August 18, 2025 -- Issue #354

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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Exit/M&A

◾ From Axios’ “Pro Rata” newsletter:
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“Gridiron Capital acquired ABC Legal Services, a Seattle-based provider of service of process and court filing solutions, from Aquiline." https://www.abclegal.com/​

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Fundraising

◾ From the press release issued today, August 11, 2025, by time-tracking startup, Laurel:
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“SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Laurel, a pioneer in AI-powered time intelligence, today announced a strategic investment from Workday Ventures. The investment affirms Laurel’s position as a leading platform transforming how professional services firms capture and leverage time data to drive business value. As part of the Workday Ventures’ investment, Laurel will become a Workday Innovation Partner, joining a community of innovators delivering AI capabilities to customers.”
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Find the entire press release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250811601948/en/Laurel-Secures-Investment-from-Workday-Ventures-to-Reshape-How-Professional-Services-use-AI-to-Track-Manage-and-Maximize-Time​

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◾ From Axios’ “Pro Rata” newsletter:
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“Infinity Loop, a contract intelligence platform, raised $5m in seed funding. Glasswing Ventures and TIAA Ventures led, joined by Plug and Play and Restive Ventures. https://www.infinityloop.ai/

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Hiring/New Hires​
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◾ Per Legal Tech News:
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“Hughes Hubbard & Reed’s new chief information officer from Proskauer Rose comes with plans to center legal tech in the firm’s long-term strategy, as Am Law 200 firms continue to look to artificial intelligence and other technologies as key sources of innovation.
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“Neeraj Rajpal joined Hughes Hubbard last week as its new chief information officer, the same role he just held at Proskauer Rose. He has previously served in similar C-suite information positions at K&L Gates, Morrison & Foerster, and Strook & Strook & Lavan as well.”
​https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2025/08/12/hughes-hubbard-adds-new-cio-as-law-firms-eye-innovation/​

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◾ From Legal Tech News:

"A weak jobs report and broader economic uncertainty have sparked employment fears in many parts of the economy, but job prospects for legal IT professionals at every level of seniority look strong at the moment." https://www.law.com/2025/08/15/iltacon-day-4-rosy-skies-for-legal-it-professionals/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_content=20250818&utm_campaign=morningminute&utm_term=law&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&slreturn=20250818085129​

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Partnerships/Business Development​
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◾ A law firm builds AI tools with Google; yes, that's what Freshfield has been doing. Legal Tech News examines this BigTech and BigLaw collaboration:

"In April, Freshfields announced its partnership with Google Cloud in hopes of bolstering artificial intelligence-focused innovation and product development at the firm. Since then, the firm has built a number of proprietary tools using Google’s AI offerings."https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/08/13/-inside-the-gen-ai-tools-freshfields-built-from-its-google-partnership-/?kw=Inside+the+Gen+AI+Tools+Freshfields+Built+from+its+Google+Partnership&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=afternoonupdate&utm_content=20250813&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A​

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◾ Legal Tech News offers a “post-ITLACon 2025” legal tech rundown:
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“It's been four days of ILTACON sessions, meetings, keynotes, and, of course, legal tech company announcements. While we covered announcements from the week leading up to, and the first day of ILTACON 2025, there was still much news that came out during the event.
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“Here's a look at the announcements”
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​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/08/15/legaltech-rundown-iltacon-edition-ironclad-partners-with-harvey-onit-launches-new-ai-tools-and-more/​

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◾ From Artificial Lawyer:

"Harvey is partnering with California-based CLM Ironclad because of what CEO Winston Weinbergdescribed to Artificial Lawyer as a ‘huge request from our inhouse customers’. It follows a deal with rival Icertis last year. Meanwhile, OpenAI is a client of Ironclad and an investor in Harvey.

