January 20, 2024 -- Issue #324

​

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.

Conferences and Other Events

◾ I'm thrilled to report that the New York Legal Tech Meetup has announced what I expect to be the first of many events this year: the NY Legaltech Meetup's "Drinks + Demo" get-together on January 30 from 6:30 to 9:00 pm (Eastern) at Fried Frank's NYC offices. Truly, this is a can't-miss event for anyone in any way interested in legal tech.

I hope to see many Legal Tech StartUp Focus community members in NYC on that date at the Meetup.

The link to get more information about the Meetup and to register is here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nylegaltech-drinks-demos-130-fried-frank-registration-1158518563209?aff=ebemoffollowpublishemail&ref=eemail&utm_campaign=following_published_event&utm_content=follow_notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite​

​

Exit/M&A

◾ “On Tuesday, contract lifecycle management company Agiloft announced the acquisition of Screens, a generative artificial intelligence-powered contract playbook provider.
​
“Screens sits directly in Microsoft Word, and will be offered as a stand-alone product in addition to being incorporated into Agiloft’s flagship Data-First Agreement Platform.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/01/14/agiloft-acquires-ai-powered-contract-playbook-provider-screens-aiming-to-foster-industry-standards-/​

​

◾ "On Tuesday [January 14, 2024], legal technology and services company Epiq announced the availability of the Epiq AI Discovery Assistant and the creation of Epiq AI Labs, a new AI development initiative.
​
"The announcement follows Epiq’s 2024 acquisition of Laer AI, a legal technology startup founded by Igor Labutov and Bishan Yang..."
​
Interesting fact: "Prior to the sale, Laer had been operating out of the New York headquarters of Sullivan & Cromwell, which had invested in the startup. It was while working out of Sullivan that Labutov and Yang began developing an AI discovery assistant."
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/01/14/epiq-announces-ai-discovery-assistant-initially-developed-by-laer-ai-with-help-from-sullivan--cromwell-/​

​

Fundraising

◾ Hard-hitting wisdom from a former VC (now a consultant to VCs) in NYC:

"Recently, Lightspeed’s Mercedes Bent offered founders some reasons why a VC might ghost a founder. It was a perfectly reasonable explanation that basically boiled down to “VCs are busy” and “there’s no upside to hurting your feelings or getting into a debate”.

"The post was met with a bunch of founders responses, mostly from men, that equated a lack of response with disrespect. Many answered her admission that VCs simply don’t have the time with, “Yes, you do have the time.”

"Well, sorry guys, but VCs don’t owe you a goddamn thing—and especially not after they’ve already met with you. That was the time they had for you. They offered a meeting—no more and no less."

The whole piece is well worth reading and can be found at the link below. There, you'll find advice about what you should always do immediately at the close of a meeting with a VC if you think matters were left unclear. https://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2025/1/13/vcs-dont-owe-you-a-response-or-a-follow-up​

​

◾ From today's (January 16, 2025) Axios"Pro Rata" newsletter:
​
"Eve, an AI legal platform, raised $47m in Series A funding. A16z led, and was joined by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Menlo Ventures. axios.link/3DZnfaf"

​

◾ From the StrictlyVC newsletter today, January 17, 2024:

“Harvey, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that assists legal professionals by automating tasks such as legal research, document drafting, contract review, and case analysis, is reportedly in the market to raise $300 million at a $3 billion valuation, double the valuation of its previous round last year. Prior backer Sequoia Capital is the deal lead. The company has raised a total of $200+ million. Bloomberg has the scoop [at the link below].

​https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-16/legal-ai-startup-harvey-set-to-double-valuation-to-3-billion​

​

Hiring/New Hires​
​

◾ “Patrick Hurley has today (16 January) joined transatlantic legal technology services consultancy Harbor as managing director of applications management, with a remit to lead and grow Harbor’s managed services business.”
​https://legaltechnology.com/2025/01/16/patrick-hurley-joins-harbor-to-lead-and-grow-its-legal-tech-managed-services-business/​

​

Incubators/Accelerators

​
◾ "A&O Shearman’s ground-breaking tech innovation incubator, Fuse, has opened applications to join its ninth cohort which commences in May 2025.
​
"Applications can be made by clicking on the application link [below] and will close on February 5, 2025. Final selection days will take place in March 2025, and the new cohort will join Fuse in early May."
​
​https://www.f6s.com/fuse-by-ao-shearman-2025/apply​
​
And more about the Fuse program at this link: https://www.aoshearman.com/en/insights/fuse-cohort-9-legaltech-applicants-are-now-open​

