April 7, 2025 -- Issue #335

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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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🍹🍻 NEW YORK CITY HAPPY HOUR EVENT 🍻🍹

To all our community's legal tech startup founders and their colleagues:​
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​You're invited to a very special Legal Tech StartUp Focus "Startup Leaders Happy Hour" from 6:00 pm to 8 pm on Thursday, May 8, at Jack Doyle's in New York City (located at 240 West 35th Street, at the upstairs bar).​
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​Joining us at the Happy Hour will be SF-based venture investor Yousuf Khan, a partner at Ridge Ventures, our sponsor for this event. Thank you, Yousuf and Ridge Ventures!!​
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​So, if you're in NYC on May 8, come by to hoist a drink (or two or three), meet your fellow legal tech startup leaders, and, most importantly, get to know Yousuf and his thoughts on legal tech investing.​
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​RSVP at the Eventbrite link here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/legal-tech-startup-focus-startup-leaders-happy-hour-tickets-1308517433869?aff=oddtdtcreator​

See you at the Happy Hour!!

Charlie

Fundraising

◾ From the Sifted newsletter:
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“Paris-based Tomorro, which is building an AI-powered software for contract management, raised €25m in funding. XAnge and Acton Capital led the round and were joined by investors including Adelie, Founders Future, HenQ, Resonance, Financière Saint-James and Motier Ventures.”
​https://www.tomorro.com/​

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◾ "TrialKit, maker of an artificial intelligence-powered discovery platform for criminal defense attorneys, announced on Tuesday its public debut, as well as a $4.25 million fundraising round. The round was led by venture capital firm UpWest, with additional participation from 97212 Ventures, Kaedan Capital, and NYU Law’s Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital Program."
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/04/02/criminal-defense-discovery-platform-trialkit-debuts-announces-425m-in-funding/​

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◾ “Artificial intelligence-powered contract automation platform startup Vallor announced today that it has raised $4 million in new funding to save enterprises time and money by giving procurement teams the tools to eliminate manual tasks.
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“Vallor, officially Broad AI Inc., offers an AI-powered contract management platform designed to automate tasks and optimize procurement processes. The platform allows organizations to extract valuable insights from contracts to drive data-driven decisions that maximize value.”
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More information about the raise and about Vallor can be found here: https://siliconangle.com/2025/04/02/vallor-raises-4m-advance-ai-automation-enterprise-procurement/​

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Hiring/New Hires

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◾ Legaltech News reports:
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“E-discovery is likely to prove a rare exception to these [soft job market] trends, with experts expecting increased hiring in the months to come. While further interest rate decreases could help break the field out of a prolonged hiring slump, an anticipated increase in litigation will have an even greater impact on e-discovery employment.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/04/01/e-discovery-hiring-is-picking-up-everybodys-gonna-sue-each-other/​

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◾ "Litera has appointed Priyanka Singh as chief financial officer, replacing Carl Gillert, who has joined US software development company Calabrio after a year in role."

Further reporting from Legal IT Insider on this hiring news: https://legaltechnology.com/2025/04/02/litera-appoints-priyanka-singh-as-cfo/​

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◾ "In March, law firm Pierson Ferdinand announced the appointment of Christina Wojcik as its head of innovation and partnerships.

"Prior to joining Pierson Ferdinand, Wojcik was managing director of corporate and legal operations at legal tech company LexFusion. She also previously served as director of legal innovation, technology and process improvement at Citibank as well as the vice president of solutions and enablement at Seal Software, which was acquired by DocuSign in 2020."

Click on this link to read part 1 of Legaltech News' two-part interview with Christina: https://bit.ly/3FUj4gL​

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JusticeTech/A2J

◾ “Beth Henderson, Assistant General Counsel and Senior Director of Pro Bono at Microsoft, which won the Legalweek Leaders in Tech Law Award for Community Impact Through Technology, discusses how the tech company is innovating in their pro bono efforts.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/03/31/microsofts-assistant-gc-pro-bono-director-identifying-rois-will-encourage-legal-innovation/​

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LegalEd

◾ I was reading a BBC piece about journalist Ben Black who discovered, much to his surprise, that an April Fools’ Day prank he had published years ago was being treated by Google’s AI as real news. It’s amusing at first glance, and the article is not that serious… a made-up story about a town supposedly boasting the world’s highest concentration of roundabouts, highlighted as genuine information. But the more I thought about it, the more it started to sink in that AI can unintentionally circulate misinformation – we’ve seen this happen and its certainly occurring unseen, too, and this could even cause real headaches for people on the other end of the joke.

