February 2, 2026 -- Issue #379
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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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.
Fundraising
◾ Legaltech News (LTN) has funding news:
"Intellectual property platform Tradespace announced Monday that it raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by investment platform AVP and with participation from previous investors Eniac Ventures, Amplo VC and Scrum Ventures.
"With the funding, the company plans to grow its artificial intelligence-powered IP platform to further streamline patent development."
Read the entire LTN post here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/26/-ip-platform-tradespace-announces-15m-series-a-funding-round-/?kw=IP+Platform+Tradespace+Announces+$15M+Series+A+Funding+Round&utm_position=1&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20260127&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b
◾ The Strictly VC Newsletter posts about SpotDraft's fundraising:
"SpotDraft, a nine-year-old New York and Bengaluru startup that uses on-device AI to review and edit enterprise contracts without sending sensitive data to the cloud, raised an $8 million Series B extension at a $380 million post-money valuation. Qualcomm Ventures provided the capital. The company has raised a total of $92 million. TechCrunch has more here: https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/qualcomm-backs-spotdraft-to-scale-on-device-contract-ai-with-valuation-doubling-toward-400m/?utm_source=newsletter.strictlyvc.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=svc-beehiiv&_bhlid=7c2face3be842588c02869411f1e18f1ce4ebf28 "
◾ From the Axios “Pro Rata” newsletter today, January 27, 2026:
“Summize, a British provider of in-house contract management solutions, raised $50m from Maven Capital Partners, YFM Equity Partners, Kennet Partners and Federated Hermes Private Equity. axios.link/4bRjUJ1”
◾ More from Axios’ “Pro Rata” newsletter:
“Checkbox, a startup that sorts in-house legal requests, raised $23m in Series A funding, per Axios Pro. Touring Capital led, joined by Peak XV, Conductive Ventures, Tidal Ventures, and Five V Capital. axios.link/4qMsXzO”
◾ And still more legal tech fundraising news from the Axios “Pro Rata” newsletter:
"Chamelio, an NYC-based in-house legal intelligence platform, raised $10m in seed funding led by Work-Bench and Emerge. axios.link/4bnmLcG"
Hiring/New Hires
◾ Legaltech News (LTN) publishes a post that offers predictions about the legal tech job market in 2026. From the LTN post:
"The legal job market is finally being impacted meaningfully by AI. After three years of carefully monitoring the behavior of the legal ecosystem, here’s what to anticipate for legal professionals looking to hire or be hired in 2026."
Read the entire post here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/27/ten-predictions-for-the-legal-job-market-in-2026/?kw=Ten+Predictions+for+the+Legal+Job+Market+in+2026&utm_position=1&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20260128&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b&slreturn=20260128080324
JusticeTech/A2J
◾ How will legal aid groups use AI in 2026 to better access to justice? That’s the question that this post from Legaltech News addresses.
From the post:
“Law firms and in-house teams attract a lot of attention with their initiatives to apply artificial intelligence to legal work, but they’re not the only ones doing so. Legal aid organizations have begun to develop and deploy traditional and generative AI-powered tools as well, hoping to use novel technologies to address unmet need for civil legal services.
“These forays into applying AI to the needs of legal aid groups are visible in a number of projects that were awarded funding through the Legal Services Corp. (LSC) 2026 Technology Initiative Grants (TIG), announced in December.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/23/how-legal-aid-groups-hope-to-use-ai-in-2026-/
LegalEd
◾ From the LawSites blog:
“A number of leaders from the legal technology community are joining other legal professionals in an open letter supporting the rule of law.
“‘Lawyers, judges, and government officials all take an oath to support and defend the constitution,” the letter says. “We write at a moment when constitutional rights and legal norms, long considered stable, are being challenged. Today, our profession must speak clearly and firmly.’
