January 5, 2026 -- Issue #375
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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Fundraising
◾ Fundraising news from the LawSites blog by Robert Ambrogi:
“BriefCatch, a legal technology company devoted to helping legal professionals improve their legal writing, has raised a $6 million Series A led by the growth equity investing firm Full In.
“BriefCatch says the round comes amid its highest revenue growth rate to date, with 126% net enterprise revenue retention among large law-firm customers. The start-up’s customers include more than 50 of the AmLaw 200 and many of the nation’s state and federal courts.”
https://www.lawnext.com/2025/12/breaking-briefcatch-raises-6m-series-a-to-accelerate-acquisitions-and-development.html
◾ Leaving 2025 with a post from Legaltech News that lists the biggest legal tech funding rounds this year. From the post:
“While nine figure funding rounds in the legal tech market once caused shock, this year they have become commonplace. It’s not just legacy legal tech providers that are securing once unheard-of amounts of investment, but also relatively new startups that launched around the time generative artificial intelligence became mainstream. This new influx of capital is fueled by new investors in the legal tech space, including some of the largest financial institutions and venture funds in the market.”
View the “carousel” of LARGE legal tech investments in 2025 (a roster of investments that would have seemed impossible a mere five or so years ago) at this link: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/12/29/9-figure-norm-the-biggest-legal-tech-investments-of-2025-/
Hiring/New Hires
◾ What were the major personnel moves in legal tech in 2025? Legaltech News covers the "people" beat with a post that lists the top seven such moves this past year. From the post:
"Between launching new offerings, competing for clients and managing finances, 2025 was a busy year for legal tech vendors and service providers. Amid steady news of funding rounds and product launches, the year saw a number of major changes to the roster of executives leading the companies law firms and in-house teams rely on. Here are seven of the biggest people moves from the legal tech industry in 2025." https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/12/30/7-major-legal-tech-people-moves-from-2025/?kw=7+Major+Legal+Tech+People+Moves+From+2025&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=afternoonupdate&utm_content=20251230&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A
LegalEd
◾ New LTSF community member, Carlos Henrique, posts legal tech and the practice of law in Brazil:
"In Brazilian legal practice, missing a deadline is not “just” a technical mistake; it is a direct risk to reputation, client relationships, and, ultimately, the lawyer’s civil liability.
"The real fear is not the complex case
"Ask any Brazilian lawyer what their biggest fear is:
It is not the complex case.
It is not the tense hearing.
It is not the demanding client.
"It is the deadline that quietly slips by unnoticed — the one no one saw, no one prioritized, no one flagged in time. In many situations, this happens even in mature structures, because the main problem is not legal knowledge, it is operations.
"When workflows become the villain
"In the day-to-day of Brazilian law firms and in-house legal departments, the problem usually shows up like this:
- The intern who spends the entire morning reviewing publications and still misses a relevant one.
- The support team receiving dozens of notices on the same day and being forced to choose “where to start” in the dark.
- Triage done with dozens of open tabs, different official journals, and systems that do not help prioritize anything within the Brazilian litigation context.
"Until the phone rings: “Doctor… a notice just came out. The deadline is today.”
The discomfort does not come from the complexity of the case, but from the feeling of being caught off guard by a workflow that was never designed to deliver predictability.
"A point of consensus in Brazil
"After talking to Brazilian legal teams and to those building technology for the sector in Brazil, a clear consensus emerges:
The one who “misses” the deadline, in practice, is not the lawyer.
"It is the fragmented workflow.
It is the information overload without hierarchy.
It is the lack of clear prioritization.
It is the critical information buried under volume.
"For the LawTech community that closely observes the Brazilian reality, this creates a direct responsibility for the kind of solutions being built: it is not enough to “digitize” the routine, it is necessary to re-orchestrate legal work around context, urgency, and risk.
"Where technology needs to go further
"Instead of simply replicating Brazilian analog chaos in digital interfaces, the more mature solutions are moving towards:
- Automatic prioritization that highlights critical deadlines and actions with higher impact in national litigation.
- Smart filters and search that cut through the noise and make it possible to quickly find what is sensitive among thousands of publications from Brazilian courts.
- Triage in seconds, consolidating official Brazilian sources and normalizing data, reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks.
- Real-time operational visibility into what is urgent, what is at risk, and what can be delegated or rescheduled by Brazilian legal teams.
"When operations stop being a maze, lawyers go back to practicing law in depth, analysts can finally breathe, and firms start trusting their own processes again — instead of relying on luck.
"An invitation to the international LawTech community
"From the perspective of those who live the day-to-day reality of the Brazilian legal ecosystem, the next step might not be to create “just another tool”, but to establish operational design principles tailored to this specific context:
- A deadline is a critical event, not “just another data point” on the screen.
- Volume without prioritization is risk disguised as productivity.
