December 15, 2025 -- Issue #372

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.
​

If you enjoy reading this digest, please forward it to others with an interest in legal tech startups. Readers who aren't already members of the LTSF community and who wish to join can do so here. Please do send me feedback here with any questions, comments or other ideas for this digest. If you're not already a subscriber to this newsletter and would like to subscribe, please email me here to join the subscriber list.
​

Oh, and if you want to unsubscribe to this digest, you can do so by using the link in this email's footer.

Sponsorships:

The Legal Tech StartUp Focus (LTSF) community's platform (this newsletter, the podcast, and the community's website and LinkedIn following) is now accepting sponsors for the fall. If you are interested in reaching LTSF's audience of startup leaders and other legal innovators, send me an email at charlie@legaltechstartupfocus.com.

Exit/M&A

◾ A post from Artificial Lawyer about a Robin AI "acquire:"

"Breaking News: Scissero, an AI-enabled NewMod law firm, has acquired Robin AI’s legal services team. Meanwhile, the remaining ‘tech group’ of Robin AI is understood to still be in negotiations with another company. CEO Richard Robinson will help with the team’s transition to Scissero, but will not be joining them. AL will bring you an in-depth analysis tomorrow. For now, here are the key aspects."https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/12/09/ai-enabled-law-firm-scissero-buys-robin-services-arm/​

​

◾ Legaltech News has more on Robin AI’s “partial” exit to managed services company, Scissero:
​
“Slightly more than a month after reports emerged that London-based, artificial intelligence-powered contract drafting and review platform Robin AI faced insolvency, a buyer has stepped in to purchase part of the business. Instead of landing with another legal tech vendor, Robin’s managed services team was bought by Scissero, a U.K.-based, AI-enabled law firm.
​
“For Scissero founder Mathias Strasser, the purchase of Robin AI’s managed services team reflects a belief that AI deployment in professional services will continue to rely on human-in-the-loop tools in the years to come. The team primarily performs work on contracts for corporations and financial institutions, such as negotiating and writing offer letters, nondisclosure agreements and other deal documentation.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/12/11/why-ai-forward-law-firm-scissero-bought-robin-ais-managed-services-team-/​

​

Fundraising

◾ From Legaltech News:

"On Tuesday [December 9, 2025], Solve Intelligence, a San Francisco and London-based artificial intelligence platform for patent attorneys, announced the completion of a $40 million Series B funding round. The new round was co-led by Visionaries Club and 20VC, and included participation from Thomson Reuters, Y Combinator and Operators Collective. The round also featured a number of individual angel investors, including Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan IP litigation practice founder Kevin Johnson.

"The new investment follows a $12 million Series A this April and brings total investment in the company to $55 million. 20VC, Thomson Reuters and Y Combinator are all returning investors."https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/12/09/ai-patent-platform-solve-intelligence-attracts-40m-series-b-funding-launches-new-patent-litigation-offering-/?kw=AI+Patent+Platform+Solve+Intelligence+Attracts+$40M+Series+B+Funding,+Launches+New+Patent+Litigation+Offering&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=afternoonupdate&utm_content=20251209&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A​

​

◾ Legaltech News posts about another legal tech startup funding:
​
“U.K.-based artificial intelligence-powered legal tech startup AttiFin AI announced Wednesday that it raised £5 million (approximately $6.66 million) in seed funding. The announcement did not disclose who was behind the investment.
​
“Set to officially launch its platform in early 2026, AttiFin was created by tech consultancy Scrumconnect founders Shilpa Kaluti and Praveen Karadiguddi and aims to provide U.K. legal professionals answers with citations to queries related to U.K. legislation and case law, contract summaries and clause drafting, according to a release.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/12/10/uk-focused-legal-tech-startup-attifin-ai-raises-5m-in-seed-funding/​

​

Hiring/New Hires​
​

◾ Legaltech News posts:
​
“The rise of sophisticated legal operations teams in recent years has lessened management burdens and brought efficiencies to legal departments. But sometimes that's not enough, particularly for large and complex organizations.
​
“As a result, the position of "chief of staff" is becoming more common in legal departments. That person—slotted between legal ops and the general counsel/chief legal officer—works with the legal chief to shape and carry out the department's strategy.”
​
$$Quote: “[From a job posting by ServiceTitan, a company that posted in search of a Chief of Staff for its legal department] ‘This critical role sits at the intersection of business strategy, legal expertise, and operational excellence.’"
​https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2025/12/09/more-legal-departments-hiring-chiefs-of-staff-to-relentlessly-focus-on-strategy-execution/​