“You can view the full text of the letter and add your name as a supporter at this page: https://sites.google.com/view/openletter-ruleoflaw/home "
◾ UK-based law firm Eversheds Sutherland announced the creation of a US innovation department, as reported by a post a Legaltech News (LTN). From the LTN post:
"On Monday [January 26, 2026], global law firm Eversheds Sutherland announced the launch of its U.S. innovation department.
"Headed by the law firm’s former U.S. legal technology director Katrina Dittmer, the U.S. innovation department will be focused on coordinating collaboration between its data and analytics, research and knowledge services, legal technology, client-facing technologies, and change management and adoption operations to develop solutions that better serve clients."
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/27/eversheds-sutherland-announces-its-us-innovation-department/?kw=Eversheds+Sutherland+Announces+Its+US+Innovation+Department&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=newsroomupdate&utm_content=20260127&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b
◾ New LTSF community member, Morgan Maina, posts:
"Hi everyone,
"Quick one for the legal minds here ⚖
"AI is already changing how we research, draft, and work but the real question is: can we trust it with our legal data? 🤔
"Let’s have an open conversation around trust, integrity and security in LegalTech; what’s working, what feels risky and what lawyers actually need as technology evolves.
"HakiChain is hosting a relaxed but insightful webinar with legal professionals to unpack this together.
"🗓 4th February 2025
"⏰ 8:00 PM (EAT)
"📍 Google Meet"
More information about the "meet" can be found at this link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/97290381?utm_source=manual
◾ James Tuke, CEO of AI Futures Forum, has a post on Artificial Lawyer about the "culling" of junior lawyers as GenAI increasingly affects how law firms/legal departments deliver legal services. From the post (that's captioned "Broken Ladder: Are Lawyers Sleepwalking into a Competence Crisis"):
"It is late January 2026. For the past two years, the legal sector has been in a race to deploy GenAI. We have moved from the initial hype phase to the deployment of tools like Harvey, Spellbook, and Microsoft Copilot. The efficiency gains are no longer theoretical; they are in the bottom line.
"But while the balance sheets look healthier, the foundations of the profession are showing cracks.
"In our latest Green Paper, ‘The Broken Ladder: Human Capital Risk in UK Professional Services’, we argue that the sector is witnessing the beginning of a ‘junior cull’ – a structural hollowing out of the pyramid model that has sustained law firms for decades. We are automating the ‘training wheels’ tasks – document review, bundling, basic drafting – that historically nurtured professional judgment."
Read the entire post here (which includes summaries of recommendations to deal with the crisis of competence that the cited Green Paper lays out in full): https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/01/30/broken-ladder-are-lawyers-sleepwalking-into-a-competence-crisis/
Product Development
◾ "Thanks for the memories," perhaps the best way to introduce this post from Legal IT Insider about a product update by Luminance, the UK-based contract automation provider: From the post:
"Today (27th January) Luminance announced what it is calling its “most significant product update to date”, enabling the tool to retain negotiation history and decision-making across a company’s contracts. Graham Sills, co-founder and director of AI at Luminance told Legal IT Insider: 'Until now, legal AI has been all about evaluating and assessing snippets of text, having a view over the entire system of contracts has not been possible.'"
"One area where this new “memory” will have an impact is in contract negotiation, as Luminance is now able to read a whole agreement, align it with a client’s standard terms and review the negotiation history in real time. Luminance estimates that these negotiations will be 10% faster than the 70-80% efficiency gains the tool offered before, and is claiming it will give legal departments 30% of their time back." https://legaltechnology.com/2026/01/27/luminance-unveils-major-product-update-with-institutional-memory/
◾ The LawSites blog reports on Litera’s product enhances for its Kira software. From the LawSites blog post:
“Litera is significantly enhancing Kira, its AI-powered contract review platform, with new capabilities designed to address the growing demands for speed, accuracy and trusted generative AI in contract review work, the company announced today.
