September 21, 2026 -- Issue #412

Hi, Charlie Uniman here, host of Legal Tech StartUp Focus ("LTSF"), the online community for everyone involved with legal tech startups. You're reading the latest digest of articles, opinion pieces, and other thoughts posted during the past week at the community.
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Sponsored

Fundraising

◾ From a fundraising-related post at Legaltech News (LTN):
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"Self-described 'AI-Native' immigration law firm Alma announced that it raised $17 million in a Series A round.
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"Alma was founded in 2024 by former Cooley associate Aizada Marat, former Uber engineering manager Shuo Chen and former Step senior product manager Assel Tuleubayeva.
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"Alma joins at least one other nontraditional law firm in leveraging a unique model to deliver immigration services."
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Find the entire LTN post about Alma’s raise here:
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​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/09/16/self-described-ai-native-immigration-law-firm-alma-announces-17m-in-series-a-funding/​

Hiring/New Hires​
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◾ Legal IT Insider (LITI) has posted about Ackerman’s hiring Charles Zener as its first director of AI development. BigLaw continues to consider building, rather just buying, applications.
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From LITI’s post:
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“US firm Akerman has appointed its first director of AI development, hiring Charles Zerner from Texas firm Munck Wilson Mandala.
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“Zerner, originally a litigator before moving into AI, takes on a new role in which he will be responsible for building custom AI applications.”
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Read the company complete
lITI post at this link:
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​https://legaltechnology.com/from-ai-users-to-builders-akerman-hires-first-director-of-ai-development/​

◾ Legal IT Insider (LITI) reports on a new hire by Clio: namely, former Michigan jurist (Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court), Bridget Mary McCormack, joins Clio as "general manager, judiciary." So good to see the judiciary getting some love from a big player in legal tech.

From LITI's post:

"In a rare move from the highest levels of the judiciary into legal technology, former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack has joined Clio as general manager, judiciary, strengthening the leadership team behind Clio’s expansion into the courts.

"In her new role, McCormack will lead Clio’s growth across courts, judicial officers, and dispute resolution organisational partners, leveraging her deep understanding of the justice system to help Clio grow its judiciary business. She will be working alongside Casetext co-founder Pablo Arredondo, who joined Clio last month from Thomson Reuters as senior vice president, judiciary."

Read all that LITI has to say on this personnel move by visiting this link:

​https://legaltechnology.com/supreme-court-judge-mccormack-joins-clios-growing-judiciary-team/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-83AYgXnWEenEPuAWKfFxLQ08YyKM7bvpTHYXJ4GLvrmtHj-taMz7O1eKbaBH9avvQyPOXu9WpDkhIlppn-f2EdQtMVufr__HmXUNBvE5BPtF_KobY&_hsmi=145900416&utm_content=145900416&utm_source=hs_email​

LegalEd

◾ Noah Waisberg, co-founder and CEO of Zuva, has posted on LinkedIn about his recent experience using (in an actual deal) GPT 5.5 Pro for contract review and summarization. Here's an excerpt from Noah's post:
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"The summaries came back looking great. Then we checked them against the actual agreements, and results looked a lot more mixed. There were a lot more mistakes than we expected, including clauses it missed entirely and (more troublingly!) answers GPT appeared to have simply made up."

Read Noah's entire post at this link (where you can also access a slide deck with more information about the AI's output and, in the comments to Noah's post, a blog post that Noah posted at Zuva's blog): https://lnkd.in/p/g5uBUi43​

◾ Mary O'Carroll of LegaEng Consulting Group has done a public service for law firms and in-house legal departments with a September 14, 2026 blog post that lays out a weighted scoring framework for prioritizing legal tech projects.

From Mary's blog post:

"Legal ops has always had to prioritize. That part hasn’t changed. What’s changed is the volume: more ideas, more tools, and more options competing for the same finite time. The skillset needed for the job is the same… It’s just a lot harder now. I wanted to write this piece because both my in-house and law firm friends have been telling me some version of the same thing for months: 'There’s no shortage of ideas anymore, the hardest part of the job is prioritization.'”

"At the time [i.e., when Mary was at Google and her colleagues and she ". . . established a Legal Tech SteerCo that reviewed and ranked every tech initiative that came our way], I thought of our SteerCo as a nice-to-have, a luxury for a mature, well-resourced team. I don’t think that anymore. It’s not enough to ask whether something is worth doing, because right now almost everything is. The harder question is whether it’s the right thing to spend your limited people and attention on, given everything else competing for the same resources, and the true cost of any initiative goes well beyond what it takes to build or buy it."

