Hidden Gems: Meet Mani Kandan of Morality

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mani Kandan.

Hi Mani, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself
My college roommate and I were debate partners in high school, so Anay and I spent a lot of time talking and researching many different sides of American domestic and foreign policies. A constant throughout the years of high school debate were the inefficiencies and lack of care throughout the public and private sectors. When we landed on ASU’s campus as freshmen, we watched HBO’s Silicon Valley and were left probably a little too big-eyed and bushy-tailed. We were looking for trouble.

At the time, I was competing on ASU’s undergraduate mock trial team, but I was completing my bachelor’s in Computer Science. Two very different curriculums— one encouraged public speaking and teamwork while the other communicated through documentation and rarely assigned group projects. But through mock trial, I was meeting attorneys from Arizona and California. Slowly I started hearing about their pain points. Perhaps a benefit of being one of the many computer science students stuck in three hour trials with pre-law students and practicing attorneys was that attorneys would tell me about what wasn’t working or taking too long. Funny enough, most of them were just repeating what I had heard from other attorneys.

I’d share these ideas with Anay, but as young college students we wanted to do something “cooler”. There were a lot of nights where we should just kick ideas back and forth, but there was not much impetus to get up and do it ourselves. For a while, we were just stuck in that pre-execution phase of spitballing and sound boarding.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Just recently, I heard a great quote from Gregg Scoresby (CEO of Campus Logic) when I attended ASU’s 2021 Techiepalooza, “If you’re stuck or not progressing, you have to push yourself to the next level. There are more new opportunities there. So keep trying to get to the next step.”

Two and a half years ago, Anay found ASU Law School’s [Global Legal Hackathon](https://blogs.asucollegeoflaw.com/lsi/2019/03/12/devildocs-takes-round-one-of-hackathon-at-asu-law/) and that was the step we needed to take. Even though we went into the hackathon with an idea completely different from what attorneys had been telling me at mock trial competitions, we came out with a few networking connections and a first fail. That first fail was important for us to have because it gave us a chip on our shoulders and a better sense of where the legal industry was in terms of new technologies. That first fail also taught us how to better pay attention to lawyers’ pain points, instead of inserting ourselves into the legal field.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Solo attorneys and small-firm attorneys tend to charge more economically than their mid-size and big law firm counterparts, which means they attract a more cost-effective population. This group of attorneys are very overworked and understaffed, so client care can suffer without adequate use of the right software. We believe that intelligent software guided by humans can make the legal process a more pleasant experience.

Morality automates law firms with AI-enabled workflow automation, knowledge management, and client care. Our platform is delivered as a cloud-based SaaS legal practice management platform to small law firms and solo attorneys.

A lot of our competitors and customer relationship management (CRM) software in general heavily depend on manual entry of information, but we use AI through Natural Language Processing to make sure small law firms and solo lawyers spend more time serving their clients than managing their law firm’s administration.

Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Similar to what Greg said, find the next level of opportunities you can take yourself to. For Morality, it started out by going to a legal hackathon. From there we were able to make a few connections, and learn about ASU’s entrepreneurial success program, Venture Devils. Through VD, we were able to find our first (and current) business mentor.

I’m an introvert at heart, so I’ve had to train and exercise my social muscles. As expected, this can be pretty hard during a pandemic. But I started going to a few networking events with a high school friend who was also in ASU’s VD program with my co-founder and me to find my tempo and a networking style that was comfortable for me. Recently, I attended my first networking event solo!

Contact Info:

• Email: info@moralityapp.coom
• Website: moralityapp.com

Image Credits
Caitlin Waters