“The enhanced version of Kira combines gen AI with proprietary AI models trained on over one million legal contracts to deliver what Litera says is a consistent 90% or greater level of accuracy in contract analysis.”
https://www.lawnext.com/2026/01/litera-expands-kiras-ai-capabilities-with-hybrid-gen-ai-proprietary-approach-to-contract-review.html
◾ EvenUp, the AI-driven software company that builds for personal injury lawyers, gets a product launch featured in a post from LawSites. From the post:
“EvenUp, a company that specializes in AI tools for personal injury law practices, today launched Communication Agents, AI-powered voice and text assistants designed to automate routine communications in PI case management. The company also announced enhancements to its AI drafting capabilities.
“The company announced the new features during a keynote by cofounder Saam Mashhad at the National Trial Lawyers Summit in Miami.”
https://www.lawnext.com/2026/01/evenup-launches-ai-communication-agents-to-handle-routine-tasks-in-pi-cases-also-enhances-its-ai-drafting.html
◾ AI to help turn invoices into cash - from DataQ AI by Zebraworks. That’s the subject of this post from the LawSites blog:
“Zebraworks today announced the launch of DataQ AI, an artificial intelligence-powered analytics platform designed to help law firms identify and address revenue cycle issues before they impact cash flow.
“The new product, part of the company’s Invoices-to-Cash suite, analyzes billing and collections activity, accounts receivable, trust and retainer balances, and client payment patterns to surface actionable insights that can improve collected realization, shorten lockup periods, and enable more proactive revenue management.
$$ Quote: “According to CEO Bill Bice, the platform addresses a common challenge in law firm finance: not a lack of data, but the difficulty of knowing which signals require immediate attention.”
Read all of of the post at this link: https://www.lawnext.com/2026/01/zebraworks-launches-dataq-ai-to-help-law-firms-accelerate-cash-flow-through-ai-driven-revenue-analytics.html
◾ From the January 29, 2026 press release from Actionstep, a company that provides law firm management software in the Cloud:
"January 29, 2026 — Denver, CO — Actionstep, a leading provider of cloud-based law firm management software supporting nearly 5,000 law firms globally, today announced a major acceleration of its product roadmap with the upcoming launch of Trace, a next-generation time capture module designed to help law firms capture more accurate billable work with less effort."
"Powered by next-generation AI, Trace automatically detects activity, understands the legal work performed, maps it to the correct client and matter, and generates draft, bill-ready time entries for review and approval. Keeping human judgement firmly in control, while automating the mundane administrative burden."
Readers can access the entire press release at this link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/97228419?utm_source=manual
◾ The Legaltech News weekly legal tech rundown is out, and it's captioned: "Legaltech Rundown: Thomson Reuters Brings CoCounsel Legal to UK, EvenUp Launches Voice and SMS Agents and More." So go to the link below to read about product releases, business partnerships, hirings, and more."
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/30/legaltech-rundown-thomson-reuters-brings-cocounsel-legal-to-uk-evenup-launches-voice-and-sms-agents-and-more-/?kw=Legaltech+Rundown:+Thomson+Reuters+Brings+CoCounsel+Legal+to+UK,+EvenUp+Launches+Voice+and+SMS+Agents+and+More&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=afternoonupdate&utm_content=20260130&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b&slreturn=20260130184537
Purchasing/Using Legal Tech
◾ Legal IT Insider reports on Thomson Reuters' expansion of CoCounsel Legal to the UK (including some features that won't arrive in the US until next month). From the Legal IT Insider post:
"Thomson Reuters today (26 January) announced the UK launch of CoCounsel Legal, an agentic AI solution that brings together legal research, workflow automation and legal assistance.
"This follows CoCounsel Legal’s rollout last year in the US, however the UK release includes deep research on Practical Law and Westlaw – the US release will follow in February and globally thereafter." https://legaltechnology.com/2026/01/26/thomson-reuters-expands-cocounsel-legal-to-uk-including-deep-research-on-practical-law-and-westlaw/
◾ The LawSites blog from Bob Ambrogi reports that legal tech provider August is "breaking down the barriers" that impede AI's use by small- to medium-sized law firms. From the LawSites post:
"Aiming to remove the sales-cycle obstacles that have kept generative AI tools out of reach for many solo and smaller-firm lawyers, August today launched immediate self-service access to its legal AI platform, including a two-week free trial, alongside a comprehensive library of over 100 video tutorials.
