Data Sets
Legal tech platforms have been gaining popularity around the world in recent years, resulting in a market valued at an estimated at $29.8 billion at the end of 2022, according to Reuters data, and that is expected to continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.9 percent in the next decade. Consisting of technology and software that aims to improve and/or streamline legal services and processes, legal tech encompasses the application of various technologies, such as artificial intelligence (“AI”), machine learning, cloud computing, automation, and data analytics, among others, to enhance the delivery, efficiency, and accessibility of legal services. Specifically, tech-driven innovation is assisting firms in case management, document drafting, legal research, e-discovery, risk management, etc.
While the legal industry has traditionally been slow to embrace technology, the onset of the pandemic – and more recently, the growing adoption of AI across industries – has led to an increase in software and services offerings (including in the realm of generative AI), and a notable number of mergers, acquisitions, and funding rounds. In order to get a handle on what legal tech providers are garnering the most traction – and funding – and to take the temperature of this space more broadly, we have compiled a (running) tracker of legal tech funding and M&A …
Legal tech platforms have been gaining popularity around the world in recent years, resulting in a market valued at an estimated at $29.8 billion at the end of 2022, according to Reuters data, and that is expected to continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.9 percent in the next decade. Consisting of technology and software that aims to improve and/or streamline legal services and processes, legal tech encompasses the application of various technologies, such as artificial intelligence (“AI”), machine learning, cloud computing, automation, and data analytics, among others, to enhance the delivery, efficiency, and accessibility of legal services. Specifically, tech-driven innovation is assisting firms in case management, document drafting, legal research, e-discovery, risk management, etc.
While the legal industry has traditionally been slow to embrace technology, the onset of the pandemic – and more recently, the growing adoption of AI across industries – has led to an increase in software and services offerings (including in the realm of generative AI), and a notable number of mergers, acquisitions, and funding rounds. In order to get a handle on what legal tech providers are garnering the most traction – and funding – and to take the temperature of this space more broadly, we have compiled a (running) tracker of legal tech funding and M&A …
Lawhive has raised £9.5 million ($11.9 million) in a Seed funding round to fuel its mission to make it “easier and more affordable for consumers and small businesses to access quality, expert legal help.” The London-based AI-powered platform for lawyers targets small law firms or solo lawyers, per TechCrunch, which reports that lawyers can use Lawhive’s software to onboard and manage their own clients, or can sign up for Lawhive’s marketplace to be matched with individual customers and small businesses.
“Pretty much all of the existing legal tech – AI companies like Harvey, Robin AI or Spellbook – all go after the corporate market,” Pierre Proner, CEO and co-founder of Lawhive, told TechCrunch. “That’s a very small number of big law firms in the U.S. or the U.K. We’re trying to solve the problem in the consumer legal space, which is a totally different and separate market. It’s served, at the moment, by – in the U.K. – 10,000 small law firms.”
NLPatent has raised $1.5 million in a Seed funding round. The Toronto-headquartered AI-powered natural language patent search platform will use the new cash to grow its team and build out a second patent-focused product offering. NLPatent co-founder and CEO Stephanie Curcio said that the company’s platform enables users to “simply describe their invention in full sentences and conceptually relevant results are generated instantly; consistently outperforming human experts on speed and accuracy,” while also “explaining the relevant sections of each patent it identifies, removing the ‘black box’ often experienced by other AI-based platforms.”
Ivo has raised $4.8 million in a new funding round led by Uncork Capital and Fika Ventures, with participation from previous investors Daniel Gross, GD1, and Phase One Ventures. The San Francisco-based generative-AI powered contract review solution provider says the new funds will allow it to “further enable legal teams to improve efficiency and accuracy, ensure consistent negotiating positions and deliver faster business value” by expanding its own core team and continuing to “drive innovation within its existing product offering.”
“Contracts are foundational to commerce, but reviewing contracts is a key bottleneck for important business processes. By using AI to reduce the time, effort, and cost of negotiating contracts, we’re making it easier for businesses to work together,” said Ivo co-founder and CEO, Min-Kyu Jung.