- The right information, at the right time, is infrastructure, not a luxury.
T"he challenge for anyone building LawTech today, especially when looking at legal operations in Brazil, is:
"Are your solutions helping Brazilian law firms and legal departments reduce the structural risk of missing deadlines, or are they just digitizing the existing chaos?
Marketing Legal Tech
◾ A post from Legaltech Hub, and we learn that ContractpodAI begins the new year with a rebrand. From LTH's post:
"New year, new me—it's a mantra that doesn’t just apply to people.
"AI and contract lifecycle management (CLM) provider ContractPodAi has rebranded to Leah, signaling the company’s commitment to its broader AI vision in the agentic era. The Leah name was previously associated with certain of the company’s products, including its AI legal assistant, first launched in March 2023." https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/contractpodai-rebrands-as-leah-embracing-shift-to-a-comprehensive-agentic-ai-platform/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9xU-tR6pxn4oTCiI1LWGyJK_NiNDaGdaa0lrgp-VvvpHxevv8wsRSnRSqFc_pD2UmvYOCnhhmgbDCEFXXzeg8LGQEq-Vv_pGCK5SBCMFW67zjMEPY&_hsmi=396896822&utm_content=396896822&utm_source=hs_email
Product Development
◾ Another 2025 retrospective - here Legaltech News posts about legal tech company product-related moves made last year. From the LTN post:
“2025 saw a number of legal tech companies and service providers expand into new product areas and service offerings. Whether through mergers, acquisitions or internal development, these companies moved into new verticals to deepen their relationships with existing customers and attract new ones. Here are some of the biggest moves legal tech companies made to expand into new areas in the past year.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/01/02/7-legal-tech-companies-that-moved-into-new-verticals-in-2025-/
Purchasing/Using Legal Tech
◾ An essay by Judge Scott Schlegel about modernizing court systems and processes. An essay that surprises with a framing drawn from a five-step algorithm SpaceX uses to audit its own workflows. Much wisdom here that can apply to all kinds of organizations, public and private - but, especially organizations in the non-judicial branches of government, where, as is the case with the judiciary, transparency, fairness, and trust are vital.
One of several "$$Quotes:"
"As I read the five rules [that SpaceX applies], it became clear to me that courts rarely modernize this way. Too often, we modernize backwards. We begin with the tool, not the purpose. We keep every legacy step to avoid conflict, then we pay a vendor to digitize it, and then we act surprised when nothing meaningfully changes except the invoice. Meanwhile, the work does not stop. Caseloads rise, staffing gets tighter, and the public walks into the same old experience, only now it has a portal, a password, and a help desk ticket number. When people ask why the justice system feels slow or inconsistent, the answer is often not a lack of effort. It is that we have been building improvements on top of a foundation we never audited, never simplified, and never had the courage to subtract from." https://judgeschlegel.substack.com/p/what-does-spacex-have-to-do-with?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1176023&post_id=182872693&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1cv2&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
◾ A "neat" (and interactive) world map of legal tech companies from The Legal Wire. Have fun clicking around on the map.
"Welcome to The Legal Tech Map, the official global directory for Legal Tech. We showcase Legal Tech companies from around the world, making it easier to discover, connect, and collaborate. Want your company featured? Simply send us your details, and we’ll add you to the map."
Here's access to the web page with the map: https://thelegalwire.ai/legal-tech-map/?utm_source=newsletter.thelegalwire.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=year-end-bets-agentic-reality-and-a-vault-for-what-matters&_bhlid=b9603c45cf9e7103e46f59226a59a4775b49816b
◾ Judge Scott Schlegel kicks off 2026 with a redesign of his website. I’ll let Judge Schlegel explain what his redesign is all about (from a post he put up on his Substack today):
“After a talk, or after someone reads one of my articles, I tend to get the same questions. Where do I start? What should my court do next? What should lawyers be doing now? Should judges be using AI in chambers?
“So while I had some time, I decided to redesign the site around those questions. It points to the same themes I have been writing about for years, but in a way that is easier to navigate.
“If you want a simple starting point, click on AI in Chambers where you will find two guides. While they are written specifically for judges, they are just as useful for lawyers and court staff who want to start using AI in a responsible way.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/judgeschlegel/p/happy-new-year?r=1cv2&utm_medium=ios
Teaching/Learning Legal Tech
◾ US law schools are (finally!) warming up to including legal tech in their curricula, particularly AI-related tech. Here's Legaltech News with a post about some law schools' legal tech courses and programs in 2025. From the post:
"Law schools are partnering with legal tech companies and tapping innovators to guide them in using rapidly developing technology." https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/12/30/how-law-schools-advanced-legal-tech-in-2025-/?kw=How+Law+Schools+Advanced+Legal+Tech+in+2025&utm_position=2&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20251231&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A
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