"For the first time, the company says, smaller law firms from solos to midsized can access the same capabilities as large firms without the usual barriers of extended sales processes, lengthy implementations, expensive training programs and dedicated IT staff."https://www.lawnext.com/2026/01/aiming-to-make-ai-more-easily-accessible-for-smaller-law-firms-legal-ai-company-august-launches-self-service-platform-and-free-educational-library.html
◾ Legaltech News (LTN) reports on a new AI survey initiative from advisory firm Baretz +Brunelle. From LTN’s post:
“On Tuesday, legal industry advisory firm Baretz+Brunelle announced the launch of L.E.G.A.L. (Leaders Exploring Generative AI in Law), a new market intelligence initiative. L.E.G.A.L is designed to survey legal services providers and clients to establish baseline metrics for the commercial impact of generative artificial intelligence adoption.
“The launch of L.E.G.A.L. marks the formal introduction of LexFusion Intelligence, B+B’s broader market intelligence offering. LexFusion Intelligence is led by B+B partner Casey Flaherty, who was one of the cofounders of LexFusion prior to its 2025 purchase by B+B.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/28/baretzbrunelle-sets-out-to-quantify-firms-gen-ai-adoption-with-new-market-intelligence-initiative-/
◾ A post from community member, Yash Giri:
"I ran a real U.S. license agreement through an early version of ContractLens (LexiCheck) contractlens.app, reviewed against a predefined contract playbook.
"In minutes, the system generated a PDF review report that:
"flagged missing high-risk clauses
cited the exact contract language (or absence of it)
"marked areas that need human review instead of guessing
"suggested playbook-aligned fixes
"produced a clear RED risk status based on blocking issues
"What’s different from most contract AI tools is the focus on structure and defensibility, not summaries. The output is designed to be shared directly with stakeholders or used as a review/negotiation memo.
"I’m sharing the actual report here to get honest feedback from people who review NDAs, MSAs, or license agreements:
"Would this save you time?
"What would stop you from using it?
"Not selling. Still validating. Blunt feedback welcome."
You access the report that Yash's work with ContractLens (and also deliver feedback to Yash) at this link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/97155337?utm_source=manual
◾ Legal Tech StartUp Focus (LTSF) is very pleased to share two posts that have appeared recently on Legalverse Media, an online publishing platform that provides useful information to legal professionals of all kinds (regardless of their practice setting).
The first post is by Tiffany Archer, a lawyer and President & Founder of Eunomia Risk Advisory, Inc., a specialized consultancy harnessing behavioral insights and data-driven strategies to create innovative legal and compliance solutions for public and private companies. Tiffany's post is captioned "From Blaming to Building: An Architect's Guide to Ethical Behavior."
The second post is piece co-authored by Knut-Magnr Aanestad, a longtime pioneer in legal engineering and COP at Saga Legal AI, and Srinidhi Ranganathan, the Founder and CEO of AgreedPro that builds AI tools to align businesses and legal ops teams. Knut-Magnar's and Srinidhi's post is captioned: "Language Is the Lens: How LLMs Quietly Shape What And How We Think."
Both posts can be accessed at this link: https://lnkd.in/eraDdgXs
◾ Legaltech News has a post from Ari Kaplan, whom many of our readers know as one of the most insightful legal industry analysts. Ari writes about a recent survey of law firms and legal departments that ". . . aim[ed] to identify trends in legal AI, highlight similarities and differences in the factors driving its adoption, and the challenges faced by law firms and corporate legal departments."
From Ari's post:
"The emergence of artificial intelligence and the rise of tools like ChatGPT continue to disrupt and reshape the broader business landscape, and now AI seems to be everywhere in the legal world. But with this growth comes increased pressure to balance the promise of deploying generative AI and emerging technologies with the challenges of implementation and adoption.
