July 21, 2025 -- Issue #350
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
◾ From TechCrunch:
“Helios (not to be confused with the payroll/HR management solution, or the climate/economic forecasting product of the same name) emerged from stealth last month with $4 million in seed funding. The round was led by Unusual Ventures, with participation from Founders Inc. and Alumni Ventures, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
“Helios’ flagship product Proxi, an AI-based operating system built for public policy, regulatory affairs, legal, compliance, and government teams, is still in beta. But, Scheidler says, the company is already seeing early traction with workers in federal, state, and local agencies, as well as Fortune 500 companies and startups.”
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/11/helios-wants-to-be-the-ai-operating-system-for-public-policy-professionals/
From Axios’ “Pro Rata” newsletter today, July 15, 2025:
“Tavrn, a legal tech platform, raised $15m in Series A funding led by Left Lane Capital, per Axios Pro." https://www.axios.com/pro/enterprise-software-deals/2025/07/15/legal-tech-startup-tavrn-15m-series-a?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alerts_pro_deals_subs
◾ Legaltech News reporting:
'On Tuesday [July 15, 2025], New York-based legal tech startup Covenant announced that it has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Flybridge Capital.
'Covenant was founded in 2021 by Berrent, who was previously CLO and COO of WeWork as well as former CVC general counsel Richard Perris.'https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/07/15/legal-tech-startup-covenant-announces-4m-seed-round/?kw=Legal+Tech+Startup+Covenant+Announces+4M+Seed+Round
◾ Legaltech News reports:
"On Tuesday, legal research and litigation tech startup Callidus Legal AI announced that it has raised $10 million in a funding round led by Cervin Ventures. The round also saw participation from Foley and Lardner and a consortium of partners from an undisclosed law firm, as well as the AI Fund, Tandem Ventures and Myriad Venture Partners, among other investors.
"Callidus offers a proprietary case law database as well as a recently updated generative AI-powered litigation platform that provides various tools for research, outlining and drafting."https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/07/15/litigation-startup-callidus-announces-10m-funding-round-with-investment-from-foley--lardner/?kw=Litigation+Startup+Callidus+Announces+$10M+Funding+Round,+With+Investment+From+Foley+%26+Lardner&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=newsroomupdate&utm_content=20250715&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A
Hiring/New Hires
◾ Legaltech New reports:
“On Tuesday, legal AI expert and litigator Kyle Bahr announced in a LinkedIn post that he has joined Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton as AI product lead. He will be part of the firm’s broader practice innovation team, and will be responsible for managing its portfolio of AI vendor tools.
“Bahr comes to the firm from agentic AI legal tech startup Eudia, where he served as legal product lead.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/07/15/cleary-gottlieb-hires-legal-ai-professional-kyle-bahr-as-ai-product-lead/
Honors and Awards
◾ The quote and link below is from Tom Martin’s LinkedIn post about the forthcoming American Legal Technology Awards. Click on the link below to read more from Tom about the awards and to access another link that will take you to the nomination form.
“𝗧𝗼 𝗺𝘆 𝗳𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀, you deserve recognition. The American Legal Technology Awards spotlights individuals who are exploring innovative new ways to deliver legal services or use technology in the legal space. 𝗡𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝟯𝟭𝘀𝘁. 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆!
“𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘁 𝗮 𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳-𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗱. It’s great publicity.”
http://bit.ly/44Y6cix
Incubators/Accelerators
◾ From Legaltech News:
“On July 9, the legal tech-focused venture capital firm The Legaltech Fund announced the launch of The Legaltech Lab, an accelerator program for legal tech startups.
“The Legaltech Fund’s Legaltech Lab is a six-month program that offers early-stage companies equity investment, product strategy support and mentorship to startups focused on improving the delivery of legal services.
“The Legaltech Lab’s mentors hail from companies and law firms including LegalZoom, Rimon Law, Stratify by Kingsley Napley—the law firm’s regulatory advisory service, among others.”
The entire article is very much worth reading here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/07/16/the-legaltech-fund-launches-its-startup-accelerator-the-legaltech-lab/ And go to this link for more Legaltech Lab information: https://www.legaltech.com/legaltechlab
Partnerships/Business Development
◾. Scott Leigh, co-founder and CEO of AltFee, announces: "We’re thrilled to announce an expanded partnership between AltFee and Clio!
