The Australian said that at the same time, women were starting new businesses in greater numbers than ever before and that there was a proliferation of groups and communities that connected women, encouraging them to do business with each other and purchase goods and services from women-led providers. Miss Ponniah is aiming to connect all of these trends with the launch of My Legal Marketplace, offering a niche marketplace of women lawyers offering specific legal services for a fixed fee.

Challenging

Her marketplace aims to make it easier – while also helping customers easily access the legal services they need, from vetted female lawyers. The entrepreneur has worked as a sole practitioner herself, while raising her three children explaining that continuing in family law in a larger firm was difficult, given the flexibility she needed. ‘But I also found that being on your own in the one practice area is hard…You need to do marketing, constantly. So that’s why I came up with the idea of forming the one spot where all those women could come together, with a range of different areas of law in the one place, and all being offered to clients at a fixed rate.’

For starters

The firm has started with four areas including divorce, conveyancing, wills and employment and is set to expand into small business needs. The service will operate exclusively on a fixed fee basis to ensure client cost certainty. My Legal Marketplace will also donate 5 per cent of all revenue to the Katrina Dawson Foundation, helping the foundation to find, fund and mentor young women.