Luminance has raised $40 million in a Series B round led by Santa Monica-based growth-stage venture firm, March Capital, with participation from National Grid Partners and other existing investors, including Slaughter and May. The London-based “leader in ‘legal-grade’ AI” boasts a legal Large Language Model that “automates the generation, negotiation and analysis of contracts and other legal documents for a rapidly growing customer base.” Luminance CEO Eleanor Lightbody said, “The past 12 months have seen huge technical achievements from our Cambridge R&D hub. Developments such as ‘Auto Mark-Up’, which brings agreements into line with gold standards in a click, and AI-powered tools for non-legal teams to independently negotiate contracts, make Luminance the most advanced legal LLM available today.
The company will use the new funds to “bring our technology to new markets, strengthen our foothold in the United States where Luminance now generates over one third of its revenue, and solidify our position as the clear market leader in this space.”
Legitify has raised €1.5 million in a Seed round led by Verb Ventures, with contributions from Enterprise Ireland, Actium Partners, and Redbay Ventures. The Dublin, Ireland-based legal tech startup says that it has “quickly established itself as a leading remote online notarization solution in Europe and beyond, empower[ing] both enterprises and individuals to effortlessly certify and notarize documents online, transcending traditional jurisdictional boundaries and transforming in-person processes with a sleek, intuitive, and cost-effective online solution.” Legitify CEO Aida Lutaj said in a statement, “This funding round not only reinforces our commitment to making cross-border legal processes smoother and more accessible but also paves the way for us to expand our product offering, introduce AI-powered enhancements to our solution and broadening our operational reach.”
Climate Policy Radar has raised over $6.8 million in a new funding round from the the Environmental Defense Fund, Google.org, Open Society Foundations, The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Sequoia Climate Foundation, Schmidt Futures and Quadrature Climate Foundation. The London-based startup uses data science and machine learning to analyze climate change policies and laws on a global scale. It will use the new funds to expand its scope of available data by adding more documents, including sub-national policies, climate-related litigation cases and corporate disclosures.
IPSecure has closed its second multi seven-figure round of funding led by Secondary Market pioneer Manhattan Venture Partners. The San Francisco-based startup touts itself as “the leading Buy Box brand protection company for brands and e-commerce agencies” thanks to its AI-driven technology, which targets sellers operating in illicit markets. “Unlike traditional brand protection software that targets intellectual property attorneys, IPSecure offers a platform that is purpose-built to protect and expand wallet share for e-commerce professionals and Amazon managers,” said David Cooper, CEO and Founder of IPSecure. “Competition for the Buy Box is fierce, and, despite Amazon’s best efforts, unauthorized sellers will try to win the Buy Box from legitimate sellers. As a result, brands and Amazon agencies must safeguard their Buy Box from illicit sellers or risk losing wallet share.”
Proof Technology, Inc. has raised $30.4 million in a Series B funding round led by Long Ridge Equity Partners with participation from existing investors including Blue Heron Capital and The LegalTech Fund. The Denver, Colorado-based company hosts a litigation services marketplace that provides law firms and government agencies with document delivery through a nationwide network of process servers, electronic court filing services, and remote notarization. The Eric Voogt-founded and led company intends to “leverage the new capital to accelerate revenue growth, expand electronic filing capabilities, enhance integrations with legal industry case management software, and more deeply embrace AI to create additional efficiencies for its users.”
Legalyze.ai has raised $100,000 in an Angel round from Bethesda, Maryland-based venture capital firm Payment Ventures. The rising AI startup, which specializes in AI-powered solutions for legal workflows, including GenAI and AI document review, says that it is “poised to revolutionize how legal professionals handle casework.” Legalyze.ai CEO Chris Ford says the “new funding will propel us forward, enhancing our platform’s features and extending our reach in the legal tech market.”
Spellbook has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Inovia Capital. Thomson Reuters Ventures, The Legaltech Fund, Bling Capital, Moxxie Ventures, Concrete Ventures, Path Ventures, N49P, and Good News Ventures also participated in the round, which now brings Spellbook’s total funding to more than $30 million. The Toronto-based company, which provides an AI copilot for lawyers, will use the new funds to “continue innovating within the legal AI sector, partnering with the most law firms of any generative AI that we know of – and more importantly, to continue delivering new value to our customers.” CEO and Co-founder Scott Stevenson said, “We’ve been amazed by the explosive usage growth our platform has experienced, since launching Spellbook as the first generative AI contract drafting tool in 2022. This raise marks a major milestone for our team, and is indicative of the market traction we saw in 2023.”