Mary's complete post is a must-read, if there ever were one, and it can be accessed at this link: https://maryocarroll.substack.com/p/you-dont-have-an-idea-problem-you​

Member Introductions/Questions

◾ LTSF'er, Dixon Melitt James, has a question for the community:

"Comparing notes with people just back from major events; at BRICS, the talk is local currency settlement, interoperable payment systems, digital infrastructure. At LEAP, its about AI, data centres, cloud etc. Infrastructure is becoming more distributed, more programmable, and less tethered to global rails. For those of us allocating capital with a long horizon, the implication reaches into real estate, trade etc. 5 years on, what infrastructure will we actually depend on? Still working through my own answer. Curious how others allocating for the long term are thinking about it."

You can responde to Dixon's post by going to this link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/107380255?utm_source=manual​

Product Development

◾ Oz Benamram, Chief AI Officer at BigLaw's Pillsbury, posted on LinkedIn about his recent conversation with Sherwin Wu, a member of OpenAI's technical staff, about OpenAI's approach to configuring its LLM for legal work.

From Oz's post on LinkedIn:

"The part that matters most to me: OpenAI is not trying to build every legal workflow itself and stamp it an "OpenAI skill." It is inviting lawyers, legal technologists, and domain experts to bring their expertise into the platform."

Read the entire post that Oz put up (and also access a video of Oz's conversation with Sherwin, at this link: https://lnkd.in/p/gRp6672f​

◾ Artificial Lawyer (AL) does a great job in posting the third-party plugins that accompany OpenAI's release of Astra for Law.

From AL's post"

"OpenAI commented: ‘These plugins cover the practice and business of law. With iManage, a lawyer can draft a negotiation brief in ChatGPT and save it to the matter file; Intapp can surface activities that may need a time entry for review; DeepJudge can bring prior deals into a comparison. Thomson Reuters is bringing HighQ matter context into ChatGPT and previewing a forthcoming CoCounsel Legal connector.’

"They also added: ‘Using developer mode, you can build custom private plugins that connect proprietary data and tools to ChatGPT, or add MCP-based plugins from other sources. Private plugins can be built using the Apps SDK.’"

Don't just read the above excerpt from AL's post, get the entire post here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/09/18/astra-for-laws-26-legal-tech-plugins/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup​

◾ Here is Legaltech News (LTN) with a post reporting on law firm Husch Blackwell's launch of an AI-powered platform that the firm calls "CXT" (Complex Torts), " . . . which will focus on the management and defense of complex litigation such as mass torts."

From the LTN post:
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"The CXT launch is the latest move by Husch Blackwell to embrace new technologies while providing alternative billing methods and efficiencies to clients. Although J.Y. Miller, the partner who leads the platform and has served on the firm’s executive board, said it would provide a shared infrastructure to more than 1,000 lawyers at the firm to use market intelligence and pricing tools, among other things, to come up with the best way to service their clients—something the firm calls 'engineered defense.'"

Read the LTN post in full at this link: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/09/18/husch-blackwell-launches-ai-based-cxt-for-complex-torts-defense-a-concierge-support-model/?kw=Husch+Blackwell+Launches+AI-Based+CXT+for+Complex+Torts+Defense:+A+%27Concierge+Support+Model%27&utm_position=1&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20260921&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b​

Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

◾ If you live in the US and watch television (online or OTA), you've probably seen commercials for Morgan & Morgan, purported to be the largest (by revenue?) personal injury law firm in the US. Now Morgan & Morgan is making news in the legal tech space with, as reported in a post at Artificial Lawyer (AL), the firm's announcement of a "big money" AI investment plan and the "unveiling" of its own AI platform, MX2.

From AL's post:

"Morgan & Morgan, the largest plaintiff law firm in America, has announced it will spend at least $1 billion on legal tech and AI over the next 10 years, as it formally unveils MX2, its own legal AI platform.

"In June this year, a Reuters article reported their revenues at $2.4 billion. So, $1 billion over 10 years, is $100m per year, which is still a lot of money….but, is around 4% of annual total income for the firm. Interestingly, the same article – here, suggests the firm recently has been exploring the idea of external investment.

"The firm stressed that it’s not only Big Law firms that can make major investments into AI. They added that the new plans build on the $300m that Morgan & Morgan has spent in the last five years on tech already."

