June 29, 2026 -- Issue #400
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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Conferences and Other Events
◾ Here's a Legal IT Insider (LITI) post that provides a "view from 35,000 feet" summary of the goings-on at the Legal Tech Talk conference in London last week. It's a good summary, despite the altitude; so do give it a read. And as you read it, marvel at the fact that around 5,500 people attended the conference.
LITI describes the event as a "legal tech festival." Read this from LITI's post and tell me you don't agree with that description:
"Coffee stations, a nail bar, massages, juice bar, live music, beer and cocktail bars (and don’t forget mocktail bar), surround and permeate the exhibitor booths, which themselves increasingly offer beverages or food to entice conversation and fun. We once called it the Met Gala of legaltech conferences, but perhaps a better analogy would now be Glastonbury. Legora built their own pub."
Read the full post from LITI here: https://legaltechnology.com/the-legaltechtalk-festival-some-important-takeaways/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--O9RjSvUay11MnPi2K0VYTfnjC2JP2W84s1xIU32xEpkAdDmmrWZhAv0BucWYWx6bf6Sidxi-GJqC5qFKJgcSg5i6rBH4T9Y3PBLm-v3DteUDbUfU&_hsmi=139085565&utm_content=139085565&utm_source=hs_email
Fundraising
◾ Sifted Daily, the newsletter that focuses on tech startups throughout Europe, posted this item in the newsletter's "Deals" section today, June 24, 2026:
"Cologne, Germany-based JUPUS, which develops an AI assistant for law firms, raised €13m in Series A funding. Semapa Next led the round and was joined by investors including NRW.BANK, Acton Capital and High-Tech Gründerfonds."
LegalEd
◾ Vibecoding Turns Legal Ideas into Working Tools -- Episode 85 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast -- An Interview with Matt Pollins of Lupl and Alex Baker of Legal Tech Collective
You do not need a computer science degree to build something genuinely useful for legal work, but you do need a clear problem and the willingness to experiment. That’s why I invited Matt Pollins (Lupl, https://www.lupl.com/) and Alex Baker (Legal Tech Collective, https://www.legaltechcollective.com) to talk about vibe coding and what it means when software can be built with natural language instead of traditional programming.
We unpack the definition of vibecoding and why the term now covers a wide spectrum, from non-technical beginners to seasoned engineers who increasingly “manage” AI agents that generate most of the code. Then we bring it back to the real world of practicing lawyers: how prototyping helps you understand AI, APIs, and agents faster than reading hot takes online, and how small “micro apps” can eliminate repetitive grunt work, speed up delivery, and improve client service without replacing professional judgment.
We also go deep on Vibecode.law (https://vibecode.law/, the project Matt and Alex built to bring balance to a polarized conversation. You’ll hear what’s inside Vibe Academy, how the project showcase helps lawyers learn from each other, and why vibathons can be a practical way for law firms, universities, and even clients to build together. Along the way, we talk about legal tech workflow gaps, work management, security and rollout realities, and why legal education needs to catch up.
Read the rest of the show notes for this episode at: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/103720833?utm_source=manual
Listen to the episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2454829/episodes/19398562
Member Introductions/Questions
◾ Community member, Valli S. Challa, introduces herself to the LTSF community with a post about her company, DocketEngin:
"Exciting milestone to share with this community, DocketEngine is officially live and out of beta: https://guardedgrowthip.com/products/docketengine/
"I'm Valli, founder of GuardedGrowth IP, based out of Sugarland, TX. After years in legal ops at ExxonMobil, Fluor Corp, Deloitte Global, and others, I lived the pain of managing trademark deadlines across jurisdictions firsthand. So I built the solution I wished I'd had.
"DocketEngine is an AI-powered trademark docket management platform, helping IP practitioners track renewals across 100+ jurisdictions without the deadline anxiety. Would love feedback from folks here, and if you know anyone managing trademark portfolios who might find this useful, I'd appreciate the intro.
"Also quietly raising a seed round, happy to connect with anyone curious about where we're taking this, find me on Linkedin or DM [at the LTSF website]."
◾ New community member, Vernon Niven, introduces himself to our community:
"Entrepreneur. Investor. Advisor. I am passionate about applying emerging technologies to improve business performance, empower the workforce, change the playing field, and unlock hidden value. Because that is how people and economies thrive ;-) At CogAbility, we provide safe & secure AI solutions that automate work and empower government, university & healthcare organizations (and the people they serve)."