Read the full article: https://thelegalwire.ai/collateral-damage-of-ai-hallucinations-why-googles-slip-up-with-an-april-fools-joke-should-prompt-caution/​

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Product Development

◾ “Personal injury startup Supio announced the launch of the next generation of its Document Intelligence platform, which includes several new AI-powered tools that will be available in beta to select customers starting Wednesday. The updated platform will be generally available later this spring.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/04/02/supio-launches-updated-document-intelligence-platform-with-new-ai-tools-for-personal-injury-lawyers/​

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◾ A Friday legal tech rundown from Legaltech News:
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“An update on the legal tech market’s past week, from product launches to new partnerships.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/04/04/legaltech-rundown-haystack-id-launches-gen-ai-matter-intelligence-tool-aaa-announces-new-consumer-mediation-procedures-and-more/​

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◾ From London’s Financial Times:
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“A&O Shearman has created an artificial intelligence tool to speed up work performed by more senior lawyers, as the “magic circle” firm attempts to generate revenues from the disruption of the legal industry.
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“The tool, created in collaboration with AI start-up Harvey, is focused on time-intensive, low-billing tasks including in areas such as antitrust and fund formation that require senior associate or partner input and oversight.”
​https://www.ft.com/content/9bfebd81-b7f4-4b90-aa22-fdd012b4ccd1​

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Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

◾ Joel Bijlmer posts: "Juristic – Where Legal AI and Human Judgment Join Forces
​https://thelegalwire.ai/juristic-where-legal-ai-and-human-judgment-join-forces/ "

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◾ From Legaltech News:

"As AI begins to reshape legal work, many legal departments are rewriting their hiring playbooks to bring in tech-savvy lawyers.

"Major, Lindsey & Africa's newly released 2025 General Counsel AI Hiring Survey found that 39% of legal departments already have adjusted their hiring criteria because of AI, and more than one in five now require candidates to have AI experience."

Learn more about the Major, Lindsey & Africa study here: https://bit.ly/3FLkASv​

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◾ Here’s a summary of some of the Legalweek 2025 demo’s on display as Legal IT Insider made the rounds at the event’s exhibit halls.
​https://legaltechnology.com/2025/04/01/legalweek-2025-demos-and-analysis-of-deepjudge-vincent-ai-thomson-reuters-cocounsel-lexisnexis-protege-and-more/​

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◾ And, in the "if you can't beat 'em, pay'em" department:
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"Shoosmiths has become the first major UK law firm to announce it will tie bonuses to how much lawyers use artificial intelligence (AI), encouraging its staff reach one million prompts to unlock a £1 million payout."
​https://www.legalcheek.com/2025/04/shoosmiths-offers-1-million-bonus-pot-to-encourage-ai-use-among-staff/​

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Sales

◾ From Tom Tunguz, a VC at Theory:
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“As startups scale, effective sales implementation becomes the difference between stagnation and sustainable growth. After analyzing hundreds of sales organizations across startups, I’ve distilled the key pieces of advice that founders and leaders should keep in mind.”
​https://tomtunguz.com/sales-implementation-guide/​

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Startup Management

◾ Former VC and now coach/consultant, Charlie O’Donnell, discusses what it takes to convince an investor your startup is “Series A ready. https://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2025/3/28/tadpoles-frogs-and-what-you-need-for-a-series-a​

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◾ Episode 69 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast - From Paperwork to Productivity: How CaseBlink is Transforming Immigration Law

CaseBlink co-founders Khalil Zlaoui (CEO) and Tina Zedginidze (COO) join us to unveil how their technology helps immigration attorneys spend much less time on routine aspects of case preparation. With most immigration lawyers working on a flat fee basis, this efficiency translates directly to improved margins, increased capacity, and potentially greater access to justice for clients.

Show notes and access to the podcast episode here: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/82452131?utm_source=manual​

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◾ “Meet the 25-year-old legal tech startup founder who's daring to challenge Harvey.”
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That’s the headline for a Business Insider article on Legora and its 25-year old
Swedish founder, Max Junestrand.
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Good read here: https://www.businessinsider.com/max-junestrand-legora-founder-legal-tech-ai-harvey-2025-4​
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