Read AL's complete post at this link: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/09/14/morgan-morgan-commits-to-1-billion-for-legal-tech-ai/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup​

◾ LTSF community member Cara C. Walker, Chief Growth Officer at TrustForge Estate, posts about her company's launch:

"Launching Trustforge for Estate Planning

"Nashville-based Trustforge has launched the new Trustforge app, an AI-driven proofreading tool built for an often-overlooked corner of estate planning practice. The software uses AI to validate a drafted trust against the client's intake form or design sheet, using the documents as the backbone to confirm the accuracy of the trust.

"Founded by CEO Joe Thomas and CTO and John Purdy, Trustforge developed the product in partnership with August Law, PLLC, an estate planning firm based in Franklin, TN. Trustforge is drafting software agnostic and uses LLMs to add a layer of confidence to a trust drafting process that has traditionally been time-consuming and expensive.

"Trustforge is releasing its current model to solo and small law firms interested in partnering with the company as advisors.

"https://www.trustforge.estate/"

◾ Bob Ambrogi posted on his LawSites blog about ILTA's 2026 Technology Survey, highlighting results showing the most popular AI tech among respondents.

From Bob's post:

"At the recent conference of the International Legal Technology Association, the big legal AI vendors CoCounsel, Harvey and Legora had outsized presences, with ginormous booths in the exhibit hall, major-name performers at their parties, and advertising so ubiquitous it even popped up in people’s Uber apps. (See: Have We Reached ‘Peak Legal Tech?’ Sure Felt That Way At ILTACON this Week.)

"So which of those is the preferred choice of law firms? Turns out, the answer is “None of the above,” at least according to the findings of the just released 2026 technology survey.

"The survey spanned over 500 law firms — all ILTA members — from small boutiques to global giants, representing a dozen countries and 140,000 lawyers."

You'll want to read all of the whole post from Bob at this link: https://www.lawnext.com/2026/09/which-ai-product-is-most-popular-among-law-firms-findings-of-iltas-tech-survey-may-surprise-you.html​

◾ We posted yesterday about a report at the LawSites blog concerning ILTA’s 2026 Technology Survey, a report that discusses what the Survey says about the most popular AI apps that lawyers are using. Today, here is a link (below) to a post at Legaltech News (LTN) that brings readers the five items from the Survey that LTN found particularly interesting.
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From LTN’s post:
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“After surveying 140,000 lawyers across 508 law firms, ILTA found that more responsibilities related to gen AI are being given to gen AI task forces, law firms are using gen AI tools from a small number of providers and they are becoming increasingly concerned with compliance and technology costs.
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“Legaltech News identified five interesting takeaways from this year's ILTA survey.”
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Find LTN’s full post here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/09/14/5-things-we-found-interesting-from-the-2026-ilta-tech-survey/​
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And here’s a link to the LTSF post that covered yesterday’s LawSites report: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/107344336​

◾ Call it what it is: a big client win for Legora, with Artificial Lawyer (AL) reporting that Salesforce has adopted Legora for Salesforce’s global legal function
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From the AL post:
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“AL doesn’t usually do client wins, but this one is worth a mention. Legora has been picked by Salesforce for its legal teams across the US, Europe and APAC. It’s noteworthy as Salesforce has been vocal about building many of its own legal tech applications for internal use. In fact, they talked about this at Legal Innovators California.”
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Read AL’s full post here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/09/16/salesforce-rolls-out-legora-for-legal-function/​

Startup Management

◾ ◾ Tom Rice and Alex Herrity posted on their Law://What's Next blog about a new and interesting take on how, in this agentic AI age, legal tech vendors (and, for that matter, other SaaS vendors) understand where their software's "moat" lies. As Tom and Alex state in their post, the take comes from David Bushby, head of Canva's legal ops, and consists of realizing that the moat no longer should be seen as coming from the UI that the SaaS products offer, but instead should be seen as coming from the data (the "system of record") and the workflows that these products offer and, equally importantly, make available to AI agents.

From Tom and Alex's post:
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​"Give up owning the interface to become indispensable underneath it.

"The core thesis is that AI agents will increasingly become the front end, while trusted SaaS platforms supply the canonical data, governed workflows and approved actions.

"That is not “SaaS is dead.” It is a shift from UI-first SaaS to agent-first systems of record: great APIs, MCPs, permissions, audit trails and safe write-back capabilities"

Don't neglect to read the complete post here: https://lawwhatsnext.substack.com/p/legal-techs-moat-isnt-the-ui?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true​