March 17, 2025 -- Issue #332
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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Exit/M&A
◾ “Canadian-founded SaaS legal practice management vendor Clio has acquired UK cloud case management provider ShareDo, in a move that enables it to cater for the needs of all segments of the legal market, from solo to large enterprise customers. The acquisition will also accelerate Clio and ShareDo’s global expansion.”
More from Legal IT Insider on this acquisition at this link: https://legaltechnology.com/2025/03/13/breaking-news-clio-acquires-sharedo-as-it-says-were-the-solution-for-firms-of-all-sizes-now/
Fundraising
◾ "On Tuesday [March 11, 2025], Norm Ai, a developer of regulatory artificial intelligence agents, announced that it had raised $48 million dollars in a funding round led by private equity firm Coatue, with participation from repeat investors Bain Capital, Citi Ventures, TIAA Ventures and New York Life Ventures. The new round also includes Salesforce founder Marc Benioff."
"Norm Ai builds AI agents on its proprietary Legal Engineering Automation Platform, which allows the company's lawyer engineers to construct the agents without coding. The agents are designed to perform first pass legal and compliance reviews for legal obligations, regulatory requirements and internal company policies."
Much more from Legaltech News here:
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/03/11/regulatory-ai-company-norm-ai-announces-48-million-funding-round/?kw=Regulatory%20AI%20Company%20Norm%20Ai%20Announces%2048M%20Funding%20Round&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=newsroomupdate&utm_content=20250311&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&slreturn=20250311163657
◾ From the Axios “Pro Rata” newsletter: “Trust & Will, a San Diego-based digital estate planning platform, raised over $25m in Series C funding. Moderne Ventures led, and was joined by Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, UBS Next, and Erie Strategic Ventures. From the Axios “Pro Rata” newsletter:
“Trust & Will, a San Diego-based digital estate planning platform, raised over $25m in Series C funding. Moderne Ventures led, and was joined by Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, UBS Next, and Erie Strategic Ventures. trustandwill.com https://www.trustandwill.com”
◾ Axios’ “Pro Rata” reports: "Lexroom.ai, an Italian legal research startup, raised €2m in seed funding led by Entourage." axios.link/43FcWmn
◾ From the StrictlyVC newsletter: “Enter, a two-year-old Sao Paulo startup that leverages AI to assist large Latin American enterprises in automating high-volume, labor-intensive legal processes such as generating personalized lawsuit responses, raised a $5.5 million round led by Sequoia Capital.” https://www.finsmes.com/2025/03/enter-raises-5-5m-in-funding.html
JusticeTech/A2J
◾ "Today’s guests [on the LawNext podcat[ are the film’s director, documentary filmmaker Laura Hand, who previously directed The Tent Mender, about homelessness on Skid Row in Los Angeles, and Maya Markovich, a legal innovation leader – and two-time previous guest on this show (here and here – who is serving as a producer and advisor to the documentary. You may know Markovich as executive director of the Justice Technology Association and for her recent appointment as vice president of the American Arbitration Association’s thought leadership and research arm.
"The documentary, called Justice: Just A Promise?, has been given unprecedented access to film inside the courthouses of the Los Angeles County court system – the largest court system in the world and one where litigants unable to get a lawyer present enormous challenges to the civil justice system."
More reporting from Bob Ambrogi about this documentary and access to the podcast can be found here: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/03/how-a-new-documentary-aims-to-raise-public-awareness-of-the-access-to-justice-crisis-and-the-crowdfunding-campaign-to-support-it.html
LegalEd
◾ This article from the UK's Hyperscale Group is a fine example of worthwhile futurism (a form of prediction-making that distinguishes itself from "flaky futurism" of the sensationalistic, hand-waving variety of prediction). The article offers many predictions about the legal services industry (as that industry becomes ever more digitized and impacted by GenAI), where those predictions are comprehensive in scope, well illustrated by plausible examples, and well grounded by current facts. Do give it a careful reading. https://www.hyperscalegroup.com/articles/2025/2/27/the-lawyer-of-the-future
◾ From communitymember (and stalwart poster), Joel Bijlmer: “If you want to understand a system, you have to understand the people who operate it.” — W. Edwards Deming
"Imagine this: a highly skilled lawyer is on his way to court, late again for an important hearing. But instead of driving a car he’s riding an expensive, firm-issued bike. Despite pedaling fast, he can’t seem to keep his balance for very long. No matter how hard he pedals he can’t seem to go any faster.