Robin AI has raised $26 million in a Series B round led by Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore. Other investors include QuantumLight, Plural and AFG Partners. The New York and London-based AI-powered legal copilot provider says that it “leverages the power of generative AI to automate and speed up the process of drafting and negotiating contracts, as well as extracting information from across entire contract repositories through simple search. Its legal copilot, available as a Microsoft Word add-in, can cut the time it takes to review contracts by 85%, allowing businesses’ legal teams to move faster, save money and ultimately invest their time more strategically.” Founded in 2019 by Richard Robinson, a lawyer at Clifford Chance, and James Clough, a machine learning research scientist at Imperial College, Robin AI will use the new funds to “capitalize on the strong momentum it is seeing in a very fast moving market, including by expanding its team on the ground in the US where three quarters of its revenue is already derived from; as well as opening an office in Singapore to expand into Asia Pacific. The investment will also be used to expand its existing team of AI and machine learning experts.”
FirmPilot AI has raised $2 million in a Seed funding round. The Miami, Flordia-based company, which aims “to make law firm marketing simpler and marketing results more consistent,” provides clients with an AI-driven marketing platform. “Perpetually learning from new situations and circumstances, FirmPilot AI’s adaptability and inventiveness, as well as a commitment to disrupting the legal tech space, are among the main reasons why it was able to secure such a substantial seed capital,” according to Jake Soffer, the founder of FirmPilot.
LawFi has raised $1.5 million in a Pre-Seed funding round led by Capital Q Ventures and their Fund CAPQ BDC. The Jacksonville, Florida-based company, which offers “a mobile-first digital lending and payments platform purpose-built for the legal profession,” says that it is building “the first legal fee loan decision engine capable of underwriting and making customized legal fee loans for most types of legal matters.” LawFi’s platform will offer “simple and transparent point-of-need legal fee loans and guaranteed payment plans to finance attorney consultations, retainers, and current or past-due legal invoices.” Steven Highfill-founded LawFi says the new funds will help to “propel LawFi’s innovative platform to new heights.”
Settlement Intelligence has raised Seed funding from Verify Venture Studio. The Portland-based customer-focused legal technology startup, which was founded by a team of legal and technology experts, “has developed a comprehensive SaaS service designed to streamline and enhance the settlement negotiation process for legal professionals.” The Charlette Sinclar-led platform says that it “leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to ingest extensive information about traumatic injuries, bodily injury claim software, medical bill review software, and personal injury demand letters to create the industry-leading demand letter SaaS service.”
LegalFly has raised over €2 million in a Seed funding round led by Redalpine, together with Mehdi Ghissassi, Director of Product at Google DeepMind. The Belgian startup says that it provides an artificial intelligence copilot tailored for legal teams that merges cutting-edge technology with exclusive legal data pooled from key partnerships.” CEO Ruben Miessen said in a statement, “Our goal is to supercharge legal teams across law firms and corporate counsels, enhancing every aspect of their professional journey with our AI-driven Copilot. Our product-first mindset, refined through our experiences at Tinder and Match Group, drives us to create solutions that precisely meet user needs. “
Jimini AI has raised a €1.9 million Seed funding round led by Polytechnique Ventures, with participation from J12 Ventures, Galion.exe, Evolem, Zebox Ventures, Better Angle, and others. The French startup, which aims to empower law firms through AI, will use the new funds to pursue R&D development and roll out the solution in France and Europe. Founded by Raphael Arroche and Stéphane Béreux, Jimini’s interface provides “lawyers and legal professionals decisive leverage to improve the efficiency of their legal research and the productivity of their analyses and contract drafting.” Béreux said in a statement, “50 percent of a lawyer’s work is based on tedious tasks that can now be automated. We free lawyers and legal professionals from these constraints, so that they can focus on their core business and legal strategy.”
LegalMation, Inc., has raised a $15 million Series A financing round led by the venture capital team at Aquiline Capital Partners LP, Aquiline Technology Growth, with continued participation from existing investors Motley Fool Ventures, REV Venture Partners, Key Venture Partners, Quick Set LLC, and Brentwood Investments. The Los Angeles-based company, which touts itself as “the market leader in Generative AI-driven solutions for high-volume litigation,” will use the new funds to “deepen the functionality and breadth of its platform to support the growth of its rapidly evolving customer base. Additionally, the new funds will enable LegalMation to devote significant resources to build new end-to-end litigation workflow automation and analytic tools, all focused on the goal of resolving disputes faster, while improving accuracy, cost, and outcomes for its customers.”
