Meet the three Brisbane women wanting to shake the crusty old construction and energy industry disputes in a completely new direction.
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And the trio want Brisbane's most innovative industry collaborators to help break new ground.
Former law firm partner Janelle Kerrisk, senior counsel Sarah Roach and experienced personal assistant Dayna Gilbert were at Brisbane's newest CBD Innovation Hub in the Queen Street Mall on Friday to unveil their new venture, Helix Legal.
The major outfitting at The Capital begins on Monday.
It is here that start-up collaborators Fishburners and Little Tokyo 2 will begin Brisbane's first inner-city industry start-up centre right on the Queen Street Mall.
Floor two of The Capital, inside the old Regent Theatre, will have creative thinkers and technology thinkers, while floors three and four will have fledgling small start-ups.
The idea is funded with $5 million from Brisbane City Council, but the rooftop bar and 24-hour beer was funded by start-up incubator Little Tokyo 2, not by rates.
The three women have quit their old jobs and want to tie their decades of construction and energy legal experience to innovative ways to get their experience to tradies and construction firms facing construction delays.
Ms Roach said solving construction disputes was behind the times.
"We have spent a lot of time delivering legal services ourselves and we have seen how the industry really isn't progressing and responding to what exciting technology is available and other industries are using," she said.
"We are taking a really old traditional industry and looking at how we can throw a whole lot of different ideas and approaches into that industry to provide a service that is really getting to the heart of what our clients want."
Ms Kerrisk said they wanted to change the way legal services in the construction and energy industries were delivered and would utilise technology, such as phone apps, to make claims faster and more efficient.
"Traditionally legal services are provided by a person sitting at a desk and giving their experience to come up with solutions for clients," she said.
"We think, dealing with some of the innovation that comes from the minds of the people that were potentially on level two of this building – the tech start-ups.
"If the old of the legal could partner with the innovation of the people sitting there, then fantastic things could happen as far as disrupting the way legal services are delivered."
Jock Fairweather from Little Tokyo 2 said the fit-out of the new business begins Monday.
They will then run "accelerator" programs after picking up good support from large corporate companies.
"So we will be running a Fin-Tech accelerator, we are going to run a travel and tourism accelerator and a health accelerator," he said.
The Capital's backers – very big Queensland-based companies – will be announced when the centre's outfitting is complete.
But Mr Fairweather said Little Tokyo 2 was already helping tech-starts move to become start-ups and ultimately small, viable businesses.
"We have had 34 businesses already 'outscale us', with eight employees or more," Mr Fairweather said.
"So they have become alumni, as such."
Mr Fairweather said he liked what he saw inside The Capital.
"I think The Capital is going to become the key stakeholder and the concrete for Brisbane's new entrepreneurial ecosystem," he said.
"We are going to start scaling regionally to support Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Toowoomba – we are obviously doing Springfield – and I would like to do Moreton Bay, Redlands and Logan as well," he said.