Partnerships/Business Development
◾ As reported in the Legaltech News (LTN), the American Arbitration Association (AAA) and Intergra Ledger, a “blockchain-based documentation provider,” partner (along with other business parties) to try to bring semantic consistency to Gen AI use in legal. The AAA and Integra Ledger do so by offering a protocol (standard) for assigning legal terms to LLM agents that transact on behalf of people and companies.
From the LTN post:
“The American Arbitration Association (AAA) announced Wednesday the launch of the Legal Context Protocol (LCP), an open standard designed to ensure the presence of verifiable and discoverable legal terms when artificial intelligence agents perform transactions on behalf of companies and individuals.
“The ledger was developed with blockchain-based documentation provider Integra Ledger and with contributions from a coalition including Google, IBM, Circle, Wayfair and other enterprises.”
Read LTN’s post in its entirety here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/06/24/aaa-and-integra-ledger-announce-legal-protocol-for-ai-agent-transactions-/
Product Development
◾ Thomson Reuters “flagship legal AI assistant,” CoCounsel Legal has undergone a major rebuild. Although TR had already previewed the rebuilt tooling, here’s a post from the LawSites blog discussing the new CoCounsel Legal’s early access release.
From the LawSites post:
“Thomson Reuters is opening early access this week to what it calls the next generation of CoCounsel Legal, the most substantial reworking of its flagship legal AI assistant since the company acquired the product as part of its 2023 purchase of Casetext — and, just as notably, a shift in how the company describes what the tool is meant to do.
“During a LinkedIn Live event this morning, Ragunath Ramanathan, Thomson Reuters’ president of legal professionals, said the company has rebuilt the product from the ground up.”
Complete post here: https://www.lawnext.com/2026/06/thomson-reuters-opens-early-access-to-the-next-generation-of-cocounsel-legal-saying-beta-users-fing-loved-the-product.html
◾ The UK contract intelligence company, Luminance, has joined the still-small but growing ranks of well-funded AI-first legal tech companies that train their own large language models on a proprietary data set. As reported in a Legaltech News (LTN) post:
"U.K.-based legal AI company Luminance announced June 19 the release of Luna Crescent, a proprietary large language model (LLM) designed specifically for contract work. Crescent is intended to be the first release in a family of models under the Luna banner.
"Crescent is designed to offer higher quality performance than general-purpose LLMs, such as those from OpenAI and Anthropic, on tasks involved in contract work, including interpreting legal language, flagging risks and identifying non-standard language and missing provisions. Luminance has already incorporated Luna Crescent into its contract intelligence features, which are built to surface risks and help users understand the commercial impact of their agreements."
More from the LTN post:
"Luminance’s new model was trained on a subset of documents from the company’s proprietary legal database. The launch builds on the company’s longstanding research and development efforts, which have previously included the introduction of smaller proprietary models and fine-tuning of publicly available LLMs."
So, as with other legal tech companies training their own LLMs, what we're apparently talking about in Luminance's case is Luminance not "just" fine-tuning or distilling already pre-trained LLM models (difficult work in its own right, if done well), but instead we're talking about Luminance taking on the very expensive pre-training stage of LLM model development.
You can find the full LTN post at this link: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/06/22/luminance-launches-proprietary-llm-for-contract-work-/?kw=Luminance+Launches+Proprietary+LLM+for+Contract+Work&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=afternoonupdate&utm_content=20260622&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b
◾ I'm sort of in love with a legal tech application, Centari. Centari is a deal intelligence app, but the fact that the app brings intelligence to deals is not, by itself, what's caused this former deal lawyer to declare his love. What has me all aglow are (as reported in a post yesterday, June 23, 2026, at the Law Sites blog) the app's two newly-released features, called "Deal Maps" and "Amendment Awareness."
From the LawSites blog post:
"Centari, an AI platform for managing complex transactions, today launched two capabilities, Amendment Awareness and Deal Maps, that help attorneys understand how transactions change over time and how documents relate to one another.
"Both features further extend Centari’s platform beyond single-document review to reasoning across the multiple agreements, amendments, and ancillaries that make up a complex transaction."
Also from the post:
"The features are designed to answer a problem most legal AI tools have not solved, the company says. Large language models read documents as text at a fixed point in time, while transactional attorneys read a deal as a system — following defined terms, chasing cross-references, and tracking how one agreement modifies, satisfies, or supersedes another.
