Thelawstore.com.au announces new CEO

Digital legal tech company thelawstore.com.au – which owns e-signing and identity verification solution Livesign – has appointed Lara Paholski to the role of CEO.

Ms Paholski was previously the director of industry partnerships at Galilee Solicitors, which part-owns thelawstore.com.au.

She has now moved into the role of CEO at the tech provider, taking over from Ian Hendey, who has moved into a non-executive director position “to help oversee its next growth stage”.

Craig Manson, group chair, welcomed the new CEO to the role, which comes as the company prepares for growth following the launch of Livesign.

“Since joining us a year ago, Lara has made a significant impact across all levels of the organisation through the opportunities she has created for us,” Mr Manson said. 

“Lara has outstanding people skills and an excellent ability to build expansive and genuine relationships, resulting in an unmatched professional network. 

“With her exceptional leadership experience, Lara demonstrates a tenacious commitment to drive the critical business outcomes every tech company needs to thrive.”

Ms Paholski, commented: “I’m excited for the future of thelawstore.com.au, as it continues to grow Livesign, build its product offering and increase the customer base. 

“It’s an honour to succeed Ian and I’m looking forward to working with the talented team to continue growing the company’s opportunities and value for shareholders.”

Speaking to Mortgage Business about her new position, the new CEO of thelawstore.com.au said she hoped to hit the ground running in her first year.

“I want to propel our growth and customer strategy acquisition forward by expanding our market penetration and expansion, product development and diversification,” she said.

“This will only be achieved by harnessing the talented and diverse pool of individuals that we already have within the lawstore.com.au. They have a huge depth and breadth of knowledge and skills that will be critical for us to execute on our company plan. I’m also looking forward to learning a lot from them myself as we enter this exciting new phase.

“I’m also a passionate advocate for working collaboratively with industry and I’ll continue to drive new partnerships, whilst embracing the existing ones that we have with authorities, peak bodies, business partners and our clients.”

The new CEO noted that the company is also looking to help innovate the mortgage industry, highlighting the ability of its tech to improve efficiencies and reduce fraud.

She said: “We’ve built a solution that not only enables the mortgage industry to know that an individual signed the high-value mortgage documents, but that they know exactly who was behind the device at the precise point of signing, in real-time. 

“With such a high-value transaction, the stakes and risks are too high to not know who the signer is, so we’ve built a solution to remove the risk. We call it Verification of Signer.

“It’s not often that you have the opportunity to take a product to market that is better and faster and delivers a much needed solution. So I’ll be working with the industry to help them remove some old unnecessary processes that were built around paper, and truly digitise the signing and witnessing process.”

[Related: Video VOI to ‘fall by the wayside’ this decade: Mark Pesce]