The arrival of "LegalTech" for online inheritance
The coronavirus pandemic has sent the number of homes passed on through inheritance soaring to an all-time high in Spain. In November 2020 it reached levels never seen before in cities such as Madrid and Barcelona.
With all this data, it is easy to understand why inheritances in Spain have been on the rise for three months, with an increase of 20% in November, 5% in October and 13% in September 2020, according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE).
Technology and bureaucracy have never got along well. The Administration has serious problems adapting to the digital environment and this makes any relationship very difficult. Start-ups (emerging companies) create highly innovative business models that are highly desired or required by the market. Their design and marketing are completely customer-oriented. This is the case of "LegalTech", which use technology to market or provide legal services.
Global LegalTech Hub is an initiative dedicated to leading the transformation process of the legal industry. It brings together different professional operators, startups, companies, institutions and also academia to write the future of a new legal industry sustained by technological innovation.
Heritae is one of those hub companies that are trying to transform the old inheritance business into something more modern and even more dynamic. Victor Ortiz is a founding partner of Heritae. He studied at Fordham Law School in New York and worked in investment banking at Banco Santander in the United States, where he met Ernesto Rivera and Javier Alcocer, also experts in inheritance law. A complicated situation led them to set up a company dedicated to inheritance management. And they went one step further with something as innovative as it is unusual in this field: a flat fee that includes all the management of accepting an inheritance or planning a will. Everything except taxes and fees. "My father passed away in September 2018 and, although I had not dealt with any inheritance professionally to date, I decided to take the plunge and claim my inheritance with the help of Ernesto and Javier. A specialist lawyer was too expensive for us and it was a job we thought we could do ourselves, as all three of us are lawyers. We also hired an agent to move the paperwork for us so we could focus on the legal side. We came to the conclusion that it was an unpleasant process and full of administrative hurdles," recalls Victor.
Technology does not mean getting in front of a computer to write up a client's needs or to write briefs for the competent bodies. Developing your own software allows you to take the necessary step towards becoming a "LegalTech". "By creating our own software, we have automated part of the process, which saves us a great deal of time. We pass these savings on directly to our clients, who pay a flat fee, instead of the traditional minute rate, which would be much more expensive for them," says Víctor Ortíz.
Despite being a very traditional sector, the world of law is an area where new technologies and process automation are a very effective tool in their daily work. At Heritae "we believe in the digitisation of the legal sector and, in fact, we believe that this is the path that the legal world has to follow".
Returning to the pandemic and the almost 100,000 victims it has claimed in Spain, inheritance and wills have become a taboo subject that no one wants to talk about outside their family circle. Víctor recalls that "some families, who never thought they would have to deal with the processing of their inheritance, tend to look for a solution that is comfortable and affordable in economic terms. More and more people are willing to leave their inheritance planned, perhaps motivated by the pandemic we are experiencing".
And the big question is whether it is possible to do an inheritance online, a long-established custom, in the hands of technology? We can manage a complete file without having had face-to-face contact with the client. It will only be necessary for them to attend the signing of the inheritance adjudication before a notary, where we will be assisting them. We are adapting to the new reality we are living in, we save the client time and we can work with clients from all over Spain, with no limitations.
But the time has come to be accountable to the public administrations. An "obligatory" relationship, because it is necessary to settle the municipal capital gains tax, register the ownership of the heirs in the Land Registry, present the Inheritance Tax and carry out procedures at the Ministry of Justice... Heritae's conclusion is that "the digital profile of the Administration and its management times can be improved. It is true that there is a commitment to the digitalisation of the public sector and it is becoming more accessible, faster and more efficient. Many of the procedures that used to have to be carried out in person can now be done telematically.
You can inherit online. You can also plan an inheritance. And, most importantly, you can break society's self-imposed veto of not talking about certain issues surrounding your own death or the death of a loved one. We live in a society that arrogates to itself how we should die and how to die. But technology has reached a very peculiar and painful field. Three years have passed since Victor and his partners, Ernesto and Javier, embarked on the adventure of "making a difficult moment easy".