"Centari says its patent-pending platform, which it calls the Deal Reasoning Engine, was built to work the second way, and that the two new capabilities extend that engine across amendments and across whole closing sets."
Do read the entire LawSites post at the link below. And let's encourage other legal tech companies to bring the same kind of visualization-driven, time-flow focus that Centari has built to their apps.
https://www.lawnext.com/2026/06/deal-intelligence-platform-centari-adds-amendment-awareness-and-deal-maps-features-that-deepen-its-multi-document-analysis.html
◾ In a post from Legaltech News (LTN) we learn that Perplexity Ai has entered the AI-for-legal ranks with launch of “Computer for Counsel.”
An excerpt from the LTN post:
“Artificial intelligence platform Perplexity AI announced Wednesday the launch of Computer for Counsel, its set of generative and agentic AI legal capabilities and legal tech integrations, available to Perplexity Enterprise and Max users.
“Computer for Counsel—accessible through the large language model (LLM)-agnostic agentic AI system Perplexity Computer—looks to support legal professionals across practice areas like litigation, employment and intellectual property, among others. Through its own capabilities and its integrations with legal tech and third party software, Computer for Counsel can streamline various legal workflows including third-party nondisclosure agreement intake and review, dashboard creation for regulatory guidance and legal research.”
Get access to the full LTN post here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/06/24/perplexity-ai-launches-computer-for-counsel-powered-by-legal-tech-integrations/
◾ A post by Legal IT Insider (LITI) discusses UK law firm Shoosmith’s “self-developed generative AI contract review” tool called Project Apollo. As you’ll find from reading the post, Project Apollo is, among other things, aimed at associate training in a big way.
From LITI’s post:
“UK law firm Shoosmiths today (24 June) unveiled Project Apollo, its self-developed generative AI contract review tool, which is now being deployed across the firm following a year-long build and pilot programme with support from Microsoft. The tool, which runs in Microsoft’s Azure environment, is designed to explain its reasoning and surface Shoosmiths’ know-how and guidance notes.
“The firm hopes that the AI tool’s transparency will give junior lawyers the opportunity to accelerate their learning. There is a strong emphasis on upskiling by design, with curated explanations and guidance creating a real-time learning environment.”
Full post at this link: https://legaltechnology.com/shoosmiths-unveils-proprietary-ai-contract-review-tool-built-with-microsoft/
◾ As reported in a post by Bob Ambrogi at his LawSites blog, Abstract, the legal tech startup that uses AI to improve legislation/regulation monitoring, has introduced what the company calls Abstract Workers, "a service that builds AI agents to take over the repetitive tasks that follow a regulatory or legislative alert . . ."
From Bob's LawSites blog post:
"When I wrote about Abstract in April, I reported on how the New York-based startup was making a push into the market for legislative and regulatory monitoring, alerting law firms and corporate legal teams to the bills and rules that matter to a client, even when they never mention that client’s industry by name. Now the company is employing AI agents to expand into the next step of that work — the follow-up that an alert can trigger.
"Today [June 24, 2026], Abstract announced Abstract Workers, a service that builds AI agents to take over the repetitive tasks that follow a regulatory or legislative alert — reading and prioritizing, updating trackers, drafting emails and newsletters, preparing reports, and coordinating follow-up. Rather than hand customers another dashboard, Abstract says, the service hands back finished work inside the tools they already use."
Read the entire post that Bob Ambrogi authored at this link: https://www.lawnext.com/2026/06/abstract-extends-its-legislative-intelligence-into-agentic-workflow-automation-with-launch-of-abstract-workers.html
Purchasing/Using Legal Tech
◾ LTSF community member, Zoran Gajic, has put up a very help post on legal tech trends:
"Legal technology trends and mobile-first legal tools
"A mobile-first legal marketplace is a practical example of how cloud-based and modern mobile technologies can help legal professionals grow their practices and connect with clients around the globe.
"'Technology for attorneys must fit into actual legal workflows, not theoretical ones. The next generation of legal tech prioritizes remote work access without sacrificing functionality, security, or user experience.'
"A post from the Rev: https://www.rev.com/blog/legal-technology-trends"
Thanks for posting, Zoran.
◾ Legaltech News (LTN) has published a post today, June 23, 2026, about frontier (lab) model testing that the contract review software provider Percipient recently conducted.
From LTN's post:
"Many frontier generative artificial intelligence models perform well when completing simple legal tasks like document review, but most struggle when it comes to more niche tasks, according to the How Frontier AI Models Perform on Real Legal Work report released Monday by managed review provider Percipient.