"This is raising the level of uncertainty for law firm and corporate legal department leaders to unprecedented heights. To help them better understand current advancements and obstacles, and to plan in an unpredictable environment, I had the privilege of interviewing 32 professionals and gathering quantitative data from 112 individuals, evenly split between law firms and corporate legal departments."
I highly recommend your reading the entirety of Ari's post and getting access to a link to Ari's research. both at this link: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/30/planning-for-an-ai-centric-litigation-future-unfiltered-insights-on-the-state-of-the-legal-profession-/?kw=Planning+for+an+AI-Centric+Litigation+Future:+Unfiltered+Insights+on+the+State+of+the+Legal+Profession&utm_position=3&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20260202&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b
Startup Management
◾ Will the foundation AI labs move into industry verticals? Like, maybe even the legal tech vertical? If you're asking these questions, then you'll want to read this post from Artificial Lawyer:
"For years people have wondered if the big AI players would ever target legal tech. Well, now they have. LLM giant Anthropic has launched new capabilities for its agentic Cowork facility for finance, sales, marketing, and….legal, via a range of plugins.
"As the pioneering AI company explained in a statement sent to Artificial Lawyer: ‘Anthropic is releasing plugins for Cowork that extend Claude’s agentic capabilities beyond general tasks into specialized business functions. Plugins bundle skills, connectors, slash commands, and sub-agents that make Claude work like a domain expert for specific roles and teams, sales, finance, legal, data analysis, marketing, customer support, and more.’" https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/02/02/anthropic-moves-into-legal-tech/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup
Teaching/Learning Legal Tech
◾ "Vibe coding for lawyers," a combination of words that, even as few as six months ago, I never thought that I'd type out. But, here's Artificial Lawyer (AL) with a post about the launch of Vibecode.law. From the AL post:
"The new Vibecode.law is the brainchild of three legal tech experts: Chris Bridges, Co-founder at Tilder / Tacit Legal; Matt Pollins, CPO of Lupl; and Alex Baker, a legal tech consultant.
"So, what is it? ‘Vibecode.law is a new open platform for the legal community. We’re launching in the coming days and all projects will go live together,’ they explain.
"Nice, but why? AL asked Bridges, a lawyer and an engineer, some questions about the new project."
Read the entire AL post (at the link) to get the answer to AL's "but why" question: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/01/26/vibecode-law-launches-an-open-platform-for-diy-ai-tools/
◾ More from Legaltech News, this time a post about how TED and the Association of Corporate Counsel Foundation are teaming up to launch a training program covering, among other things the so-called “soft skills” that lawyers need to possess, as well as skills that apply to working with AI.
“The Association of Corporate Council [sic] Foundation announced an initiative with TED earlier this month to launch TEDLaw, a training program for legal professionals set to launch in the spring.
“The TEDLaw program will consist of five in-person interactive workshops that dive into topics including cultural competence, identity and values, the law and artificial intelligence, critical thinking and intuitive collaboration within the legal practice. Participants will engage through guided case scenarios, facilitated dialogue and applying judgment in context.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/26/association-of-corporate-council-foundation-to-launch-training-initiative-with-ted-/
◾ What kind of testing should law firms and legal departments be using on the GenAI tools they recommend that their lawyers use? For that matter, what is a GenAI test anyway; especially one that's suitable for law firm use?
Josh Kubicki, "lawyer, entrepreneur and teacher," posts an answer (and a very thoughtful and actionable one) in the latest issue of his "Brainyacts" newsletter, which I and over 9,600 other subscribers have been benefitting from over the last several years.
You can read that latest issue online at the following link. And, DO read it - much, much practical wisdom here: https://thebrainyacts.beehiiv.com/p/271-the-ai-test-law-firms-aren-t-running-but-should-be?utm_source=thebrainyacts.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=271-the-ai-test-law-firms-aren-t-running-but-should-be&_bhlid=614405f796a5c007f22cb2fd28a3516545547cc2
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