​

◾ Read this piece from Artificial Lawyer about Harvey’s hiring of Ryan Samii (formerly of Hebbia) as Harvey’s Head of Product Innovation:
​
“Harvey has hired Ryan Samii from Hebbia, where he was instrumental in building and scaling the company’s legal vertical. Samii (see in-depth AL interview below) will take the role of Head of Product Innovation.
​
“The move is part of a wider ‘long-term investment in deeply partnering with – and hiring from – the innovation and legal tech community that is steering the legal profession through the AI era,’ the pioneering legal AI platform added.”
​https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/12/09/harvey-hires-hebbias-ryan-samii-for-innovation-drive/​

​

Honors and Awards

◾ A reminder from the LawSites blog:
​
“A reminder to all legal tech startups: The deadline is approaching to apply for a spot in the 10th annual Startup Alley at ABA TECHSHOW, a competition that has helped catapult the success of a long list of legal technology startups and become a seminal event of the American Bar Association’s annual legal technology conference.
​
“Startups interested in participating must complete this application form. Applications must be received by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, Dec. 26, 2025.”
​
More on the Startup Alley competition and access to the competition’s application form here: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/12/dont-forget-deadline-is-nearing-to-apply-for-the-startup-alley-competition-at-aba-techshow.html​

​

Member Introductions/Questions

◾ New community member, Hashem Alfadhli, poses the followig question. "I would appreciate your advisory input on an equity structuring question for our legal-tech startup. We are progressing with a potential CTO who will build the MVP and lead the technical side of the product.
​
"His request is structured in two scenarios:
• 30% equity if he serves solely as CTO and MVP lead
• Up to 50% equity if he becomes a full co-founder and long-term partner in the business
​
"Before finalizing anything, I want to ensure we stay within what investors typically consider healthy — particularly around founder balance, governance, and future fundraising.
​
"From your experience, would a 50% stake for a technical co-founder at this early stage be considered reasonable, or would that raise concerns during upcoming rounds?
​
"Thank you in advance." If you wish to comment, please contact Hashem here: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/94875658?utm_source=manual​
​

Partnerships/Business Development​
​

◾ Harvey announces an expansion of its partnership with Harbor. From Harvey’s announcement:
​
“Harvey, the AI legal platform used by leading law firms and enterprises, is pleased to announce an expanded partnership with Harbor Global, a leading legal technology consulting and managed services provider. Under this new collaboration, Harbor will offer dedicated enablement programs to Harvey customers to help law firms and corporate legal departments successfully adopt and scale generative AI across their organizations.”
​
My take: If you squint (and you don’t have to squint too hard), Harvey is outsourcing a “forward deployed” customer success function. And I remember how, before SaaS became the standard model for deploying business software, enterprise software deployment required on-site vendor work as a matter of course (oh, the “glory days” of SAP and its enterprise resource planning software).
​https://www.harvey.ai/blog/harvey-and-harbor-expand-partnership​

​

Product Development

◾ The LawSites blog posts about a new product offering from Agiloft - a contact obligations tracker with a host of related features:
​
“Contract lifecycle management company Agiloft today released Obligation Management, a new feature that uses artificial intelligence to automatically extract and track commitments from contracts.
​
“The feature is designed to address a persistent challenge in contract management: organizations frequently overlook critical obligations after signing agreements. Citing research from PwC, Agiloft says that companies can lose 5-9% of annual revenue due to poor obligation management, particularly when key commitments and deliverables go unmonitored.”
​https://www.lawnext.com/2025/12/agiloft-launches-ai-powered-obligation-management-system-for-contract-lifecycle.html​

​

◾ From the December 10, 2025 Lighthouse press release:
​
“Dec. 10, 2025–SEATTLE–Lighthouse, a leader in human-centered technology and services for eDiscovery and information governance, today announced the availability of Lighthouse AI Search in the UK and Europe. Law firms and legal and compliance departments in those markets can now take advantage of the company’s AI-driven indexing, retrieval, and analysis technology.”
​
Read the entire press release at this link: https://www.lighthouseglobal.com/newsroom/lighthouse-brings-ai-powered-search-to-uk-and-europe-accelerating-litigation-and-investigations​

​

◾ The latest edition of the weekly legal tech rundown from Legaltech News has dropped, bringing you ". . . the latest news on hirings, product and feature releases, new integrations, legal tech mergers and acquisitions and more."