"This is also one of the first major strategic moves since Dan Springer (pictured), the new CEO of Ironclad – and once the CEO of DocuSign – took control of the ship in April after co-founder Jason Boehmig stood down as boss. Some of Ironclad’s customers include: Salesforce, Cisco and Shell… and OpenAI, as noted." https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/08/18/harvey-boosts-inhouse-reach-with-ironclad-clm-deal/​

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Product Development

◾ From the LawSites blog:
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“LexisNexis Legal & Professional today introduced Protégé General AI, expanding its artificial intelligence platform to include secure access to multiple general-purpose AI models alongside its existing legal-specific AI tools.”
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“Launched as a preview version for U.S. customers, it allows legal professionals to access models including OpenAI’s GPT-5, GPT-4o, and o3, as well as Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4, all within the company’s existing Lexis+ AI workflow. Users can switch between general-purpose and legal-specific AI with a toggle function.”
​https://www.lawnext.com/2025/08/lexisnexis-launches-protege-general-ai-expanding-the-agentic-capabilities-of-its-ai-assistant-to-general-ai-models-such-as-gpt-5.html​

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◾ Let the, very welcome, parade of ILTACon legal tech announcements begin - here’s a start from Legal Tech News: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/08/12/whats-already-announced-at-iltacon-haystackid-launches-talent-management-app-workaday-invests-in-laurel-and-more-/​

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Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

◾ From MIT’s Sloan School of management:
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“n a large-scale experiment, researchers found that only half of the performance gains seen after switching to a more AI advanced model came from the model itself.
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“The other half came from how users adapted their prompts — that is, the written instructions that tell an AI model what to do — to take advantage of the new system.
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“The simple but powerful insight that user adaptation contributes as much to performance as the model upgrade itself highlights a critical reality for businesses: Investing in new AI tools won’t deliver their anticipated value unless employees also refine how they use them. In this case, prompting is a learnable skill that people can improve quickly, even without instruction.”
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More here: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-generative-ai-results-depend-user-prompts-much-models​

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◾ The term "technical debt" is one that's familiar to enterprise personnel who work with IT (in that context, the term generally means "costs incurred by the enterprise from implementing an easy or quick software development solution instead of taking the 'time and trouble' to implement a better, more time-consuming solution"). Well, now the term "technicl debt" comes to law firms, and this article, appearing in Legal Tech News, explains the term's application in that context.https://www.law.com/2025/08/11/iltacon-day-one-takeaways-the-financial-impact-of-technical-debt/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_content=20250813&utm_campaign=morningminute&utm_term=law&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A​

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◾ From Legal Tech News:

"Willkie Farr & Gallagher has become the latest law firm to partner with AI platform Harvey, announcing firmwide access to it from early September."

"In its announcement, Willkie also said it would serve as an innovation partner to Harvey, testing early Harvey betas and exploring agentic integrations and other interoperability solutions between Harvey and the firm's own proprietary AI platform, Wendell Intelligence."https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/08/13/harvey-tightens-grip-on-amlaw-100-as-willkie-strikes-ai-deal/?kw=Harvey+Tightens+Grip+on+AmLaw+100+as+Willkie+Strikes+AI+Deal&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=afternoonupdate&utm_content=20250813&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A​

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◾ Legal Tech News reporting:

Overheard at ILTACon 2025 -

"ILTACON 2025 revealed a legal IT field in a state of flux. As legal tech becomes more important to law firm operations, technical leaders are gaining influence in their firms, but challenges like model selection and demonstrating return on investment mean legal technologists can’t rest easy.

"Over the course of the week, attendees shared their thoughts in keynotes, panels, one-on-one conversations and booth demonstrations.

"Below are some of the most insightful quotes Legaltech News gathered from ILTACON 2025."

Read full article here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/08/15/overheard-at-iltacon-2025-demonstrating-roi-and-gauging-gpt-5/?kw=Overheard+at+ILTACON+2025:+Demonstrating+ROI+and+Gauging+GPT-5&utm_position=2&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20250818&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A​

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Teaching/Learning Legal Tech

◾ Legal Tech News shares:

"Summer associates at Ropes & Gray spent time learning how to use AI on the job, training that's become increasingly important—and increasingly common—as firms strive to prepare the prospective lawyers for firm jobs.

"'The big change isn't so much a technology change as it is a cultural change,' said Edward Black, a senior counsel in Boston at Ropes, who is the firm's technology strategy leader."https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/08/14/ropes-summer-associates-took-a-crash-course-on-using-ai-on-the-job/?kw=Ropes+Summer+Associates+Took+a+Crash+Course+on+Using+AI+on+the+Job&utm_position=1&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20250815&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&slreturn=20250815074406​

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