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Japanese legal portal Bengo4.com raises $208,000 from Kakaku.com

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Japan’s legal consultation portal site Bengo4.com, owned by Tokyo-based law office Authense, announced on Monday that it has raised about 20 million yen (approximately $208,000) from price comparison site Kakaku.com (TSE:2371). Prior to this fundraising, the portal site raised 100 million yen ($1.04 million) from DG Incubation, the investment arm of Japanese tech conglomerate Digital Garage (TSE:4819). Founded in 2005, Bengo4.com provides legal consultation services from participating lawyers for free, and allows consumers to get estimates from lawyers and compare them. As of March 8th, it has consulted on more than 246,599 cases and acquired 5,688 lawyers. To put that latter figure in perspective, that’s about 17% of Japan’s entire lawyer population. With this new partnership, the legal site expects to explore a sort of service integration with Kakaku.com site and its restaurant recommendation site Tabelog. On its website, Bengo4.com also announced it had partnered with Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) to provide legal and tax-related Q&A content to Yahoo Chiebukuro, one of Japan’s largest knowledge-sharing community services.

bengo4

Japan’s legal consultation portal site Bengo4.com, owned by Tokyo-based law office Authense, announced on Monday that it has raised about 20 million yen (approximately $208,000) from price comparison site Kakaku.com (TSE:2371). Prior to this fundraising, the portal site raised 100 million yen ($1.04 million) from DG Incubation, the investment arm of Japanese tech conglomerate Digital Garage (TSE:4819).

Founded in 2005, Bengo4.com provides legal consultation services from participating lawyers for free, and allows consumers to get estimates from lawyers and compare them. As of March 8th, it has consulted on more than 246,599 cases and acquired 5,688 lawyers. To put that latter figure in perspective, that’s about 17% of Japan’s entire lawyer population. With this new partnership, the legal site expects to explore a sort of service integration with Kakaku.com site and its restaurant recommendation site Tabelog.

On its website, Bengo4.com also announced it had partnered with Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) to provide legal and tax-related Q&A content to Yahoo Chiebukuro, one of Japan’s largest knowledge-sharing community services.