Here's the link to that rundown: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/12/12/legaltech-rundown-lexisnexis-updates-protg-general-harvey-partners-with-harbor-and-more-/?kw=Legaltech+Rundown:+LexisNexis+Updates+Prot%26eacute;g%26eacute;+General,+Harvey+Partners+With+Harbor,+and+More&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=afternoonupdate&utm_content=20251212&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A​

​

Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

◾ Legaltech News reports on the recent in-house legal department survey that Harbor/CLOC conducted:
​
“As 2025 comes to an end, in-house legal departments see technology strategy as a prime concern for their legal operations teams in the new year, according to a Monday survey from Harbor and the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium.
​
“The 2025 Harbor Law Department Survey received responses from 135 legal departments across over 15 industries, bringing to head that technology is top of mind within these organizations and a primary responsibility for legal operations professionals.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/12/08/in-house-teams-are-prioritizing-technology-strategy-in-2026/​

​

◾ The LawSites blog from Robert Ambrogi posts:
​
“Following the preview release in August and the commercial release in October of its Protégé General AI, LexisNexis Legal & Professional today rolled out what it is calling the product’s next generation, expanding its capabilities to unify authoritative legal content, customer documents and open web insights within a single secure AI workflow environment.
​
“LexisNexis developed Protégé General AI as a way to provide customers with secure access to multiple general-purpose AI models alongside Protégé’s existing legal-specific AI tools. The version unveiled today represents what LexisNexis describes as the most comprehensive integration yet of multiple data sources for legal AI work.”
​https://www.lawnext.com/2025/12/lexisnexis-unveils-the-next-generation-of-its-protege-general-ai-callling-it-the-most-integrated-legal-ai-workflow-solution.html​

​

◾ From Legaltech News:

"White & Case opted to create its own tool when it rolled out proprietary AI chatbot Atlas firmwide in October. White & Case's decisions to build some tools while buying others are driven by a strategic focus on the needs of particular clients and practice areas, Isabel Parker, who joined the firm as chief innovation officer in October 2024, told Legaltech News.

“'We're not in the business of trying to out-build people with deep tech pockets and deep capabilities,' she said. 'Where there are client or practice challenges that are not met by a product currently on the market, or the road map of that product currently on the market, which could be for a variety of reasons—it might be a client in a particular jurisdiction or a particularly niche practice area, or involving a very proprietary set of data for our client—then we would look to build something to support that use case.'"https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/12/10/how-white--cases-new-proprietary-chatbot-fits-into-the-firms-broader-ai-strategy-/?kw=How+White+%26+Case%27s+New+Proprietary+Chatbot+Fits+Into+the+Firm%27s+Broader+AI+Strategy&utm_position=1&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20251211&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&slreturn=20251211084314​

​

◾ Legal IT Insider reporting:

"Dentons, the world’s largest law firm by headcount, has announced a collaboration with OpenAI, the world’s most valuable AI start-up.

"The deal gives Dentons in the UK, Ireland and Middle East early access to OpenAI’s latest large language models, plus technical assistance with creating new digital tools using the tech giant’s application programming interfaces. It also gives all UKIME employees access to ChatGPT Enterprise, a more secure, customisable version of the free-to-use chatbot."

$$Quote: “'Our view is that having direct engineering access to the latest large language models and secure firmwide access to the latest version of ChatGPT Enterprise is now the most effective and direct strategy for delivering high-accuracy, high-impact legal work,' says Paul Jarvis, CEO of Dentons UKIME."https://legaltechnology.com/2025/12/11/dentons-enters-partnership-with-openai-insights-from-data-science-lead-bugra-ozer/​

