth. Every step in the contract process is evaluated to create a visual contract. Visual contracts support employers in their obligation for good employment practices and trust building. Something that benefits everyone involved.
Visual Contracts focuses on the future
Visual Contracts as a company is incredibly studious and that is one of the arguments to settle in Apollo 14. Lieke Beelen: “We want to be connected to other impact startups. It’s ImpactCity’s main hub so that is a perfect fit for us. The support and services we are looking for within ImpactCity is the exchange of experiences and learning from other startup founders, promotions/being visible, networking. I would really like to learn from startups that are dealing with impact measuring.”
This has opened doors to further professionalization in the company. Next to having big plans, a great mindset and work ethic, Lieke also realizes that a strong internal foundation is key. “At the moment we’re delivering a great visual employment contract for CSU, formalizing the founding team for the platform and getting our first investments for developing our MVP. We are in the middle of forming the team for the software development, with that also making the plans more concrete regarding when we want to be where.”