James M. Lee, LegalMation’s co-founder and CEO said in a statement, “The need for AI automation tools to achieve financial goals has never been greater, especially with the macro-economic pressures falling on both large and small enterprises. This investment will allow LegalMation to accelerate its growth and realize our vision of becoming the most impactful technology partner to the insurance and legal industries.”
Eve has raised $14 million in a Seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Menlo Ventures. The San Francisco-based startup, which develops a personalized artificial intelligence assistant for legal professionals, will use the new funds to further build out its machine learning talent and grow the engineering team to continue work on expanding the product and its features. “If you look at what lawyers are actually spending time on, it’s reading massive amounts of text. And what matters critically for them is the accuracy of the information they’re pulling out,” CEO Jay Madheswaran said. “How do you work alongside them when their work changes a lot every day? It’s very unstructured. This ultimately led to the birth of Eve.”
Lisam Systems – a leading global provider of Environmental, Health & Safety compliance management software solutions and services – has closed its acquisition of EcoMundo, an international specialist of regulatory and compliance software solutions and services in chemicals and cosmetics, with the support of its investor Keensight Capital. Lisam says that it serve over 2,000 companies across various industries worldwide, “helping them to streamline their regulatory compliance process, reduce risk, and increase efficiency.” By integrating Issy-les-Moulineaux, France-based EcoMundo’s cosmetic-focused SaaS solutions into its software suite, Belgium-headquartered Lisam said in a statement that it will “expand its offering beyond chemicals-focused solutions, [while] EcoMundo’s six international subsidiaries (UK, South Korea, India, Italy, Spain and Canada) will further reinforce Lisam’s global footprint, creating the undisputed global leader in its space.”
Darrow has raised $35 million in a Series B round led by B2B specialist Georgian, with F2 and previous backers Entrée Capital and NFX also participating bringing its total funding to date to $54 million. The New York and Tel Aviv-headquartered company leverages generative AI to “ingest large amounts of publicly available documents to search for class action litigation potential across areas like data privacy violations and environmental contamination,” per TechCrunch. Founded in 2020 by CEO Evyatar Ben Artzi, CTO Gila Hayat, and Elad Spiegelman, Darrow says that “every day, countless legal violations slip through the cracks, from harmful pollution affecting poor communities to data breaches endangering people’s sensitive information. It’s not humanly possible for lawyers to sift through endless amounts of data to detect every potential case. Darrow helps you cut through the noise.” The company will use the new funds to onboard new employees in engineering and business development, bulk up its search and analytics tools, and expand the capabilities of its large language models.
Paxton AI has raised $6 million in a Seed round led by WVV Capital, with participation from Kyber Knight and 25Madison, as well as former Citigroup chairman Richard Parsons and former Goldman Sachs international compliance head Robert Mass. The Portland, Oregon-based startup says that its AI platform “compiles a comprehensive spectrum of regulatory information, including all state and federal laws and regulations, and provides the capability for users to upload and leverage additional proprietary documents” in order to “lighten the load of legal research and drafting, allowing your team to accomplish more with higher accuracy, in less time.” Going beyond “mere search functions,” Tanguy Chau-co-founded and led Paxton “can answer intricate regulatory queries, draft a range of legal materials, and provide insightful feedback on various types of documents.”
Avokaado has raised €1.2 million in a new round led by Tera Ventures, which it will use to expand into new markets and verticals, and fuel the development of an AI-ready upgrade for its document and contract automation software. The Estonian legal tech startup helps businesses create and manage contracts (including contract automation, negotiation, and eSigning) with its “all-in-one toolbox.” The Mariana Hagström-founded and led company said in a statement that by incorporating its “cutting-edge document format” aDoc into its “AI-ready upgrade, Avokaado empowers organizations to take contract management to an entirely new level of efficiency, accuracy, and security. Contracts are no longer confined to static text but become living documents that respond to changing conditions, trigger actions, and seamlessly integrate with other systems.”