"The problem? It’s not the bike. The problem is that no one taught him how to ride it.
"Read the full article: https://thelegalwire.ai/the-tool-trap-why-ais-success-in-law-depends-on-people-not-tech/ "
Product Development
◾ “The e-discovery company Merlin Search Technologies has launched Alchemy, a “document intelligence platform,” driven by generative artificial intelligence, that is designed to transform unstructured data into actionable intelligence for legal teams.”
https://www.lawnext.com/2025/03/merlin-launches-alchemy-its-4th-generation-document-intelligence-platform-for-discovery-and-litigation.html
◾ Reporting from Artificial Lawyer:
"Pioneering legal search startup, DeepJudge, has launched a suite of tools for AI agents, which will enable firms to ‘build AI-powered workflows tailored to their needs without requiring them to restructure or upload their data’. (See AL Interview with CEO Paulina Grnarova, [at the link] below, which explains in more detail what this is all about)."https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/03/11/deepjudge-launches-ai-agents-suite-paulina-grnarova-interview/
◾ From the Lighthouse press release:
"Lighthouse Launches 'AI for Review' Suite for Complex eDiscovery Matters
"SEATTLE-March 14, 2025–Lighthouse, a leader in technology-enabled eDiscovery, compliance, and information governance services, today announced Lighthouse AI for Review, a suite of review offerings targeting high-impact use cases commonly seen in large-volume, complex, time-sensitive matters. Lighthouse AI for Review is powered by a proprietary combination of AI and linguistic modeling—predictive AI for classification, generative AI to improve quality and accelerate downstream review, and linguistics to improve accuracy above what the AI is capable of alone."
The full press release can be found this link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/81399812?utm_source=manual
◾ Here's Legaltech News' March 14, 2025 legal tech rundown to kick off the work week for you:
"The fast-paced legal tech world is constantly evolving. At Legaltech News, we always try to bring you the latest news on hirings, product and feature releases, new integrations, legal tech mergers and acquisitions, and more. The Legaltech Rundown is a weekly update of legal tech happenings that might have gone under the radar."
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/03/14/legaltech-rundown-seyfarth-partners-with-codex-pierferd-hires-christina-wojcik-and-more-/?kw=Legaltech%20Rundown%3A%20Seyfarth%20Partners%20With%20CodeX,%20PierFerd%20Hires%20Christina%20Wojcik,%20and%20More&utm_position=2&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20250317&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&slreturn=2025031780210
◾ News from legal tech startup Harvey on the development of agentic workflows, as reported by Artificial Lawyer (AL):
"Harvey has announced that ‘next-generation agents’ will now be available on its platform, which it defines as ‘systems that can plan, adapt, and meaningfully interact with humans to complete a task’. They will stretch across transactional, litigation, and financial services needs.
"They’re also developing ways to evaluate the agents’ performance against human lawyers across a range of tasks (see below). They added that this is all very much being led by the growth of LLM-based reasoning models.
Full article from AL's Richard Tromans here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/03/17/harvey-to-roll-out-agentic-workflows
Purchasing/Using Legal Tech
◾ We were delighted to post recently about the Legaltech Hub’s (LTH) publication of its market map for legal tech GenAI (see that post at this link: \https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/81024226).
Now LTH follows the release of the market map with some analysis that describes, among other things, just how large GenAI’s impact has been on the legal tech vertical by. All this activity in just a few years! It’s going to be, well, fun to watch how this segment of legal tech evolves.
https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/a-look-inside-the-february-2025-lth-genai-legal-tech-map/
◾ From Legaltech News: “On Tuesday, LawtechUK released its 2025 Ecosystem Tracker Report, covering investment activity in the British legal tech industry in 2024. LawtechUK is an initiative of the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice and jointly administered by Legal Geek and CodeBase, with the aim of fostering innovation and development in the British legal sector.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/03/10/uk-legal-tech-investments-mas-rose-in-2024/
◾ From the LawSites blog:
"AffiniPay, the parent company of a group of technology products for managing law practices and accepting online payments, including LawPay and MyCase, today released its 2025 Legal Industry Report, based on a survey of over 2,800 legal professionals, primarily in solo and small firms, and it reveals a profession at a critical technological crossroads, with generative AI, financial technology, and flexible work arrangements reshaping law firm operations and client services.
