What happened with the Genevar Bar Association (ODAGE) and Legaly.ch

The following content is an open letter I shared on Legaly.ch, the version of The Lawyer Guide operating in Switzerland. It was published to give visitors and lawyers more context on what we're building, how we did it and why. I believe it's also a testimonial of our activity, a manifesto for The Lawyer Guide.

Dear visitors, lawyers, and members of the Swiss legal community,

If you have arrived on Legaly.ch recently, you may have questions about who we are, why your name appears on our platform, or what we are trying to build. For lawyers, some of you may have discovered us through a colleague. Others may have come across your profile for the first time, or heard about the discussions between Legaly and the Geneva Bar Association.

Until now, we have not taken the time to properly introduce ourselves to everyone who visits this website. I think it is important that we do.

My name is François Savard. I am French, a designer by background, and I have spent much of my professional life building digital products and businesses. I co-founded The Lawyer Guide in Norway in 2020, and I have been involved in the project from the very beginning. Today, our platform operates across several markets, including Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, the United States and Singapore.

Legaly.ch is our Swiss platform. But behind the website, the profiles and the technology is a small team of people who believe that finding legal help should be easier, more transparent and more accessible.

I would like to explain where that belief comes from, what we have learned along the way, and how we see the future of Legaly in Switzerland.

It started with a simple question

When we began building Advokatguiden in Norway in 2020, our starting point was straightforward: why was it so difficult for an ordinary person to find the right lawyer?

When people need legal assistance, they are often dealing with something important, stressful or unfamiliar. It might be a family matter, an employment dispute, a business problem or a question about their rights. They may know that they need a lawyer without knowing where to start, whom to trust or which professional has experience with their particular situation.

Finding a name online is relatively easy. Finding the right person is another matter.

We wanted to build a platform that could make that process more straightforward. A place where people could discover lawyers, understand their areas of practice, explore available information and make a more informed decision about whom to contact.

We also saw an opportunity to give lawyers better tools to manage their professional presence online. A lawyer's reputation and visibility increasingly extend beyond their own website. Yet the information people encounter online can be fragmented, incomplete or out of date.

Our ambition was to bring some of that information together in one place, while giving lawyers the opportunity to take ownership of their profiles, correct their details and decide how they wish to present themselves.

That was the idea behind Advokatguiden. It remains the idea behind Legaly today.

What we learned by building across markets

We did not begin with a grand plan to change the legal industry around the world. We started with one market, one problem and a belief that technology could help solve it.

Over time, we learned that the underlying challenge was not unique to Norway. People in different countries face similar difficulties when searching for legal assistance, even though their legal systems, professional traditions and expectations differ considerably.

We expanded our work to other markets, adapting the platform to local contexts. That experience taught us something important: a product can be built on a common principle, but it cannot simply assume that every market works in the same way.

The legal profession is particularly sensitive to these differences. Lawyers operate within professional obligations, ethical standards and regulatory frameworks that deserve to be taken seriously. A solution that works well in one country must still be examined carefully before it is introduced in another.

Switzerland has made that lesson especially clear to us.

We came to the Swiss market because we believe that people here should be able to find legal assistance more easily, and that lawyers should have access to useful tools for their online presence. We also recognised that Switzerland has its own legal culture, professional expectations and rules concerning publicity and the handling of personal data.

We knew we had to learn from that environment. Looking back, there are things we could have approached more carefully from the outset.

That is part of building something new: having a clear conviction about the problem you want to solve, while remaining willing to reconsider how you solve it.

Why lawyers are at the centre of Legaly

One thing I want to make particularly clear is that lawyers are not our competitors. They are the professionals our platform exists to serve, alongside the people searching for legal help.

Legaly is designed to help users discover and compare lawyers, while giving legal professionals the opportunity to improve their visibility and manage their presence on the platform. The website is free for people looking for legal assistance. Lawyers can use a free profile, and those who want additional visibility and features can choose a paid Premium offering.

This business model is important to understand. Our objective is not to replace lawyers, tell people that they no longer need legal advice or make legal decisions on their behalf. It is to help connect people who need assistance with professionals who can provide it.

We also believe that a lawyer's professional identity should not be reduced to a single ranking or a few numbers. Legal work is complex. Experience, specialisation, communication, professional judgement and the circumstances of an individual case all matter.

Any ranking or visibility indicator on Legaly should therefore be understood in the context of our own platform, not as a definitive assessment of a lawyer's competence or standing within the profession.

We have a responsibility to make that distinction clear.

Equally, we recognise that a professional profile is not an insignificant thing. It concerns a real person, their work and their reputation. Accuracy matters. Context matters. And the ability to raise a concern and have it addressed matters.

A directory is only useful if the information it provides is useful. We cannot ask people to trust a platform that does not take those responsibilities seriously.

An honest word about the discussion with the Geneva Bar Association

In September 2026, we received formal correspondence from the Geneva Bar Association concerning our practices on Legaly.ch. The correspondence raised questions about the creation of lawyer profiles, the accuracy of certain information, our communications with lawyers and the legal basis for our approach.

The exchange was followed by a further letter and, on 5 October, a communication to the Association's members about Legaly and the correspondence between us.

We understand why this has attracted attention. Lawyers have legitimate reasons to be attentive to their professional reputation, their personal data and the way their profession is represented online. We respect those concerns, and we take them seriously.

I also believe that it is important to be candid about what we have learned from this process.