Trellis has raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Top Tier Capital Partners with participation from Okapi Ventures, Calibrate Ventures, Craft Ventures, Revel Partners, and Sky Dayton. Co-founded by CEO Nicole Clark and CPO Alon Shwartz, Los Angeleges-based Trellis is a “comprehensive AI-powered state court research and analytics platform” that provides legal professionals with a single interface for accessing state court and trial records. The company said in a statement that the new funds enable it “to continue to enhance our product, to accelerate development of some ground-breaking new generative AI products, and remain deeply focused on our mission to deliver value and powerful insights to litigators on the largest court system in the world.”
Chicago, IL-based AI-powered discovery platform Reveal has acquired both Logikcull and IPRO, two fellow eDiscovery platforms, bringing its post-acquisition valuation to upwards of $1 billion. According to K1 Investment Management-owned Reveal, the combination “integrates Logikcull and IPRO’s unique capabilities with Reveal’s proven AI prowess to create an all-in-one hub of eDiscovery tools for matters of any size and scope. From self-service offerings for smaller cases to enterprise-grade solutions for complex legal challenges, Reveal now stands as the go-to partner for automating the practice of law.” Reveal founder and CEO Wendell Jisa said in a statement, “The acquisitions of Logikcull and IPRO build on Reveal’s growth strategy of integrating the best and most useful technologies into one platform so customers have greater choice and control over their eDiscovery workflows. By bringing together the strengths of all three companies, including Logikcull’s intuitive, easy-to-use functionality and IPRO’s global reach and information governance tools, Reveal is now able to serve the diverse needs of clients across the legal spectrum, from SMB to mid-market and enterprise.”
EverService Holdings has acquired iLawyer Marketing, a San Diego, CA-based legal-focused digital marketing solutions company. According to EverService, which is a Phoenix, AZ-based provider of tech-enabled business solutions, “The integration of iLawyer’s expertise and offerings into EverService’s portfolio results in a comprehensive suite of tools designed to meet the evolving needs of law firms, corporate legal departments, and individual practitioners.” EverService CEO Jeff Mosler said in a statement, “We have closely followed iLawyer’s success in providing high ROI for attorneys and law firms throughout the country through their digital marketing offerings. We are excited to combine iLawyer’s client acquisition product with Alert Communications’ industry-leading legal intake and retainer services for an end-to-end business growth solution for our EverService legal clients.”
Thompson Reuters has closed its previously-announced acquisition of Casetext for $650 million in cash. In a statement, Reuters asserted that San Francisco-based AI assistant Casetext “has been a proven AI innovator for legal professionals since its founding in 2013, creating solutions that help legal professionals work more efficiently and provide higher-quality representation to more clients. A core solution from Casetext is CoCounsel, launched in March 2023 it uses GPT-4 to help legal professionals achieve a broad range of tasks, including research, analysis, and document preparation and review.” Reuters further stated that “in the near future,” it will “begin working through integration plans with the Casetext team, with a keen focus on accelerating breakthroughs in generative AI for the benefit of you, our customers. As we do this work, we remain committed to in-house AI development, and as previously announced, intend to invest more than $100 million annually into the organic development of AI enhanced features and tools for our customers.”
Flo Recruit has raised $4.2 million in a Seed round led by LiveOak Venture Partners and Moneta Ventures with participation from Tau Ventures and Alumni Ventures. Austin, Texas-based Flo Recruit – which provides legal recruitment software to unlock data-driven strategy for law firms – intends to use the funds to accelerate the expansion of its Flo Recruit Applicant Tracking product, particularly in developing advanced reporting and deep system integration for clients. “The legal industry deserves a better applicant tracking system,” Katherine Allen, Co-Founder and CEO of Flo Recruit, said in a statement. “Market shifts have pushed firms to adopt less structured, more diverse recruiting tactics. Flo Recruit clients are making strategic decisions based on real-time insight. Others are making expensive guesses because they can’t access their own data fast enough.”
Alt Legal has acquired rival automated trademark docketing software provider TM Cloud. In furtherance of the deal, TM Cloud customers will move to Kansas City-headquartered Alt Legal’s docketing software, marking Nehal Madhani-led Alt Legal’s fourth acquisition since 2019. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Patented.AI has raised $4 million in a Pre-Seed round led by Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures, Nicole Stata of Boston Seed Capital, Jeff Fagnan of Accomplice, Naval Ravikant and Cooley LLP. The San Francisco-based company, which touts itself as offering the “most powerful AI engine for intellectual property,” says that it has created “the world’s first patent and intellectual property service that is built to find infringement.” Founded by Wayne Chang, Patented.AI intends to use the new funds to “continue improving LLM Shield’s capabilities for the enterprise, disseminate resources to prevent AI data loss and continue developing AI-powered software to protect IP.”