​

Startup Life

◾ From VC Brad Feld a post at his blog about the stress that startup teams invariably deal with and, in particular (i) how uncertainty about a startup’s prospects plays such a large role in creating that stress and (ii) how a startup’s founders’ behavior can help or hinder employees’ ability to manage the stress level successfully.
​
From the post:
​
“Startup Snapshot, a think tank uncovering the unspoken realities of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, has released its latest report, The Untold Toll (Part 2): Navigating Stress, Wellbeing, and Burnout in Startup Teams.
​
“The emotional and mental state of startup teams has emerged as one of the most overlooked drivers of company performance. Startup Snapshot illuminates the unseen side of startup life through global data collected from startup employees. It’s the first study of its kind, and the findings are candid, revealing, and deeply human.”
​https://feld.com/archives/2025/12/the-toll-of-stress-on-startup-teams-and-its-link-to-founder-well-being/​

​

Startup Management

◾ Below is a link to a LinkedIn post from Harvey that announces a December 10, 2025 Reddit AMA with Harvey’s co-founders, Winston Weinberg and Gabe Pereyra. From the LinkedIn post::
​
“We’re live on Reddit!
​
“Harvey’s co-founders Winston Weinberg and Gabe Pereyra are answering questions right now with Alex Denne in r/legaltech about our journey, our product, and so much more.
​
“If you’ve ever wanted to ask Harvey’s founders about how we think about building legal AI, now’s the moment: https://lnkd.in/dJw5MsCk”​

​

◾ A follow up to an LTSF post earlier today, December 10, 2025, about a Reddit AMA (“ask me anything”) conducted by Harvey’s co-founders. What’s linked below is a blog post from Robert Ambrogi on his LawSites blog that masterfully summarizes the AMA. From LawSites:
​
“In a rare public forum appearance, Harvey co-founders Winston Weinberg, its CEO, and Gabriel Pereyra, its president, spent over two hours answering questions from the legal tech community in a Reddit AMA earlier today, addressing everything from their $8 billion valuation to how they compete with legal research giants and what the future holds for AI in law.”
​https://www.lawnext.com/2025/12/harvey-cofounders-answer-tough-questions-in-reddit-ama-valuation-competition-and-the-future-of-legal-ai.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=LawSitesBlog-2025-12-10-51951​

​

◾ Here's a post from Charlie O’Donnell, former VC and current coach to venture professionals. In this post, Charlie discusses why it's important (despite the awkwardness) for a startup leader whose startup went bust to have "post mortem" follow-up conversations with the startup's investors.

From Charlie's post:

"It’s perfectly reasonable to feel a bit awkward after you’ve lost someone’s money, regardless of whether they’re an individual angel or a venture capital investor. Just because it isn’t technically a VC’s own money wouldn’t make it any less of a black eye within their firm, right?

"The follow-up after a loss might not be a conversation you’re excited to have—but it’s the best thing you can do for your reputation and your growth. Here’s how to have that conversation so these loose ends don’t come back to bite you.+https://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2025/11/29/whats-next-after-you-lose-someones-money?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=693ad2b565a3f80302cb624a&ss_email_id=693ad343b9b67d7aa7cdcccf&ss_campaign_name=What%E2%80%99s+Next+After+You+Lose+Someone%E2%80%99s+Money&ss_campaign_sent_date=2025-12-11T14%3A21%3A12Z​

​

Teaching/Learning Legal Tech

◾ A post from Legaltech Hub:
​
“The legal industry has long grappled with a persistent challenge: as firms and departments expand their innovation, operations, and knowledge teams, new joiners often step into these roles with widely varied experience and little structured guidance. Leaders report recurring challenges, including extended onboarding cycles, repeated explanations of core concepts, and a lack of consistent terminology and concepts across multidisciplinary teams.

“To improve consistency and reduce this friction, SKILLS is developing UpSKILLS, a new online learning program designed to provide a consistent foundation for lawyers and business professionals entering legal innovation, knowledge management (KM), legal operations, and transformation roles.

“As the program is still in development, SKILLS is actively gathering community input through surveys and faculty volunteer calls to help shape the curriculum.”
​
Read the entire post at the link below (and get access to further links about UpSKILLS program):
​https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/skills-to-launch-innovation-certification-program-seeks-faculty-volunteers/​

​