LUMA walks the justice journey with its users, providing them with practical and user-friendly legal information. Through the power of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, it breaks down the barriers between South Africans and the laws that protect them. LUMA works with a team of experts to provide free legal assistance, with additional consultations starting at just R5.

 Renzo Zanetti, Helm’s Head of Business Development, walked alongside Grace from the very beginning of her journey, and says, “Grace’s target audience was South Africans without the disposable income (or any income) to be able to afford legal assistance. With unemployment sadly being such a major problem in our country, the content placed a special focus on labour law so our users were armed with information that could save their jobs.”

Accessibility and high engagement were crucial keys to success, which is why Facebook Messenger was chosen as the initial platform that the audience already used. The support offered by Facebook advertising meant that LUMA could reach and help more people. LUMA was built for scale and although it has long since outgrown Facebook bot, it was the foundation for today’s success.

Covid-19 forced Gichanga and Helm to change the offering to cater for people whose jobs were threatened by the pandemic and subsequent national lockdown. With multiple directives coming from the minister of employment and labour, and legalese being hard to understand, LUMA was able to synthesise this information and provide it in a conversational format, addressing people's biggest concerns with respect to the protocols put in place and their employment relationships.

70% of the user base found the Covid-19 workflow to be the most useful part of LUMA. It had links to UIF, Covid response info and changed constantly as new info became available. The Covid-19 workflow has become a source of great help for vulnerable people whose jobs hang in the balance as they battle through retrenchments and some of life’s toughest blows.

Legal information is made available through multiple formats, while evoking a sense of calm and reassurance, moving away from the traditional legal communication style which is often very cold and complicated in its delivery.