ECFX has raised $7 million in a new round led by LegalTech Fund, with participation from Growth Street Partners, Cove Fund and other existing investors. The Venice, California-based provider of electronic court notice management for law firms and corporate legal teams will use the new funds to “expand its platform and further its leadership position in a rapidly adopting market.” Founded by lawyers Dan O’Day and Nelson Quintero, ECFX says that its platform removes the need for firms to process notices manually and “minimizes non-billable hours that docketing teams, legal assistants, paralegals, and lawyers spend manually downloading, profiling, and distributing information from ECF notices from state and federal courts.”
Parrot has raised $11 million in a Series A round led by Amplify Partners and XYZ Venture Capital, bringing its total funding to $14 million. The New York-based full-stack platform for transcribing and managing depositions will use the new funds “to expand go to market, accelerate product development and deepen its investment in artificial intelligence.” Aaron O’Brien-led Parrot said in a statement that it “dramatically streamlines the deposition process for legal professionals by leveraging proprietary large language models (LLMs) specifically trained on legal and insurance vocabulary to deliver highly accurate transcripts immediately following a deposition versus the typical days or weeks. Its legally-compliant platform also helps address the growing shortage of court reporters as demand for court reporting services continues to grow each year.”
EvenUp raised $50.5 million in a Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Scott Belsky, Clio, SignalFire, DCM, NFX, and Gokul Rajaram (DoorDash executive and board member at Pinterest, Coinbase and The Trade Desk), bringing its valuation to $325 million. The San Francisco, CA-based company, which specializes in AI-driven support for personal injury lawyers, will use the new funds to scale its existing business support, and introduce new technologies and products for personal injury and other fields of law. “EvenUp provides a product to personal injury law firms that automates the workflow for demand letters, using generative AI and a proprietary legal dataset,” with customers seeing 30 percent increase in payouts, in addition to time savings from drafting legal claims, according to CEO Rami Karabibar.
Doormat has raised $1.25 million in a pre-seed round led by Alate Partners with participation from The LegalTech Fund, Erin Bury of Willful, Brandon Chu formerly of Shopify, alongside additional angel investors. The Toronto-based startup – which “enhances the client experience and streamlining the legal process with advanced technology solutions to bring much-needed simplicity and ease to the real estate buying and selling process in Canada” – will use the new funds to expand its existing operations and reach. Co-founder and CEO Robert Saunders said in a statement, “With the housing market slowly experiencing a rebound, we want Canadians to have access to a real estate tool kit and Doormat is a part of that. We are igniting change, driven by a disruptive passion to redefine the way we navigate the world of real estate.”
Steno has raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Left Lane Capital with participation from Clio Ventures. The Los Angeles-based tech-enabled provider of legal support services will use the new funds to “continue growing its presence in new markets across the country, develop adjacent service channels for its clients, and expand its tech team.” The Greg Hong, Dylan Ruga, and Dan Anderson-founded company provides court reporting services combined with technology and deferred payment options. Ruga said in a statement in connection with the round, “As a plaintiff attorney, I found myself in a spot where all of my working capital was tied up in case costs. I couldn’t grow my business, there were no court reporting agencies that would defer costs until my cases settled, and securing litigation financing was resource-draining for my staff. I called Greg and Dan with the idea, and Steno took shape.” The company has raised a total of $38.5M, including a Series A round completed in fall 2020 led by Trust Ventures.
Orbital Witness has raised £7.5 million in Series A round led by Parker89 and joined by LocalGlobe, Outward VC, Seedcamp, Portfolio Ventures, and Realty Corporation. The London, UK-based company will use the new funds to expand its 40-strong team and build key partnerships across the property market. Co-founded by Will Pearce and Ed Boulle in 2018, Orbital Witness leverages machine learning and AI to enable lawyers and property professionals “to manage the complex, labor intensive, and heavily regulated diligence process.”