​

JusticeTech/A2J

◾ “Generative AI presents a generational opportunity for legal aid organizations to address the justice gap, keynote speaker Laura Safdie told the roughly 350 people who convened in Phoenix on Sunday for the inaugural AI for Legal Aid Summit.”
​https://www.lawnext.com/2025/01/at-the-inaugural-ai-for-legal-aid-summit-a-call-to-arms-for-adopting-ai-to-tackle-the-justice-gap.html​

​

LegalEd

◾ "Today, the UK’s Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has announced the formal launch of the ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’, a wide-ranging State-backed effort to drive AI use and thus more economic growth. But, will the legal and legal tech sectors benefit from this?"
​
With this leading, Artificial Lawyer continues with a wide-ranging thought piece on the UK government's AI effort. The piece includes, of course, thoughts on how the effort can benefit legal tech in the UK. https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/01/13/will-uk-ai-action-plan-help-legal-legal-tech-sectors/​

​

◾ LTSF'er, Joel Bijlmer, posts: "an AI Revive the Partner Track for a New Generation of Lawyers? Could AI offer a path to a healthier work-life balance, and with it, the ability for law firms to meet the changing demands of both its employees and clients? https://thelegalwire.ai/can-ai-revive-the-partner-track-for-a-new-generation-of-lawyers/"

​

◾ Blockchain, crypto and justice-tech are among the non-GenAi emerging technologies mentioned in the predictions-for-2025 collected from experts that Legaltech News surveyed in the article linked below. https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/01/13/legal-techs-predictions-for-emerging-technology-in-2025/​
​

Product Development

◾ Legal IT Insider reports:
​
"Bloomberg Law has launched two new generative AI-powered features, Bloomberg Law Answers and Bloomberg Law AI Assistant.
​
"Bloomberg Law Answers provides answers by drawing from a range of legal sources available on the Bloomberg Law platform. We’re told that each answer generated includes citations and links to the Bloomberg Law authorities and source documents used to generate it, including select primary and secondary sources."
​https://legaltechnology.com/2025/01/15/bloomberg-law-launches-genai-answers-and-assistant/​

​

◾ Reporting from Bob Ambrogi's LawSite blog:

"If context switching is the bane of AI adoption in law firms, legal technology company Syntheia may just have the balm.

"Recognizing that lawyers spend much of their days in email, it has developed an AI-powered document analysis tool that allows lawyers to obtain summaries and insights from legal documents by simply forwarding them from their email to a dedicated email address.

"Syntheia developed the product in collaboration with the AmLaw firm Weil Gotshal & Manges and unveiled it to the public today during a demonstration at the SKILLS conference presented by Horace Wu, Syntheia’s founder and CEO, and Rita Jennings, senior director of practice systems at Weil Gotshal."

Much more at the link: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/01/exclusive-syntheias-new-product-brings-ai-powered-document-analysis-to-lawyers-email-workflows.html​

​

◾ midpage releases a new chat interface (in beta) for its main platform:

"Today, [midpage] released the beta version of our general-purpose chat interface on our main platform, midpage.ai. All users will now see a “Chat” tab on the left-hand side panel. Click it, ask some questions, and let us know what you think!

"Our chat works differently than others and is less of a black box. In some ways, the agent works like a lawyer.

"When lawyers do research, they often run a search, skim the results, run another variant of the first search, skim those results, and so on until they feel like it’s time to take a closer look at the most relevant cases. At this point, they’ll start reading selected cases, filtering out the close-but-useless ones as they go. In the end, they’re left with a few good cases, and they’ll base their answer on those.

"This is sort of how our agent works, too.

"Given a question, the AI generates and executes several relevant queries in parallel. A list of relevant sub-issues is created based on the combined results of the searches. With the user’s confirmation, it filters through the search results until it is left with cases that touch on the sub-issues (i.e., it applies one or more conditions). Finally, it reads the remaining cases and bases its answer on those."

Visit this link to access midpage's Substack article announcing this release (where you'll also get access to a "Try it" button that provides early access to this beta): https://midpage.substack.com/p/beta-release-case-law-agent-available​

​

◾ “LexCheck, a legal technology company specializing in contract review, is launching a new AI-powered contract analysis tool that aims to solve two persistent challenges in contract technology: the ability to handle complex agreements beyond routine contracts such as NDAs, and the creation and maintenance of contract playbooks.”
​
Note the reference above to “complex agreements “ when reading the following $$Quote:
​
“ ‘The dirty secret of contract tech is that nothing is that good beyond NDAs,’ said Gurinder Sangha, LexCheck’s founder, during an exclusive product demonstration. ‘If you see any demo, it’s going to be on an NDA. If you see any live demo, it’s an NDA. You rarely see anyone trying to pitch something on a more complex document.’ ”
​https://www.lawnext.com/2025/01/exclusive-lexcheck-unveils-ai-powered-tool-for-analyzing-complex-agreements-and-auto-generating-custom-playbooks-opens-waitlist-for-free-access.html​