"The report evaluated 16 models from Anthropic, DeepSeek, OpenAI, Google, Moonshot AI and xAI on four legal task types across litigation, transactional, employment and insurance practice areas and was roughly built based on OpenAI’s GDPval evaluation measuring AI performance on realistic tasks out of 100 points each.
"Model outputs were graded by experienced legal professionals."
Access LTN's full post here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/06/22/frontier-ai-models-struggle-with-complex-legal-tasks-benchmarking-study-finds-/?kw=Frontier+AI+Models+Struggle+With+Complex+Legal+Tasks%2C+Benchmarking+Study+Finds&utm_position=1&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20260623&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b
◾ From an article in the UK's The Global Legal Post about the Ministry of Justice-backed "AI Growth Labs:"
"Lawyers have welcomed UK government-backed “AI Growth Labs” to build and test AI technology for the legal sector, including tools to speed up conveyancing during property sales.
"The Ministry of Justice said the labs will enable innovative AI software to be tested securely and released to the market sooner. It will work with lawyers and liaise with regulators to make it easier to introduce new legal AI.
"As part of a wider effort to encourage the use of AI in UK business, the UK government also announced an “AI adoption plan” for professional and business services, led by Shaheen Sayed, chief commercial officer at consultancy Accenture."
Go to The Global Legal Post's full article here: https://www.globallegalpost.com/news/uk-government-launches-legal-ai-scheme-2067085075?utm_source=newsletter.thelegalwire.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=legal-ai-tool-or-infrastructure&_bhlid=2f536ffd6e1428b4d57a291729ac0b7d0e213b0c
H/T to The Legal Wire for calling my attention to this article.
◾ According to a post from Legaltech News (LTN), IP law firm Fish & Richardson has built FishStream AI, software (with Google's Gemini as its engine) that assists the firm's professionals in carrying out their tasks. From the LTN post:
"Intellectual property-focused law firm Fish & Richardson on Monday [June 22, 2026] announced the launch of FishStream AI, a proprietary generative artificial intelligence-powered tool for patent prosecution.
"FishStream AI is designed to help users throughout the patent prosecution process, providing application drafting support, suggesting requests for more information from inventors and analyzing patent office actions, among other functions."
$$Quote from Fish & Richardson principal Tracy Hitt (who designed FishStream AI):
“'I had the opportunity to evaluate a lot of those tools, and I just kept coming away with, "I want something a little different, I want something that reflects how we actually go about analyzing a case, the process that we go through’'' Hitt said."
"While Hitt said Fish & Richardson has previously adopted some other AI tools for patent workflows, FishStream AI is intended to provide a more intuitive and convenient experience for users than they may encounter with more general purpose tools."
Read the complete LTN post here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/06/23/fish--richardson-launches-proprietary-ai-powered-patent-tool-fishstream-ai-/?kw=Fish+%26+Richardson+Launches+Proprietary+AI-Powered+Patent+Tool+FishStream+AI&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=afternoonupdate&utm_content=20260623&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b
◾ Quite a shot in the arm for Perplexity AI's recent launch of its legal tooling with law firm Gunderson Dettmer's firmwide rollout, as reported in this post by Legaltech News (LTN).
From the LTN post:
"Silicon Valley-based Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian has high expectations for Perplexity AI's new Computer for Counsel.
"Gunderson Dettmer initially rolled out Perplexity AI firmwide in May 2025 and is now preparing to embrace the set of agentic artificial intelligence legal capabilities and legal tech integrations the AI platform launched Wednesday.
"Gunderson Dettmer chief innovation officer Joe Green told Law.com that he anticipates Computer for Counsel could help members of his firm dig deeper into transactional uses cases like research and performing document review for lengthier files."
Access LTN's complete post here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/06/25/gunderson-dettmer-to-deepen-perplexity-ai-use-following-computer-for-counsel-launch/?kw=Gunderson+Dettmer+to+Deepen+Perplexity+AI+Use+Following+Computer+for+Counsel+Launch&utm_position=1&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20260626&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b
◾ Legal IT Insider (LITI) has a post revealing a partnership among law firm Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer (HSF Kramer), "data and AI specialist Acora," and Microsoft, whereby HSF Kramer undertakes building its own "proprietary system of intelligence." The ranks of build-and-buy law firms continue to grow.
