A weekly newsletter with links to articles from around the world that help legal tech startup leaders (and their customers and their investors) succeed in business
LTSF Newsletter -- January 26, 2026 -- Issue #378
January 26, 2026 -- Issue #378
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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The second post is by Eve Vlemincx, an award-winning changemaker, strategic advisor, academic, and keynote speaker specializing in legal leadership, innovation, and transformation, with teaching ties to Stanford and Harvard. You can click on the below image to read Eve's post.
Exit/M&A
◾ TechCrunch reports on Harvey's acquisition of Hexus:
"Harvey, the high-flying legal AI startup, has acquired Hexus — a two-year-old startup that builds tools for creating product demos, videos, and guides — as the company continues its aggressive expansion amid fierce competition in the legal tech market."
“ 'What we’re bringing to Harvey is deep experience building enterprise AI tools in adjacent problem spaces,' [Hexus founder and CEO Sakshi Pratap] said. 'This expertise helps Harvey move faster in a market that’s becoming increasingly competitive.' ”
I presume that this is Harvey bolstering its own, internal, tooling.
Fundraising
◾ Legaltech News (LTN) reports that Ivo has closed a Series B round for $55M. That, to put it technically, is "quite a chunk of change." From the LTN post:
"San Francisco-based artificial intelligence-powered contract startup Ivo announced that it raised $55 million in a Series B funding round led by Blackbird, and with participation from Costanoa Ventures, Uncork Capital, Fika Ventures, GD1 and Icehouse Ventures.
"The funding will be used to bolster the startup’s product development and expand its reach to new and current clients."
◾ Ever more legal tech fundraising news from Legaltech News (LTN):
“London-based artificial intelligence-powered billing compliance platform Antidote announced Wednesday that it raised $5 million in a seed round led by European venture capital fund Lakestar, with participation from The LegalTech Fund (TLTF) and Concept Ventures.
“Antidote intends to use the capital to further its expansion into the U.S., building on adoption it has already seen from law firms in the U.S., UK and Australia, according to a press release. The startup also plans to expand its product offering.”
Read the entire LTN post here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/21/ai-billing-compliance-startup-antidote-raises-5m-in-seed-funding/
◾ Let's kick off the work week's legal tech news with word about a fund raise from a Legaltech News (LTN) post: From the post by LTN:
"On Monday [January 26, 2026] Orbital, a London- and New York-based artificial intelligence-powered platform for real estate legal work, announced the completion of a $60 million Series B funding round.
"The round was led by Brighton Park Capital, and featured participation from The LegalTech Fund and REV, the venture capital arm of LexisNexis parent company RELX. Other investors include Moderne Ventures and real estate company Grosvenor Group."
Hiring/New Hires
◾ From the website of London's Financial News, a post that describes how Harvey is "paying (way) up" for experienced lawyer talent to join the legal tech scaleup's team:
"Legal AI startup Harvey is offering City lawyers equity and spending money for sabbaticals in a bid to lure leading solicitors to the firm.
"The OpenAI-backed software company is ramping up recruitment as it races to revolutionise the industry, hoping pay packages worth nearly $400,000 can draw talent from elite law firms and in-house legal teams."
H/T to George Hannah and his "Best Practice" email newsletter for calling my attention to Harvey's recruiting efforts. https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/ai-firm-harvey-offers-bumper-pay-deals-to-lure-city-lawyers-9d93f1f3
◾ Legaltech News posts with hiring news:
“E-discovery provider HaystackID announced Tuesday that Chad Pinson, previously CEO and managing partner of accountancy firm Carr, Riggs & Ingram, has been named as the company’s new CEO.” https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/20/haystackid-names-former-accountancy-firm-leader-chad-pinson-as-new-ceo/
◾ Bloomberg Law posts about how a law OG (former executive committee chair of a very big Big Law firm) has taken a "leap into the future" by joining an AI-native law firm. From the Bloomberg Law post:
"Sidley Austin’s former executive committee chair is pivoting from leading one of the world’s largest law firms to a two-month-old AI-native law firm.
