June 9, 2025 -- Issue #344

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

◾ From Artificial Lawyer:

"On 25 June, Mishcon de Reya will convene a diverse group of in-house lawyers and technology specialists at the AB2L London Summit to discuss key issues faced by large in-house legal departments operating around the world.

"[At the link below], Marcelo Moura, an Associate at the firm and who is organising the event, explains what it’s all about." There's also access to registration for the event at the link. https://bit.ly/4kHVh2Y​

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Exit/M&A

◾ “On Wednesday, professional and legal services provider Harbor announced that private investment firm BayPine LP provided a majority investment in the company. Financial details and transaction terms were not disclosed.”
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Legaltech News’ full article here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/06/04/harbor-announces-majority-investment-from-private-equity-firm-baypine-eyeing-service-market-expansions/​

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◾ When we label an article as "Exit/M&A," we're usually talking about a legal tech company either acquiring, or being acquired by, another company. But here we're talking about Michael Ulin's departure from Paxton. As reported by Artificial Lawyer (see link below for full article; well worth reading):

"Michael Ulin, who co-founded genAI company Paxton, an all-in-one legal AI assistant, and was also its CTO, has left the legal tech business to create a new stealth startup focused on agents. The move comes several months after Paxton secured $22m in funding earlier this year.

"Artificial Lawyer asked Ulin – who helped create the company back in 2023 – about the move. He said: ‘Paxton’s moving into a scale-up phase with its own rewards and challenges, but I’ve realized I’m happiest in the 0-to-1 trenches. I’ll share more soon, but the next venture is all about AI agents that quietly handle the admin grind for knowledge workers so they can stay in the flow.’

"AL also asked him about leaving not long after the company received so much cash. He replied: ‘No change regarding that – still full steam ahead there.’ (I.e. Paxton carries on.)"

Along with Artificial Lawyer, we wish Michael the very best of great good luck in his new endeavor. https://bit.ly/4lgZbQD​

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Fundraising

◾ Reporting from the LawSites blog of Midpage’s announcement of (i) its $4 million seed raise and (ii) its release of its “Proposition Search” product. As to that product release, the linked LawSites article states:
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“. . . [Midpage] founder and CEO Otto Zastrow explicitly positions [Proposition Search] as the heir apparent to Casetext’s Parallel Search — only better, he says, in that it solves what he saw as a weakness of the Casetext product.
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When it comes to that weakness, with LawSites describing how Zastrow’s sees it:
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Casetext suffered from a certain “imprecision,” such that, more specifically, Casetext would:
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“In the best-case scenario, . . . return a list of relevant cases, but you were still left to sift through them to find the best case to cite for a proposition. In the worst-case scenario, the search would focus on the wrong aspects of your query and force to iterate on your query several times over.”
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The entire article is worth a read here: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/06/legal-research-startup-midpage-raises-4m-launches-proposition-search-feature-channeling-the-spirit-of-casetext.html​

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◾ Joel Bijlmer posts: "Wordsmith AI Raises $25M Series A from Index Ventures to Deploy Fleets of Legal AI Agents and Power the Rise of Legal Engineers
​https://thelegalwire.ai/wordsmith-ai-raises-25m-series-a-from-index-ventures-to-deploy-fleets-of-legal-ai-agents-and-power-the-rise-of-legal-engineers/"

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◾ Another take on Wordsmith's fund raise, this one from Legaltech News: Per Legaltech News:
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“On Monday, Scotland-based legal tech startup Wordsmith AI announced that it raised $25 million in Series A funding led by venture capital company Index Ventures.
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“Wordsmith AI offers gen AI-powered assistants for in-house legal teams that perform legal response drafting and contract editing and analysis, among other tasks.”
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In addition to using the funds from the raise to “. . . bolster its engineering efforts and improve the user experience of its tools . . ., “Wordsmith AI is also hoping to use the investment to grow its online AI training course for lawyers, Wordsmith Academy, which launched last month.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/06/02/legal-tech-startup-wordsmith-ai-announces-25m-series-a-funding-round/​

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◾ Here’s a link to a LinkedIn post from The Legal Tech Fund on the subject of “. . . what dependable stardom stalked pitches.” Don’t miss this brief, but powerful, post.
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One of several $$Quotes: “Workflow-first AI: Everyone’s using AI. What’s rare? Seamless UX and real adoption. AI isn’t the differentiator, user experience is 📊”
​https://www.linkedin.com/posts/the-legaltech-fund_thelegaltechfund-activity-7335613508862029825-9YPS?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAACjKkUBuYvfoBWwBGd7KKABZw3jrdiBcc0​