Some profiles contained information, including indications about whether a lawyer accepted new clients or offered online consultations, that had not been directly confirmed by the lawyer concerned. Information gathered from public sources is not necessarily complete, current or appropriate to display without further verification.

We recognised that problem and took steps to remove those unverified details from profiles that had not been claimed. We also reviewed our communication processes after concerns were raised about messages continuing after lawyers had asked not to be contacted.

These were important issues to address. We should not dismiss them simply because our original intention was to make information easier to find.

I am personally committed to the idea that building a useful platform also means recognising when something needs to change. We will not get everything right on the first attempt, but we must be prepared to listen, correct mistakes and improve the way we work.

At the same time, the correspondence raised a broader question on which we and the Geneva Bar Association have not reached agreement: how publicly available professional information may be used to create an online directory, and what conditions should apply to that activity under Swiss law.

We recognise that the Association has its own responsibilities towards the profession and its members. We have our own understanding of the purpose of a professional directory and the role it can play in helping people find legal assistance. Those perspectives have not always aligned.

We do not believe that a disagreement of this kind is best resolved through assumptions about one another's intentions. Nor do we believe that technology should be exempt from legal obligations simply because it offers a new way of doing things.

The appropriate legal requirements must be respected, and questions that remain disputed should be treated with the seriousness they deserve.

From our side, we have sought dialogue and proposed practical ways to address the concerns raised. Our intention remains to engage constructively, listen to legitimate objections and find a way forward that respects the Swiss legal environment and the people affected by our work.

This letter is not intended to replace the correspondence or offer a legal conclusion. It is an opportunity to explain, in our own words, why we built Legaly and the principles that guide us.

What we believe the future of legal search should look like

The way people discover professional services is changing.

For many years, search engines and professional websites were the main starting points for finding information online. Today, people increasingly ask AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude for recommendations and explanations.

These tools draw on information available across the internet. That makes the quality, consistency and accuracy of online information increasingly important for professionals, including lawyers.

A lawyer's digital presence is no longer limited to a website or a business listing. It is becoming part of a wider information ecosystem in which professional details may be discovered, summarised and repeated by systems the lawyer does not directly control.

We believe there is an opportunity to help lawyers navigate that change. A well-maintained professional profile can provide another structured source of information about a lawyer's practice, experience and contact details. It can also help prospective clients better understand who they might approach for assistance.

But the opportunity comes with responsibilities. Visibility should not come at the expense of accuracy. Technology should not create confusion about a lawyer's qualifications or professional standing. And people should be able to understand what a platform does, how it works and how to raise concerns.

Our long-term ambition is to contribute to a legal market in which finding a lawyer is less confusing for the public and managing an online professional presence is more straightforward for lawyers.

We want to help make legal services easier to discover without pretending that choosing a lawyer is as simple as choosing a product from a catalogue.

That is a distinction we intend to preserve as the platform evolves.

A note to every lawyer listed on Legaly

If you are a lawyer who has come across your profile and wondered why it exists, I understand that you may have questions.

Our approach has been to build a directory using professional information available through public sources, with the aim of helping people discover legal professionals. We recognise, however, that the existence of a profile does not mean that the lawyer has reviewed or confirmed every detail on it.

That is why we want the process of managing a profile to be straightforward.

If your information is incorrect, please contact us so we can address it. If you would like to take ownership of your profile, you can claim it and review the information displayed. If you do not wish to be listed, you can ask us to remove your profile.

You do not need to purchase a subscription to raise a concern, request a correction or ask for removal. These are separate from our paid offering.

We also understand that professional associations play an important role in the legal community. Their concerns should not be ignored, and neither should the individual views of the lawyers they represent. We believe that constructive dialogue is the best way to understand those perspectives and work towards practical solutions.

Ultimately, we want our relationship with the legal profession to be based on clarity and trust, rather than uncertainty about who we are or what we are trying to achieve.

Looking ahead

I started this project in 2020 because I believed that a relatively simple idea could make a meaningful difference: helping people find the right lawyer, while giving lawyers better ways to be discovered.

That belief has not changed.

What has changed is our understanding of the responsibility that comes with building a platform in a profession as important as law. We have learned that good intentions are not enough. We must pay attention to local rules, listen when concerns are raised and be willing to improve our product and our processes.

We also believe that innovation and professional responsibility do not have to be opposing forces. It should be possible to develop better ways for people to access legal services while respecting the standards that protect the public and the profession.

We do not expect every lawyer to agree with our approach. We do not expect everyone to want a profile on Legaly, and we recognise that some will prefer not to be listed. Our aim is not to convince everyone to use our platform.

Our aim is to build something genuinely useful for those who do.

To everyone who has taken the time to look at Legaly, send us a message, raise a concern or engage in a discussion, thank you. We may not always see things the same way, but those conversations matter.

And to the lawyers who have chosen to work with us, claim their profiles or use our services, thank you for giving us the opportunity to be part of your professional journey.

We are still building. We are still learning. And we remain committed to the idea that finding legal help should be easier, that professional information should be treated responsibly, and that the future of legal services should be shaped through dialogue rather than distrust.

I hope this letter gives you a better understanding of who we are, where we come from and why Legaly exists.

If you have questions or would like to speak with us directly, our door remains open.

Warm regards,

François Savard
Co-founder & CEO, The Lawyer Guide
On behalf of the Legaly.ch team and everyone at The Lawyer Guide.