Profile - Ajaz Ahmed: Setting sights on becoming the ‘Specsavers’ of the legal world

Ajaz Ahmed and I reach a stumbling block early on in our interview.

When I ask what his job title is, he hesitates. “Sometimes when I meet people and they ask me what I do I just say I don’t do anything to see what their reaction is. Other times I say I’m involved with a few companies.

“Some people use the word entrepreneur. I don’t particularly like that word, it’s a bit pretentious. The reality behind a lot of people who say that is nothing.”

Doing nothing is not something you could accuse Ahmed of.

As the brains behind Freeserve, he created the first free internet service provider in the UK in 1998 and saw the business through to flotation and the £1.6bn sale to Wanadoo.

The 48-year-old currently sits on the board of regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, which closes next March, and has invested in a number of internet start-ups, including Browzar, which claims to allow users to surf the web without leaving traces of their activities, and website-developer Quba. He is also on the advisory board of Huddersfield University Business School.

Ahmed’s latest venture is Legal365, which he hopes will revolutionise the legal world following the deregulation of the market, which is due to come into effect early next year.

The idea is simple: to create an online legal service which is backed up by a chain of city centre high street shops.

The website allows customers to create their own legal documents, from contracts to co-habitation agreements, by answering a series of questions.

The website, launched three months ago, will eventually be supported by a national network of city centre shops offering on-the-spot advice at fixed prices – the first of which is due to open in Leeds next year.

“It will really revolutionise legal services because it will make them much more accessible,” says Ahmed.

Ahmed’s ultimate goal is to turn Legal365 into the Specsavers of the legal world. “The opticians market used to be a regulated market... it got de-regulated and look at it now,” he says. “But the person you go and see when you get your eyes tested is still a qualified optician. I think people are screaming out for better, more affordable legal services. We want to become the next Specsavers within the legal profession.”

The idea for Legal365 came about after a chance meeting with Simon Stell, managing partner of law firm Last Cawthra Feather, at a dinner.

Stell rang him a couple of weeks later to ask for his help in setting up legal services on the internet.

“They’d tried to do something ahead of the changes in the legal sector and made a mess of it,” says Ahmed. “I had a look at what they’d done and they didn’t have a clue. There was nothing right about it.”

Ahmed saw an opportunity to develop the idea and came up with the Legal365 brand.

Currently, the only people who can own a law firm are qualified solicitors but that will change when the delayed Legal Services Act 2007 comes into force next year.

The Legal365 website is already up and running thanks to Ahmed’s partnership with Last Cawthra Feather. But Ahmed will soon own a majority stake in the business and become a director. “The legal sector is something I never thought about but now I’m in it I can see enormous opportunities,” he says.

Ahmed insists Legal365 is different from other business models being developed. “We’re the only ones who will offer a range of services on the internet and have direct contact with customers on the high street,” he says. “That’s a winning combination.”

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Ahmed, the eldest of six, moved to Huddersfield at the age of three where his father worked in the textile mills.

He went to a predominantly white school in Rawthorpe, but, although says he felt isolated and experienced some racism, he insists he was “quite happy”.

His father died suddenly from a respiratory condition when he was in his twenties. “I think the fact that I was the eldest, and my brothers and sisters were still at school, had a big effect on me,” he says. “I think that’s one of the things that drove me. I’m only sorry my father didn’t get to see any of it.”

After failing all his school exams, Ahmed went to work for Dixons as a junior sales person for £30 a week.

He progressed through the ranks to become a store manager and, after struggling to get on the internet for the first time, he came up with the idea of creating a free internet provider called Freeserve. He lobbied his bosses to launch it and in 1998 the idea became reality.

Ahmed’s life changed forever overnight. “One minute we were working in the background and the next thing you know, within hours thousands were signing up,” he says.

He was promoted to head up business development and within six months, Freeserve had a million subscribers. By the summer of 1999, it had become Britain’s first dotcom to float on the stock market. It entered the FTSE 100 soon after with a market cap of £9bn and, in 2001, was sold to Wanadoo for £1.6bn.

He is reluctant to reveal his windfall from selling his shares. “I made a decent amount of money”, he says.

Ahmed paid off his mortgage, bought a Lexus and initially invested in a few companies which subsequently failed. He lost money but says he learned lessons from the experience.

His first loves are retail and technology. “The internet has changed peoples lives forever and now people live their lives on their mobile phones,” he says. “It’s amazing how this has happened in a short space of time.”

Interestingly, he hates social media. “I am on Twitter and I have an awful lot of people following me but I’ve never written a single word. I see people on Twitter who tweet senseless garbage and I think ‘why’?”

Ahmed, who is married with four children, says he is constantly approached by people who want him to invest in their business ideas. “I never turn people away,” he says. “Ninety nine per cent of the ideas that you get are not very good. It’s like the X Factor when they think they can sing. I’m doing them a favour by telling them it’s not a good idea.”

Ahmed is brutally honest about his motivation. “I often read in this sort of thing when you ask people ‘Does money drive you?’ they say ‘no’. But it does. Money drives people because of what money can do. But also achievement. If Legal365 goes on to become a big venture and gets sold for a lot of money, that would make me very happy.”

However, Ahmed insists he remains grounded. “I’m just an ordinary guy who’s lived the dream but I’ve got my feet firmly on the ground.”

Ajaz Ahmed Factfile

Title: Founder of Freeserve and Legal365

Date of birth: May 7, 1963

Education: Fartown High School

First job: Working on a market stall while I was still at school

Favourite song: 99 Problems, by Ice-T

Car driven: Lexus GS

Favourite film: Pulp Fiction

Favourite holiday destination: Lahore – I have a house there

Last book read: Grinding It Out: The making of McDonald’s, by Ray Kroc

What I am most proud of: My kids.