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◾ “UK employment rights legaltech platform Valla has secured £2 million in seed funding to democratise access to justice for millions across the UK.
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“Founded by CEO Danae Shell, Valla tackles a staggering national challenge: the 12.4 million workers who are affected by non-compliance with employment laws annually, according to the Resolution Foundation, yet find themselves priced out of traditional legal support.”
​https://tech.eu/2025/06/02/uk-startup-valla-raises-ps2m-to-simplify-employment-law-for-millions/​

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◾ From the StrictlyVC newsletter:
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“GC AI, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that develops AI agents to help legal teams automate contract review and negotiation, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Sound Ventures, with Fellows Fund, Guillermo Rauch, Gokul Rajaram, and TipTop VC also investing.”
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More here: https://www.finsmes.com/2025/06/gc-ai-closes-series-a-funding.html​

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◾ “Legal tech startups raised in excess of $145m in May, led by the Series Bs of Swedish GenAI startup Legora – which raised $80m – and the $60m raise by Seattle-founded GenAI personal injury and mass tort plaƞorm Supio.”
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Insightful article from Legal IT Insider about the legal tech fundraising lay of the land: https://legaltechnology.com/2025/06/05/fundraises-in-may-top-160m-what-it-means/​

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◾ Legaltech News reporting:
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“Agentic AI Startup Flank Raises $10M, Partners with Simmons & Simmons
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“The startup, which is focused on supporting in-house teams by automating tasks such as document drafting with AI agents, is collaborating with Simmons & Simmons on gen AI-powered NDA automation.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/06/05/agentic-ai-startup-flank-agentic-ai-startup-flank-raises-10m-partners-with-simmons--simmons/​

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◾ Legaltech News’ weekly legal tech rundown:
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“Legaltech rundown: LegalZoom partners with Perplexity AI, Midpage announces $4M in seed funding, and more.
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“An update on the legal tech market’s past week, from product launches to new partnerships.”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/06/06/legaltech-rundown-legalzoom-partners-with-perplexity-ai-midpage-announces-4m-in-seed-funding-and-more/​

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◾ From Artificial Lawyer today, June 9, 2025:
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“Definely, the AI-driven contract-focused company, has raised $30m in Series B funding. Revaia led the round, which also included legal tech giant Clio, among others. This takes its total funding to around $40m since Nnamdi Emelifeonwu and Feargus MacDaeid started the UK company in 2020, (see AL In-depth Interview below with the founders.)”
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More on the raise and an interview with Definely’s founders at this link: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/06/09/definely-raises-30m-in-depth-interview/​

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Investing

◾ From LawtechUK:
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“On Tuesday 14 October we'll be bringing together speakers, investors and founders to highlight the opportunities to invest in UK legal tech.”
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You can register here: https://lawtechuk.io/events/lawtechuk-investment-event-in-london-14-october-2025/​

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JusticeTech/A2J

◾ “In a move that could potentially reshape how people look at the delivery of consumer and SMB legal services, genAI-driven research platform Perplexity is to provide its Pro subscribers with LegalZoom’s legal help directly within the application.
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“For Artificial Lawyer this is something of a watershed moment, as it’s not just a Google search that might drag up some random bits of legal info, or a ChatGPT prompt to surface something the LLM has perused – it’s an active and deep connection between Perplexity and a bona fide legal information supplier – in this case LegalZoom.”
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Do give the entire article from Artificial Lawyer a full read; it’s available here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/06/04/perplexity-to-provide-legal-help-directly-from-legalzoom/​

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Partnerships/Business Development​
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◾ Read about Harvey’s partnership with iManage.
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“The integration will enable Harvey users to seamlessly access documents from within iManage and return Harvey-generated work product back to the iManage platform. This reduces content duplication and manual uploading and downloading, maintains content security protecting an organization from accidental data leakage, and enables legal professionals to focus on higher-impact work.”
​https://www.harvey.ai/blog/harvey-imanage-integration​

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Product Development

◾ TR joins the genetic AI rollout wave, but does so with a more “gradual” core product-by-core product approach - as reported in the linked article by Legaltech Hub:
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“On Monday, global technology and publishing company Thomson Reuters (TR) announced its official foray into agentic AI.
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“Unlike other tech providers who have come forward with a new, agent-specific offering, TR is taking the approach of gradually incorporating agentic AI across its existing product ecosystem. ‘Rather than build standalone agentic tools, Thomson Reuters is re-architecting core product experiences,” the press release said.’”
​https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/thomson-reuters-starts-rolling-out-agentic-ai-across-cocounsel-products/​