"The report, written by Nicole Black, principal legal insight strategist at AffiniPay, provides insights on how legal professionals are adapting to rapid changes in how they work, where they work, how they get paid, and how they manage their businesses."
Access to the full AffiniPay report, as well as further reporting from Bob Ambrogi, can be found at the link: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/03/affinipays-2025-legal-industry-report-portrays-a-profession-at-a-technological-crossroads.html
◾ As readers are likely aware, Vals recently released a report that benchmarked Gen AI contract-review tools from legal tech vendors. That report showed, among other things, that three of the vendors’ tools missed extracting most-favored-nations provisions from the contracts under review. A significant miss!!
From Artificial Lawyer:
“An analysis of the VALs genAI benchmarking study by Noah Waisberg, CEO, Zuva.
“Artificial intelligence tools for contract review have made real progress in recent years. Yet, recent findings from the Vals Legal AI Report vendor evaluation re-raise a critical question: how reliably accurate is Generative AI at contract data extraction?”
https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/03/12/missed-mfn-gate-and-ai-contract-review/
◾ Legaltech News reports:
“Of the 200 attorneys, 117 respondents work in private practice, while the remaining 93 work in-house, with roughly equal numbers from each market. Respondents were recruited from YouGov’s research panel and Definely’s client base.”
“Despite frequent predictions that the advent of artificial intelligence may change the relationship between in-house attorneys and outside counsel, the survey indicated that there is little evidence of a sea change as of yet.”
Referring to elderly faculty members, someone said the impact of revolutionary theory on hiring decisions at
university science departments depends on “retirements and funerals.” Bear that in mind when reading the $$Quote (below) from the linked article.
“‘As the younger cohort now start to become partners … the perception of how technology should be used is completely different,’ [Definely’s co-founder and CSO, Feargus McDaeid] said. ‘I think they have an expectation that technology should be there, could bring them efficiency.’”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/03/12/ai-is-yet-to-change-many-client-firm-relationships-in-the-us-uk/
Rule of Law
◾ Here’s Ryan McClead on a matter that, as Ryan points out in his piece on 3 Geeks, deserves much more attention on social media (and elsewhere); namely, the Trump Administration’s attack on two prominent US law firms. Greg’s use of the work “outrage” is spot on.
Expressing outrage here is no “clutching at my pearls” behavior. Bringing the powers of the executive branch of the US government to bear to punish lawyers for representing parties that took positions contrary to the positions and interests of Trump is an outrageous threat to the rule of law. It is too an abuse of presidential power.
Please, members of the legal tech community, raise your voice and spill some virtual ink against this outrage. https://www.geeklawblog.com/2025/03/whereistheoutrage.html
Sales
◾ As a legal tech startup leader, are you interested in sales and marketing? News flash: Of course you are! So, read this article from Alex Su (formerly of Evisort and Ironclad, and now Chief Revenue Officer at Latitude Legal, where he’s still “selling stuff to lawyers”).
https://open.substack.com/pub/itsofftherecord/p/understanding-demand?r=1cv2&utm_medium=io
Startup Management
◾ Episode 67 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast- Democratizing Fundraising: How SeedLegals is revolutionizing startup fundraising.
What if raising capital for your startup could be 10x cheaper and dramatically faster? Anthony Rose, founder and CEO of SeedLegals (https://seedlegals.com), reveals how the SeedLegals platform has revolutionized fundraising for UK startups and why he's now bringing this game-changing solution to the US market. Show notes and access to this episode of the podcast at the link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/81101117?utm_source=manual
◾ “Calling all #legaltech #GenAI vendors: Due to demand since we launched the LTH GenAI Legal Tech Map, we are pulling together a V2 that will launch on Day 1 of Legalweek.
“If you are a vendor / provider with a legal tech product leveraging generative AI, and you do NOT appear in our map or in our directory, and have not already been in touch with the team, please get in touch with us, either by creating a log-in for our vendor portal and submitting your info (https://lnkd.in/ejfKKGHq) (preferred), or by emailing curation@legaltechnologyhub.com.
“Cut off date is COB next Tuesday March 18.”
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