"Mike Schmidtberger, Sidley’s executive committee chair from 2018 to 2025, has joined Norm Law LLP as chairman, partner, and head of the investment funds and regulatory practice. Schmidtberger stepped down as Sidley’s executive committee chair last spring under firm rules that require the chair to step aside after turning 65. Schmidtberger continued working as a partner at the firm before retiring last month." https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/former-sidley-leader-embraces-future-joining-ai-law-firm?source=newsletter&item=body-link®ion=text-section
LegalEd
◾ Community member, Christopher John, posts about AlphaLit's case-scoring technology and, in particular, the impact that this technology can have on A2J:
"The 80% case routing efficiency AlphaLit promises is a gem. It's a game-changer for litigation finance.
"Think of it like this: "If you automate the mundane, you elevate the human." This isn't just about efficiency; it's about leveling the playing field for access to justice.
"This move signals a shift where AI becomes the backbone for scaling smaller claims into viable business opportunities. Good news for anyone looking to disrupt the legal finance space."
https://www.lawnext.com/2026/01/ai-startup-alphalit-raises-3-2m-seed-round-to-screen-and-score-smaller-cases-and-route-them-to-lawyers.html
Marketing Legal Tech
◾ Artificial Lawyer posts to report on Harvey's opening of a Paris office and one of its latest hires:
"Pioneering legal AI platform Harvey is to open an office in Paris as its global growth continues. It’s great timing because the Legal Innovators Europeconference will take place for the first time in the French capital this June. They have also hired Jorge Bestard from Canva to become VP EMEA Sales.
"The launch of a Paris office follows the rapid expansion of Harvey around the world, with other office launches including Bengaluru in India last year, and Dublin, Ireland at the start of 2026."
AL's entire post can be accessed here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/01/15/harvey-to-open-paris-base-as-global-growth-continues/
Over at Artificial Lawyer (AL) there's a post about Legora and its plans for the India market. From AL's post:
"India is increasingly seen as a key market for legal tech players, with Legora now forming an exclusive legal data partnership with locally-based Manupatra. The move comes not long after the Stockholm-based legal AI platform launched an office in the Indian tech centre, Bengaluru."
"This partnership strengthens Legora’s commitment to India, they stated, ‘a market offering the perfect conditions for legal innovation, driven by a tech-savvy lawyer population, rapidly digitizing legal systems, and a maturing legal services ecosystem’."
Partnerships/Business Development
◾ A post from Legal IT Insider speaks of a customer win for Harvey. From the post:
"HSBC Holdings today (20 January) announced a new strategic AI partnership with legal services provider Harvey AI, in a move, it says, that forms part of HSBC’s broader shift towards embedding AI across HSBC’s operations. This is a major win for Harvey, which already works with a number of large corporates, but whose publicity to date has revolved significantly around its law firm customer wins. Corporate customers include leading science and tech company Merck, and investment firms KKR and Bridgewater.
"It is not clear at the time of publishing how advanced the partnership is. HSBC said today that the pilot brings a cutting-edge legal AI platform into HSBC’s Global Legal function as part of the bank’s commitment to innovation and operational excellence. The bank emphasised that Harvey’s platform is purpose-built for legal teams who can leverage AI to accelerate responding to business needs while also supporting enterprise-grade controls and security aligned to regulatory expectations." https://legaltechnology.com/2026/01/20/hsbc-selects-harvey-as-its-legal-ai-platform/
Product Development
◾ Litera "goes mobile," according to a post at Legal IT Insider. From Legal IT Insider's post:
"Litera today (20 January) launched the iOS mobile application of Litera One, its cloud platform that unifies document drafting, review, and knowledge management, integrated with Microsoft 365. The mobile app extends its capabilities beyond PCs and laptops to tablets and iPhone, so lawyers can pick up their work wherever they are." https://legaltechnology.com/2026/01/20/litera-launches-litera-one-ios-mobile-app/
◾ AI Agent-driven product development news from the Law Sites blog:
“Amid the ongoing debate over whether AI will replace lawyers, the legal tech company Eve is offering a different answer: It won’t replace them, but it will autonomously handle much of the routine work they used to do themselves, to give them more time for higher-value legal work.