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“On Monday, U.K.-based contract lifecycle management (CLM) company ContractPodAi announced the release of Leah Tariff Agent, a tool designed to help users address evolving tariff regimes and trade regulations.”
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According to ContractPodAI’s CPO, Atena Reyhani:
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“‘We train on top of the LLMs to make them specific to the use case that they're applied to. And then we have agents that use one or many depending on the use case and the performance of those LLMs in that particular use case,” Reyhani said. “In many of our scenarios or features, there are multiple LLMs that are engaged at the same time to do different pieces.’”
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/06/03/clm-provider-contractpodai-launches-agentic-tariff-risk-analysis-tool/​

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Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

◾ More from Joel Bijlmer on Wordsmith (see post above from Joel under the "Fundraising" section of this newsletter): "Growing companies are often slowed down by legal bottlenecks. Traditional legal tech often tries to solve this by adding complex tools that pull lawyers away from their existing workflows and require business teams to adapt.

Wordsmith AI takes a fundamentally different approach.
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It’s the Legal AI platform powered by an intelligent AI agent, designed to give your entire business instant access to legal expertise, right within the tools your teams already use every day. Instead of just making individual lawyers faster, Wordsmith’s AI agent empowers sales, procurement, HR, finance, and every other team to get immediate legal guidance, enabling your business to move at speed.
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Read the full article here: https://thelegalwire.ai/wordsmith-ai-instant-legal-support-for-your-whole-business/​

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◾ The august Financial Times weighs in on the impact that law firm AI use will (may?) have on law firm pricing and billing practices.
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“Big law firms’ adoption of generative artificial intelligence is well under way across the globe, but their corporate clients say they are yet to see cost savings. In fact, the price for outside legal services continues to rise.” https://www.ft.com/content/cba88ff9-41ea-4137-a16e-8e46ec652d30​

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◾ A short primer on agentic GenAI from Legaltech News. I especially appreciated the distinction between building agentic AI with a framework versus plugging into an LLM more directly when building. https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/06/03/agentic-ai-101-decoding-the-latest-ai-buzzword-for-legal-professionals/​

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◾ From Legal IT Insider:
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“Global law firm Taylor Wessing has signed with GenAI startup Legora following a successful pilot involving more than 80 lawyers across multiple Taylor Wessing offices. Legora will be rolled out firmwide. The platform will be supported with training tailored to each practice area to ensure Taylor Wessing’s staff get the most out of the new technology.”
​https://legaltechnology.com/2025/06/05/taylor-wessing-signs-up-with-legora-following-successful-pilot/​

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◾ Legaltech Hub offers one of its “Product Briefings” - this one about Litera’s “Foundation Insights” deal analytics product:
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“Litera Foundation Insights turns your firm’s deal data into actionable intelligence, transforming collective experience into strategic value. Tailored for lawyers, this GenAI-powered solution extracts key terms, clauses, and data points from deal documents—structuring data into a searchable, centralized knowledge base.”
​https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/lth-product-briefing-foundation-insights-by-litera/​

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Startup Management

◾ From the “Review” published by First Round Capital:
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“A veteran strategy and ops leader turned fractional COO walks us through why, when and how early-stage founders can tap fractional execs to learn and grow faster.”
​https://review.firstround.com/fractional-exec-hiring-guide/​

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◾ The “Summit Sessions” enable legal tech companies to present their “wares” at the TLTF Summit (this year scheduled to take place November 12 - 14 in Austin, Texas). As a two-time TLTF Summit attendee, and as someone who’s attending this year’s gathering, I cannot over emphasize how rewarding the Summits are and how, in speaking to some of the presenters at the last two Summits, how valuable they found their presentations to be.
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This year’s Summit; well, let me just quote the Sessions’ planners’ own words here: “For the first time, The Summit Sessions provide an opportunity for the leaders of companies of all sizes to get on stage at the TLTF Summit.”
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At the forthcoming Sessions, there will be a “Startup Showcase” presentation category (<$5 million revenue), a Scale Up Stage presentation category ($5 million to $25 million revenue), and a “Growth Track” presentation category (<$25 million revenue).
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Apply here to present (July 31 is the application deadline): https://www.tltfsummit.com/the-summit-sessions​

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◾ VC Tom Tunguz writes:
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“Who could have predicted that crypto and data center real estate would be the categories swinging the IPO market doors open?”
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“This [IPO] resurgence dovetails with a significant M&A surge this year, pointing to robust liquidity in the back half of 2025.”
​https://tomtunguz.com/ipo-window-opening-2025/​
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Teaching/Learning Legal Tech

◾ “On Tuesday, digital legal training platform Hotshot announced that it will be partnering with Suffolk University Law School, adding curated AI training modules to the law school’s 1L curriculum in the fall.”
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Read the entire Legaltech News article here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/06/03/suffolk-law-school-hotshot-partner-on-mandatory-ai-course-for-1l-students/​
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