"This expansion marks a deeper alignment between our companies — with a shared commitment to support firms adopting flat fees and value-based pricing models.
"The first example of what’s to come? Our new workflow status feature which allows firms to track the full lifecycle of a matter. For Clio users, this includes automatic status updates driven by actions taken in Clio — making it even easier to track pricing proposals from Draft through to Paid.
"This is just the beginning. As our partnership grows, we're doubling down on building more seamless experiences that help firms modernize pricing — enabling them to stay client-centered and be rewarded for their efficiency gains." Congratulations to Scott and his AltFee team.
◾ From Legal IT Insider:
“UK managed services provider Quiss Technology has entered a strategic partnership with UAE-founded generative AI startup Qanooni AI; a Microsoft 365-embeded tool that helps lawyers draft, review, and research legal content in Word and Outlook.
“Qanooni was founded in the United Arab Emirates in 2024 by former lawyers and engineers Anuscha Iqbal, Ziyaad Ahmed, and Karim Shiyab. Rob Lawson, formerly a sales head at companies including Perfect Portal and Moneypenny, is joining the founding team as head of sales and partnerships to launch Qanooni in the UK. Lawson was previously a personal injury fee-earner.”
https://legaltechnology.com/2025/07/16/exclusive-quiss-technology-partners-with-genai-startup-qanooni-ai/
Product Development
◾ From Bob Ambrogi's LawSites blog:
"LegalOn Technologies, a legal technology company that until now has focused on AI-driven contract review, said today that it is expanding into matter management with a major upgrade to its platform that allows legal departments to manage the intake and execution of legal requests.
“ 'We want to help legal teams solve the problems that slow business, create risk and plague contracting,' said Daniel Lewis, US CEO of LegalOn. 'Contract pain is acute when reviewing agreements, but it includes steps before and after, which is why we’ve expanded to matter management. Now we can help legal teams intake, respond to and track all sorts of requests from the business, not just contracts.' " https://www.lawnext.com/2025/07/contract-review-platform-legalon-expands-into-matter-management-and-updates-its-interface.html
◾ Access your latest edition of Legaltech News’ Friday legal tech rundown:
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/07/18/legaltech-rundown-harvey-establishes-an-office-in-india-lexitas-announces-deposition-insights-and-more/
Purchasing/Using Legal Tech
◾ Most AI tools give you answers. BRYTER gives you outcomes.
In our exclusive interview, CEO Michael Grupp explains why true legal automation starts with workflows.
We discuss how BRYTER, from “Actionable AI” to promptless automation, is quietly establishing itself as one the legal industry’s best operating systems.
Read how it works: https://thelegalwire.ai/ai-meets-process-inside-bryters-end-to-end-legal-automation/
◾ Buy or build agentic AI tools? Looks as if law firms are building!
From Legaltech News:
“While gen AI entered the legal mainstream in record time, agentic AI seems to have broken all records. Since the beginning of the year, a host of agentic AI legal tech tools have come to market, while a growing number of law firms are fast developing proprietary agentic AI platforms for their attorneys and clients alike.”
Excellent piece by Rhys Dipshan; very much worth reading in full.
https://www.law.com/2025/07/11/law-firms-legal-tech-providers-embrace-agentic-ai-at-record-pace/
◾ Below is the text of an email (quoted in full with the sender's permission) from Tom Baldwin, founder and CEO of Entegrata (https://www.entegrata.com/). Congratulations to Tom and the rest of his team for bringing Big Law's Mayer Brown into the Entegrata fold.
"We’re excited to welcome Mayer Brown as the latest leading law firm to license Entegrata’sdata platform. This move reflects the firm’s continued investment in innovation, with a focus on building a modern data foundation to support advanced analytics, firm-wide reporting, and future AI initiatives.
"Mayer Brown began exploring Microsoft Fabric and that hands-on experience revealed the power and potential of a lakehouse model—demonstrating how centralized, analytics-ready data could help unlock meaningful insights across the firm. Recognizing the opportunity to accelerate their progress, the firm made the strategic decision to license Entegrata’s purpose-built Azure lakehouse platform.