​

◾ New products, new hires, a merger and more. Here’s the January 17, 2025 edition of Legaltech News’ legal tech rundown.
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/01/17/legaltech-rundown-robin-ai-releases-in-house-tool-epona-merges-with-justisolutions-and-more/​

​

Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

◾ Legaltech News asked some legal ops/in-house experts to offer predictions " . . . for Legal Ops & In-House in 2025."
​
"Here’s a look at how experts see in-house teams responding to new technology opportunities and challenges in 2025, from how gen AI could change the nature of their work to shifts in how they procure legal services, and more." https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/01/10/legal-techs-predictions-for-legal-ops--in-house-in-2025/​

​

◾. Here's a post from community member, Yuri Kozlov, of JudgeAI: "🚀JudgeAI: Major Algorithm Update Now Available (https://lnkd.in/dzEKMwvm)

We are excited to introduce a new capability unlocked by the updated meta-algorithms of JudgeAI. These advancements pave the way for the concept of "quasi-legal systems", which parties can use as alternative applicable law in arbitration.

🔺 What is "Quasi-Law"?
Traditionally, applicable law is defined by national or international legal systems. However, with the new functionality of JudgeAI, legal scholars, experts, and institutions can develop their own legal norms, specifically tailored to the needs of parties, which can then be applied in arbitration conducted by AI.

Of course, this idea is still in its early stages. Implementing "quasi-legal systems" will require time and effort, but even now, we can see the potential:
▪️ Scholars and experts can create unique legal systems designed for specific industries or situations.
▪️ Parties can select the most suitable set of norms, or even collaborate in designing these norms.
▪️ The system can apply these norms consistently and transparently, ensuring flexibility and precision.

🔺 Opportunities and Challenges
It’s too early to say how effective or in-demand this model will be in practice. However, we already see the potential for competition between traditional legal systems and their alternative "quasi-legal" counterparts. This may lead to a more flexible and adaptive approach to dispute resolution.

We view this as an experimental direction that requires discussion, analysis, and refinement. Time will tell whether "quasi-law" can establish itself as a valuable tool in arbitration and gain practical application.

🔺 Try JudgeAI Today
While the idea of "quasi-legal systems" continues to evolve, you can already test the updated meta-algorithms of JudgeAI and see how our quasi-law works in action. Simply visit the "Arbitration" section on our platform, available exclusively to registered users.

​

◾ "The American Arbitration Association-International Centre for Dispute Resolution (AAA-ICDR) and the legal technology company Clearbrief today announced a partnership by which AAA-ICDR will provide Clearbrief’s AI-powered writing and document analysis tools to its panel of 5,500 arbitrators and mediators."
​https://www.lawnext.com/2025/01/exclusive-american-arbitration-association-partners-with-clearbrief-to-offer-ai-powered-legal-writing-tools-to-its-panelists-and-parties.html​

​

◾ Very thorough and thoughtful piece from Richard Tromans of Artificial Lawyer about LLMs and accuracy.

"Generative AI is without doubt the most powerful technology to be applied to the legal sector since the arrival of digital tools, yet it has a serious challenge: accuracy. If legal genAI is to become all it can be this must be confronted."

There's much, much more at the link, of course. Do read!!https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2024/06/17/we-need-to-talk-about-genai-accuracy/​

​

◾ Another post from Joel Bijlmer (thanks for so regularly posting to the community, Joel): "Legal research is fundamental to litigation, and always has been – yet it continues to consume a substantial portion of litigators’ time. While cases have developed from being hard copy to online, ensuring features such as searchability over time, current litigation processes are often still far from a streamlined process. With deadlines looming, partners suggesting last minute updates, and of course, clients conveniently remembering crucial aspects to the case the night before filing of pleadings, even the most diligent researchers can find themselves drowning in case law.This is where midpage.ai aims to lighten the load. midpage.ai is an AI-powered platform designed to turn information overload into clear and concise answers. It’s built for litigators and law students, and offers tools that bring structure and speed to the research process without compromising depth or accuracy. https://thelegalwire.ai/midpage-ai-redefining-legal-research-for-todays-demands/​
​

Startup Management

◾ "New data from Legal Complex has shown that the burn rate for legal tech companies dropped in 2024, the first time it has done so since 2018. It also follows the previous year’s record level for longer burn rates." Artificial Lawyer offers explanations for why this burn rate change is happening.
​https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/01/14/legal-tech-burn-rate-dips-for-1st-time-since-2018/​

​