A legal marketplace for connecting clients with lawyers.

Access to legal services in Uganda is often a challenge due to the high cost and low availability of legal professionals in the country. According to the World Bank, there are only 1.2 lawyers per 10,000 people in Uganda, compared to a global average of 17.7 lawyers per 10,000 people. Many small and medium-sized businesses lack access to legal services, which can lead to legal disputes that could have been prevented with proper legal advice. Similarly, lawyers in Uganda struggle to find clients due to a lack of marketing channels, leading to reduced income and underemployment.

Balooya is a social enterprise that works to revolutionize the legal industry by leveraging on the power of technology. Through digital platforms like website and smartphone applocation, we make it easier for individuals and businesses to access affordable legal services in just a few clicks, and for lawyers to find new clients—especially from rural and urban slum communities that are not served by justice system in Uganda. In parallel, Balooya provides lawyers with a platform to manage their schedules and to create teams with other lawyers and legal professionals. We build upon goal 8:3 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals insofar as it strives to support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises. All this will be achieved through services like business incorporation, data protection, contracts, employment, technology law, immigration, taxes, trademarks & IP law, investment and E-commerce services.

Balooya serves both lawyers and clients. Our primary beneficiaries are 84 percent(about 34 million people) who live in both rural and urban slum communities. We also serve small businesses especially home based businesses of which majority are owned by women in rural and urban slum communities. our target beneficiaries do not access to justice and law because awareness to legal information is low and the price for legal services is high, beyond the reach of most Ugandans. By bringing the legal service providers into a single marketplace, we help the clients to search and compare lawyers and legal solutions based on pricing, reviews, location and other relevant criteria. Our solution also serves legal service providers both registered lawyers and unregistered lawyers to find clients/jobs.

Before starting Balooya, I worked for seven years as project manager at Young Farmers Champions Network -Yofchan where I used to travel across the country implementing agricultural projects designed for attracting youth into commercial farming. From my field experience and conversation with civic leaders in many communities, I discovered that there is a justice crisis in rural communities in Uganda and no one was working to address it. I observed a disproportionate percentage of people living in poverty live in rural and urban slum communities while at the same time, there are very few lawyers providing legal services in these communities, and their numbers are dwindling. In many rural communities in Uganda, there are no practicing lawyers, and in many cases, residents have to travel hundreds of miles to the nearest legal services provider. Similarly, public defenders are scarce in rural areas, often traveling circuits, similar to ways in which judges travel circuits and sit in courthouses just one day a week in certain communities. Frustrated by this problem which was causing many of our farmers/beneficiaries to lose their property and livelihoods, I decided to mobilized a team of experienced lawyers, farmers, economists to start Balooya company limited in 2022 as an online marketplace for connecting undeserved Ugandans with lawyers and lawyers with clients. My team driven by the passion to serve other than passion for profit.

My reason for applying to solve is to find a network of experts with skills and experience I need to pilot and scale my innovation in Uganda and East African countries.