The company has unveiled Eve 2.0, which it says represents a fundamental reimagining of how plaintiff law firms staff and deliver legal work.”
$$ Quite: “‘Plaintiff firms don’t hit a ceiling because they lack cases; they hit a ceiling because human execution is hard to scale,’ said Jay Madheswaran, Eve’s CEO and cofounder, in announcing the release. ‘The traditional law firm pyramid is broken. It traps your best legal minds in administrative noise. Our new release fixes the org chart by inserting an AI execution layer at the bottom.’”
Read the complete LawSites post here: https://www.lawnext.com/2026/01/eve-launches-ai-workforce-to-reshape-the-pi-firm-org-chart-not-replacing-lawyers-but-freeing-them-for-higher-level-work.html
◾ Legaltech News (LTN) posts about Baretz’s + Brunelle’s new advisory offering. Here’s an excerpt from the LTSN post:
“On Thursday, legal industry advisory firm Baretz+Brunelle announced the launch of LexFusion Labs, a new artificial intelligence development and deployment advisory arm. The launch comes just under a year after Baretz+Brunelle initially acquired legal innovation accelerator Lex Fusion with the intention of bolstering its legal tech and legal operations offerings.
“Former Davis Wright Tremaine senior director of innovation Dan Szabo will lead the new offering and has been appointed as the firm’s first chief innovation officer and named a partner.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/22/baretzbrunelle-launches-new-ai-advisory-offering-led-by-former-big-law-tech-leader-/
◾ From the press release issued yesterday (January 21, 2026) by Lighthouse, a provider of “ . . . eDiscovery and information governance solutions to manage the increasingly complex landscape of enterprise data for compliance and legal teams.”
“Lighthouse, a global leader in eDiscovery and information governance, today announced the launch of LighthouseIQ, a next-generation intelligence platform and AI application suite. Developed to eliminate the constraints of data scale, LighthouseIQ provides legal and compliance teams with earlier insights, regulatory defensibility, and significant cost savings.”
https://www.lighthouseglobal.com/newsroom/lighthouse-unveils-lighthouseiq
◾ Don't forget to read this week's Legaltech News legal tech rundown. Catch up on product developments, hiring, new business partnerships, and more.
Here's the link to the rundown:
Purchasing/Using Legal Tech
◾ Legaltech News reports:
“Merger and acquisitions analytics startup DEALSAGE announced that it launched in the legal market Wednesday, specifically targeting law firms and corporate development teams, as well as private equity sponsors and limited partnerships.
“DEALSAGE offers an M&A analytics platform that analyzes, evaluates and tracks M&A agreements, among other tasks. The startup was founded in 2025 by Loius Citron, the former chief legal officer at venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates—which over the years invested in a number of legal tech companies including Clio, August and Logikcull (now a part of Reveal)—and former Kirkland & Ellis partner Mario Mancuso, who now serves as DEALPAGE’s CEO.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/21/ma-startup-dealsage-co-founded-by-former-kirkland--ellis-partner-launches-in-legal-market-/
◾ The Legaltech Hub (LTH) has a post on its website by LTH co-founder and CEO, Nikki Shaver, that discusses the coming (already-arrived?) use of agentic AI systems by lawyers and their allied professionals. From the LTH post:
"Professor Dan Katz, Mike Bommarito, and Jillian Bommarito (“Katz and the Bommaritos”) are known to the legal industry from past endeavors, including their company 273 Ventures and its Kelvin Legal Data Operating System for law firms. Now the trio is writing a book called Artificial Intelligence for Law and Finance, releasing each chapter for review and public refinement before it becomes integrated into the final text. Chapter three, entitled “Governing AI Agents,” provides a framework that fills the gap left by most other governance structures – one that is genuinely useful for law firms."
