Alumnus co-creates legal technology app that assists self-representing litigants in personal injury cases

When a friend asked Ryan Bencic for tips on how to represent himself in a personal injury lawsuit, the University of Alberta Faculty of Law alumnus saw a gap in the marketplace that led him to co-create legal technology that guides users through the heart of the process.

“Many of these injury cases involve a standard framework,” says Bencic, ‘16 JD. “The initial work is done by the time people come to the table to negotiate ... and where there's structure, that process can be automated.”

“Initial work” means that an injured person calculates what should be awarded for their injuries — in pain and suffering, loss of function, loss of wages, etc. — by comparing their circumstances to other, similar cases. That usually occurs once they’ve had medical treatment and a prognosis but might not take place until many months or years after the event that caused their injuries.

Once a dollar figure is established and agreed to, a settlement can be reached by the two parties coming to an agreement or through judgment in court. However, nearly all personal injury claims in Alberta are settled by parties out of court.

Because of the structured settlement framework, lawyers may spend a similar amount of time to settle a relatively small claim as for that of a much larger claim. In some instances, the cases aren’t valuable enough for lawyers to get too heavily involved, or the injured persons might realize that legal fees will eat up a significant amount of their settlement (which is often a 30 per cent contingency fee, before other costs and taxes). Some claimants may live in areas where such legal help isn’t readily available. Yet there aren't many tools available for people with personal injury cases to self-represent themselves, says Bencic.

“Self-represented litigants face two key issues: they don't know what they're entitled to and, even if they did, they don’t know the road map once they get on this path.”

That’s part of the gap that PainWorth is trying to fill — as in “What’s your pain worth?”

How It Works

Bencic teamed up with his injured friend, who supplied the user-experience know-how, and with a third co-founder who hammered out the technical aspects of the app while Bencic supplied the underlying legal knowledge for it.

“The intake process comes down to a few basic questions, such as when were you injured, what injuries did you suffer, and are you still getting treatment,” says Bencic. “Users enter this information and, based on what they provide, the app presents legal information that might be relevant to consider. In practical terms, the app filters information depending on whether a user's injuries might be minor or significant, whether users are healed or they are still receiving treatment, or if the treatment has stopped and the injuries are permanent. The legal information is publicly available, but most users wouldn't know how to make sense of all the noise."

The app was created in early 2019 and launched in fall later that year. Since then, individual users and several companies have turned to it.

"Insurance companies see the value in speeding up the settlement process for simple claims, to reduce their overhead costs," says Bencic, while a multinational candy company has approached PainWorth about using the app as an early predictor for liabilities when workers are injured on the job.

Bencic stepped away from PainWorth operations in early 2020 to join a leading Vancouver law firm with a focus in the tech, startup and emerging-company spaces. Like PainWorth, his clients are often new founders with a disruptive idea, serial entrepreneurs looking to scale their business, or investors who want to back a strong founder team with bold ideas.

UAlberta Experience

His success in the legal tech and startup spaces was informed by previous positions as general counsel to a private equity “search fund” and as a lawyer with a prestigious regional law firm in Edmonton. But his experiences at the Faculty of Law opened his eyes to how varied his career in law could be.

"My research for the (former) dean of law (Paul Paton) first introduced me to the ways that the legal profession was evolving around the world, from non-lawyer ownership of law firms to discussions on regulating legal services that are not delivered by lawyers,” says Bencic.

“He's been at the helm of this research since the dot-com bubble burst in the early-2000s. This research, and regulatory changes on the horizon, made me realize that technology would eventually play a large role in the evolution of practising law. We're now seeing that today with changes in Canada or abroad in California, Arizona, and Utah."

Bencic also speaks of finding “great insight and mentorship from a law professor (Ryan Clements) who taught entrepreneurial law. The course was a synthesis of corporate, mergers and acquisitions, contract, and intellectual property law. It made me realize that to be a 'startup' lawyer, you need to draw on broad legal experiences and be practical if you want to work with ambitious clients."

In light of the challenges and pressures that law students face when choosing a career path, Bencic hopes to convey that "...you should focus on finding good mentorship and solid experience in a field that interests you. It's alright if you don't article at a 'big firm' or follow a traditional career path, if it leads you to your true calling."