"By selecting Entegrata, Mayer Brown expects that the solution will allow them to move faster and avoid the long lead times, staffing demands, and costs of building a custom data platform. Their internal teams will be able to shift focus from data integration efforts to delivering high-value insights, modernizing reporting, and preparing the firm to capitalize on emerging AI capabilities.
" 'Our teams saw the potential of a lakehouse approach early on,' said Evette Pastoriza Clift, Chief Information Officer at Mayer Brown. 'By licensing Entegrata, we expect to accelerate our data journey and focus on the outcomes that matter most—firm-wide insights, better decisions, and a platform that positions us for the next generation of AI applications.'
"Entegrata’s platform brings together structured and unstructured data from almost 20 key systems, providing a centralized, scalable foundation for analytics. With this architecture in place, Mayer Brown is positioned to evolve its approach to data—transforming how the firm understands performance, allocates resources, and prepares for a data-driven future.
"At Entegrata, we’re proud to help leading firms like Mayer Brown shift from intuition-based management to insight-led performance. We look forward to supporting their journey as they bring their vision for modern legal data strategy to life."
◾ Marveri: Transforming Legal Due Diligence with Artificial Intelligence -- Episode 75 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast, An Interview with Connor Acle, co-founder and CEO of Marveri
"What happens when a hardworking corporate lawyer joins forces with an MIT AI researcher? A revolutionary solution to one of the legal profession's most notorious pain points: due diligence.
"Connor Acle, co-founder and CEO of Marveri (https://www.marveri.com/), shares his journey from Morrison Foerster associate to legal tech entrepreneur in this illuminating conversation. After experiencing firsthand how due diligence consumed over half of transaction legal budgets while burning out junior associates, Connor saw an opportunity when ChatGPT emerged. He partnered with an MIT PhD candidate specializing in AI to create a system that fundamentally reimagines how lawyers approach data rooms."
The rest of the show notes here: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/87770693?utm_source=manual and access to this podcast episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2454829/episodes/17525610
◾ From Legaltech News:
“Law firm chief operating officers and principal administrators are prioritizing upgrading their firm’s technology this year, according to the Blickstein Group’s “Law Firm COO Survey” published Thursday.
“The survey received 158 responses from chief operating officers and other administrative executives at law firms around North America.”
Talent retention, together with improving billing-related tech, are among the priorities that are top of mind. https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/07/17/-law-firms-are-prioritizing-tech-updates-this-year-with-gen-ai-e-billing-modernizations-/
◾ Joel Bijlmer posts about "Legisway," a Walters Kluwer development: "What if your legal platform didn’t just organize documents, but ran your entire legal department?
"In our exclusive interview, we sat down with Wolters Kluwer’s Grégoire Miot to explore Legisway: the all-in-one legal management platform built for the demands of modern in-house teams.
"From KPIs to compliance, automation to ESG, Legisway is more than software. It’s structure.
"Read the full interview: https://thelegalwire.ai/legisway-by-wolters-kluwer-an-all-in-one-legal-management-platform-for-the-demands-of-modern-in-house-work/ "
Startup Management
◾ Where do legal tech companies find AI engineering talent? The answer is much like the “build vs buy” dilemma that legal tech purchasers face - that is, do legal tech companies “develop AI developers” by training home grown talent or, like Meta (but with many fewer dollars at their disposal), do legal tech companies “go outside” to hire AI engineering talent?
From Legaltech News:
“. . . demand for AI engineering talent is fierce, and legal tech companies face challenges driven by both the supply of these workers and the demand for their services. Even a couple years after the mass public adoption of gen AI tools, the number of coders with experience working on these products remains relatively limited.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/07/16/where-are-legal-tech-vendors-finding-ai-talent/
◾ Legal tech scale-up Harvey is expanding internationally, reports Artificial Lawyer: "Harvey has announced that it will open an office in Bengaluru, India later this year as part of its efforts to expand its engineering, sales, and operations teams globally. The move comes shortly after boosting its sales and support teams in Germany. Both steps follow the genAI pioneer’s recently stated aim to leverage some of its $600m cash infusion this year to grow more globally and to support its clients worldwide.
"While a key part of the India project is around engineering, sales, and operations, they also have some of the top firms there as customers, including Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas and S&A Law Offices, so there is a practical client development aspect here as well."
Entire article here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/07/10/harvey-to-open-engineering-operations-base-in-india/
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