All of Nikki's post is worth reading, of course, and it can be found here: https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/governing-ai-agents-and-agentic-systems-in-law-firms-from-abstract-frameworks-to-legal-grade-control/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--WVG7CF7fx2ejp_RAb0VzmCg7yKcvjDTm1MzDtVZH1DjmjDjIqNt0w54KJMYQUqrCdagAqQ81iBHvJuSxm4dIqKMdUHMn3mJeFF68ZEjuMFaRuub4&_hsmi=399983844&utm_content=399983844&utm_source=hs_email
◾ TechCrunch posts an article provocatively captioned, “Are AI agents ready for the workplace? A new benchmark raises doubts.”
From the TechCrunch post:
" . . . new research looks at how leading AI models hold up doing actual white-collar work tasks, drawn from consulting, investment banking, and law. The result is a new benchmark called APEX-Agents — and so far, every AI lab is getting a failing grade. Faced with queries from real professionals, even the best models struggled to get more than a quarter of the questions right. The vast majority of the time, the model came back with a wrong answer or no answer at all.
“According to Mercor CEO Brendan Foody, who worked on the paper, the models’ biggest stumbling point was tracking down information across multiple domains — something that’s integral to most of the knowledge work performed by humans.”
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/22/are-ai-agents-ready-for-the-workplace-a-new-benchmark-raises-doubts/
Startup Management
◾ Who wants to hear Bob Ambrogi interview Winston Weinberg and Gabe Pereyra of Harvey? I do, and you should too! From the LawSites post that accompanies the interview that's conducted on the LawNext podcast:
"In this episode of LawNext, Pereyra and Weinberg take us back to Harvey’s earliest days, when they were sending thousands of LinkedIn messages trying to get anyone to look at their product. They share the pivotal moment when early access to GPT-4 transformed what they could build, the breakthrough that came when Allen & Overy became their first major client, and how they have evolved from building an AI assistant for individual lawyers to constructing what they call “essential infrastructure” for legal work."
Here's a link to the blog post (which, in turn, displays a player for the video of the podcast): https://www.lawnext.com/2026/01/lawnext-from-roommates-to-billionaires-harveys-founders-gabriel-pereyra-and-winston-weinberg-on-building-ai-infrastructure-for-law.html
◾ From a post by Mary O'Carroll, COO at the Goodwin law firm:
"Everyone talks about AI, but it's Legal SaaS that is having a moment.
"Over the past few weeks, I’ve been in conversation with a number of legal software companies, and the one thing they all say is that demand is exploding. Growth is blowing past forecasts. Sales cycles are accelerating, and the appetite for legal software (with some AI of course) is stronger than it’s been in years."
The entire post is an excellent read. Here's the link: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/maryshenocarroll_everyone-talks-about-ai-but-its-legal-saas-activity-7420625938192728064-nR0a?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACjKkUBuYvfoBWwBGd7KKABZw3jrdiBcc0
Teaching/Learning Legal Tech
◾ Do read this post from Judge Scott Schlegel about his and others' work in " . . . launching the Judicial AI Consortium (JAIC), pronounced 'Jake'.” From Judge Schlegel's post:
" . . . we reached out to other judges who have been actively thinking, writing, and speaking about these issues, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Along the way, Judge Xavier Rodriguez also leaned in to help shape the idea and bring it to life.
"That is the purpose of JAIC. It is a judges only, judge led educational consortium focused on thoughtful, practical engagement with AI. No hype. No speculation. No policy advocacy. Just judges learning from each other across courts and jurisdictions. The goal is shared learning and candid, cross jurisdiction dialogue that helps judges approach these emerging issues with greater clarity and confidence.
"Our first meeting will be held on February 25, 2026 at 4:00 PM Eastern. Judges only."
Kudos to Judge Schlegel and his colleagues in the creation of JAIC! Read all of the Judge's post (on Substack) here: https://judgeschlegel.substack.com/p/judicial-ai-consortium-jaic?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1176023&post_id=185532837&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1cv2&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Legal Tech StartUp Focus Newsletter
A weekly newsletter with links to articles from around the world that help legal tech startup leaders (and their customers and their investors) succeed in business
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. 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....
January 19, 2026 -- Issue #377 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....
January 12, 2026 - Issue #376 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...