From LITI's post:
"In a major deal that has seen it build a proprietary system of intelligence leveraging its own data and client knowledge, Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer (HSF Kramer) has partnered with data and AI specialist Acora together with Microsoft, we can reveal.
"Together, Acora and HSF Kramer are embedding firm-contextual AI at the core of legal workflows. Central to this transformation is their Sovereign System of Intelligence, built on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Foundry and governed through Microsoft Purview. It digitises HSF Kramer’s legal expertise by combining data, governance, analytics and AI in a scalable environment, in which unstructured data in legal documents, spreadsheets and emails can be more easily interrogated and surfaced through an applied ontology."
Catch the entire LITI post at this link: https://legaltechnology.com/exclusive-hsf-kramer-develops-proprietary-ai-platform-with-acora-and-microsoft/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--HnjOs3yEyRRSkCXQVj9573YvvTU2l8GYxssSVilJzQDWQLps-8Zm2U6O4uGO76HJWlHOXlHY-YptQ_fNdVwWIAoOGedY8RgUM_CbEBI6FZjOLlfE&_hsmi=139314638&utm_content=139314638&utm_source=hs_email
Startup Management
◾ Noted US political mover-and-shaker, James Carville, famously said years ago that, when it comes to all the issues that matter in a presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid” that matters most of all. So, paraphrasing Mr. Carville, when it comes to evaluating legal Ai tools, it’s very often not the model that matters - instead, “It’s the harness, stupid.”
Here’s a post from Artificial Lawyer (AL) that pretty much makes the same point (only here the word “scaffold” is used instead of the word “harness”).
From the AL post:
“A study by consultancy Legal Nodes, which included MikeOSS, shows that no matter how good a general model appears to be, it’s the legal AI ‘scaffold’ that really makes a difference when it comes to performance.
“Legal AI expert Nestor Dubnevych told Artificial Lawyer that the study looked at Claude Opus 4.8 and then tested it on legal tasks using different set-ups (see below) and see AL interview (also below).”
Full AL post this link: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/06/22/the-legal-ai-scaffold-changes-everything-claude-study/
◾ After reading a recent Forbes article related to the Legal Tech Talk conference, titled, “Legal Tech Needs To Change Now,” Cheryl Wilson Griffin of Legaltech Hub has a lot to say in a LinkedIn post (all of it very much spot on) about just who does the legal tech purchasing at larger law firms and in-house legal departments:
From Cheryl's post:
"Just read Forbes’ coverage of the recent Legal Tech Talk conference titled, “Legal Tech Needs To Change Now,” suggesting that there were few decision-makers amongst the 6,000 attendees. That surprised me because the Legal Tech Hub team was there and meeting with decision-makers throughout the event.
"And then I read it: 'What was in short supply were actual decision makers—the law firm leaders and the corporate chief legal officers.'”
"The article argues that innovation leaders, legal operations professionals, knowledge managers, and similar roles are "rarely the ultimate buyers" because major technology investments are ultimately approved by executive leadership.
"Technically, that's true. Lawyers approve the budgets. Lawyers pay the bills. And, lawyers are probably the people who engage with and get value from a technology.
"But they are NOT the buyer at large organizations.
"That isn't how enterprise technology buying works—not in legal, and not in most large organizations."
Very good reading (especially for leaders of legal tech companies). Read the entire post that Cheryl authored at this link: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cwilsongriffin_startups-artificialintelligence-share-7477011420874874880-cK8h/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACjKkUBuYvfoBWwBGd7KKABZw3jrdiBcc0
◾ Legaltech News (LTN) has summarized Big Tech's entry to date into the legal tech space.
From LTN's post:
"In the not-too-distant past, the legal tech market was an isolated niche within the broader tech sector. Now, not only is it garnering the attention of major new investors, but it’s also seeing Big Tech players move in.
"Since the beginning of the year, Silicon Valley titans Microsoft, Anthropic and Perplexity AI have launched legal tech solutions, while OpenAI is positioning itself to become a legal tech developer, and Google is focusing on key partnerships and funding promising legal tech startups.
"Below,Law.com rounds up how Big Tech players are expanding into the market, rapidly growing their offerings and partnering with clients throughout the industry."
Read all of the LTN post here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2026/06/28/tracking-big-techs-move-into-the-legal-market-/?kw=Tracking+Big+Tech%27s+Move+Into+the+Legal+Market&utm_position=1&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20260629&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&user_id=5a62392218ff43ec508b502b
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