Clara has announced a new investment from – and partnership with – Silicon Valley-based innovation platform Plug and Play to further build out its legal operating system. Dubai-headquartered Clara boasts a “category-creating legal operating system that digitizes and automates legal tasks for founders, including digital company formations, cap table and data room management, and automated legal document generation (covering SAFEs, ESOPs, and more), all supported by the platform’s predictive educational function.” The new partnership will give Plug and Play access to Clara’s product line as well as bespoke instructional support that Clara and Plug and Play will co-create.
The investment from Plug and Play follows from an April 2022 investment from The LegalTech Fund, which coincided with the platform’s emerge from beta phase. As of April 2022, Clara’s total seed funding amounted to more than $3.5 million.
Harvey announced that it has raised $21 million in funding in a Series A led by Sequoia Capital with participation from the OpenAI Startup Fund, SV Angel, and Elad Gil. The round follows a $5 million funding round in November from OpenAI LP’s startup fund. The San Francisco-based generative AI startup focuses on the legal profession, harnessing the power of OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model AI to provide these capabilities to a growing number of law firms in an invite-only service. Harvey revealed that there are currently more than 15,000 law firms on the waitlist for its tech, with joining in February and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP launching a legal chatbot with Harvey in March.
“At Harvey, we believe that the future of AI will not be a chatbot that compliments your workflow; it will be the platform your workflow is built on,” Harvey co-founders Gabriel Pereyra and Winston Weinberg said.
Lexion has raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Point72 Ventures. Offering “an array of AI-powered contract and business management services,” Seattle-based Lexion began incorporating generative AI last year through the AI Contract Assist plugin for Microsoft Word, which engages generative AI to help draft, negotiate, and explain contracts for people outside the legal profession. The new round brings Lexion’s total funding to date to about $45 million. “For us, AI is not just hype – it’s our past, our present, and our future. When OpenAI released davinci-003 last November, we already had a use case for Lexion,” CEO Gaurav Oberoi said. “Our goal is to help lawyers save 80% of their time spent redlining contracts and then continue to extend this efficiency boost to sales teams filling out RFPs, IT teams completing security questionnaires, and more.”
LeanLaw has raised $4 million in a Series A round led by FINTOP Capital. The Boise, ID-based company provides a financial operating system for small and mid-sized law firms; its first fintech integration was with QuickBooks Online. “With cloud-based billing and invoice workflows, law firms will see invoices paid 70% faster with LeanLaw’ streamlined accounting workflows,” Jonathon Fishman, CEO of LeanLaw, said in a statement. The company will use the new funds “to become a competitive challenger to legacy legal tech and to move forward with its fintech integrations.”
Nexl has raised $4 million in a financing round led by Australian-based B2B venture capital firm EVP with follow-on participation from The Legal Tech Fund, Vulpes, and Saniel Ventures. Nexl – which provides a no-data-entry CRM platform for lawyers – will use the new funds to “accelerate the development of its core product, increase acquisition efforts in major markets, and attract industry talent to build out its fast-developing ecosystem for partners and clients.” Founder Philipp Thurner said that “raising money in the toughest investment climate in recent memory is validation of [the company’s] thesis.”
Henchman has raised $7 million in Series A funding in a round led by a New York-based early-stage fund Adjacent VC and a Munich-based VC fund Acton Capital, with participation from including Louis Jonckheere & Pieterjan Bouten (founders Showpad), Felix Van de Maele (founder Collibra) and Bram Couvreur (Partner at U.S.-based law firm Cooley). The Belgian startup uses AI tech to “automatically centralize past clauses and definitions from any legal team’s contract database (whether law firm or corporate legal department) and deliver them intelligently in lawyers’ familiar Microsoft Word or Outlook environments” to boost firms’ contract drafting. The round brings Jorn Vanysacker, Gilles Mattelin, and Wouter Van Respaille-founded Henchman’s funding to date to $10 million. The funds will be used to further innovate and expand geographically.
Bessemer Venture Partners has acquired a majority stake in Litify, which offers an “‘end-to-end legal operating platform’ that can be used for full-service practice management, enterprise legal management, plaintiff practice management and claims litigation management.” The parties did not disclose the terms of the investment. Litify previously raised $50 million in a Series A funding round in 2019, following from earlier rounds of $2.5 million in 2018 and $5 million in 2017. The lead investor in that Series A round, Tiger Global Management, will remain a minority investor.
