Start-up company Ask Q was founded in early 2021 by several partners from law firm Quinz. The business was created because clients were increasingly asking for structural support for their in-house legal teams. Ask Q has now been around for two years and has quickly grown to become a well-known name for companies looking to rethink their legal departments. "We often solve capacity problems," says Marieke Van Driessche (General Manager). "That could be a temporary replacement or support during peak moments or bottlenecks. We can also go a step further and are increasingly serving as a legal department for companies that don't have one."
Ask Q now has 20 employees, and over 40 customers and generated annual sales of over 2 million euros in 2022. Its clients include well-known names such as Gimv, Spadel, Baloise and several large pharmaceutical companies. To answer clients' questions more efficiently, while continuing to grow, Ask Q is centering its operations in three specialized Labs: Contracts Lab, Data Protection Lab and Legal Operations Lab.
"The first two Labs focus on capacity and can take on all of the Commercial Contracting and Data Protection work," says Marieke. "For several months now, Ask Q has also been concentrating on 'Legal Operations', whereas the focus has previously been on consulting and implementing change processes within legal departments. The Legal Operations Lab guides clients in the digital transformation of their legal department or helps them rethink their sourcing strategy. The labs are separate business units within Ask Q with their own Lab Lead and growth path, but each lab encompasses Ask Q's archetypal DNA."
Ask Q mainly works for clients in Belgium, but this is about to change; "We already work for quite a few companies in Switzerland, and are setting our sights on the Netherlands this year to further expand our business on the international stage," says Marieke.