Macro has secured a $9.3 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Craft Ventures, BoxGroup, 3kVC, and law firm Cooley. New York-headquarted Macro offers an artificial intelligence-powered PDF processing software tool for professionals, including those in the legal realm, that identifies/pulls key terms, sections and equations to make documents interactive and hyperlinked. “We believe that there’s a significant amount of room for improvement in open source formats like PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX and email,” founder Jacob Beckerman told TechCrunch. “The nice thing about these formats is that they’re standards. Nobody owns them. And they’re extensible, which means you can actually modify and build on the standard. So instead of writing proprietary formats from scratch, and instead of ignoring the network effects these formats already have, we’re extending and building on top.” The funding round comes as Macro prepares to release a word-processing tool and grow the size of its 8-person workforce.
Apperio has raised $7 million in a round led by Molten Ventures, with participation from Cambridge-based VC IQ Capital, Palo Alto-based VC Nextlaw Ventures, and London-based VCs Notion Capital, Volution, and Hambro Perks. The latest cash infusion brings the London-based company’s total funding to date to $19.9 million. The Nicholas d’Adhemar-led company – which touts itself as “a legal spend management software that helps in-house legal teams stay control their spend and build trust with external counsel” – will use the new funds to “further develop the company’s product for corporate counsel and to meet the growing demand for new functionality from law firms,” and to expand its operations in both the UK and the US.
SingleFile raised $3.2 million in a round led by existing investors Foundry and PSL Ventures, with participation from its largest law firm clients, bringing its total funding to date is $8.6 million. Seattle-based SingleFile – which “helps companies and law firms fill out reports, manage filings, maintain internal records and remain in good standing” – will use the new funds to fuel growth of its technology. “Government compliance is unavoidable and therefore recession-proof,” said CEO Aaron Finn, noting that the company’s revenue has grown by 3X in the past 18 months.
Digip raised €3.2 million in a seed round led by Industrifonden and Seed X with participation from various family offices and angel investors from the Stockholm startup ecosystem. Offering an “on-demand trademark registration and protection service that gives entrepreneurs an opportunity to protect and strengthen their brand names worldwide in a digital and user-friendly environment,” Stockholm-based Digip is prepping a launch of new features, including open API that will let partners integrate Digip’s techinto their workflows. The company will also expand into new markets over the next 12 months.
Digip co-founder and CEO Viktor Johansson said, “A company typically spends a 4-figure amount for a trademark search, and waits weeks for results. We have already transformed this experience for users who are reporting average savings of 80% of trademark management fees and cutting a substantial amount of their workload by using the platform and services.”
Josef has raised $5.2 million in a Pre-Series round led by OIF Ventures, with participation from Carthona Capital, Flying Fox Ventures, Jelix Ventures and Saniel Ventures, in order to “support the business as it doubles down on its mission to transform the way legal services are delivered globally.” Established in Melbourne by lawyers Tom Dreyfus and Sam Flynn and engineer Kirill Kliavin, the Australian startup offers software that “enables legal professionals to easily build digital tools that automate their day-to-day work, from streamlining intake, to drafting contracts and providing advice.” Josef will use the new funds to expand its reach globally through several new hires in the U.S., alongside APAC, following successful launches in North America and Europe in 2021.
Goodlegal has raised €1.2 million in a Pre-Seed round from Earlybird Digital East Fund, which led the round, Credo Ventures together with Daniel Dines, and Underline Ventures. The Bucharest-based company provides a legal infrastructure platform aimed at providing organizations with an “out-of-the-box legal operations framework to achieve legal compliance by leveraging the latest technology advancements and industry-standard content.” Founder Vasile Tiple said, “We are starting our journey to reinvent legal and help our customers to focus on their business, develop great products and become self-sufficient with Goodlegal infrastructure. Our mission is to make legal easy, accessible, and actionable.”
Legal.io has raised $11.6 million in a Series A round led by Tiger Global. The San Francisco, CA-based provider of an enterprise marketplace for legal talent and technology will use the funds to grow its community of legal professionals in 2022, and hire for several positions in enterprise sales, legal recruiting, and growth marketing. Led by CEO Pieter Gunst, Legal.io is building an enterprise marketplace for legal talent for temporary and permanent roles and technology.