March 3, 2025 -- Issue #330

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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 the NY Legal Tech Meetup:

"Join us on Thursday, March 6th, for our first community happy hour of 2025!

"We’ll have the entire upstairs bar at Jack Doyle’s, so come join us for some fun, networking, food, and drinks with a great crowd of your fellow legal techies!

"What: NY Legal Tech Meetup Community Happy Hour
When: 6:00 p.m., March 6th, 2025
Where: Jack Doyle’s (240 W 35th St, New York, NY 10001)"

Among the greatest legal tech networking shows on earth!

I hope to see very many members of the LTSF community (who live in or happen to be visiting NYC on March 6)

RVSP here: https://nylegaltech.com/2025/02/25/q12025happyhour/​

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◾ LawSites reports:

"AffiniPay, the parent company of LawPay, MyCase, and other platforms, today announced that it will hold its first-ever conference in the fall for legal and accounting professionals.

"Called Kaleidoscope, the two-day event will take place Sept. 2-4, 2025, in Austin, Texas."

Read on at the link for more reporting that covers some items on the conference's agenda and that contains a registration link: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/02/affinipay-parent-to-lawpay-mycase-and-others-announces-inaugural-conference-for-legal-and-accounting-professionals.html​

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Exit/M&A

◾ “US growth advisory firm Baretz+Brunelle has acquired LexFusion, with LexFusion’s three founding partners Joe Borstein, Casey Flaherty, and Paul Stroka joining B+B as partners. The deal represents a significant milestone in B+B’s own growth trajectory, marking its first acquisition under B+B CEO Mike McNamara, the former CEO of Dentons US, who joined last year.
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“LexFusion was founded in 2020 as a go-to-market collective or ecosystem of companies, curated by its founders, to help organisations transform their operations.”
​https://legaltechnology.com/2025/02/25/breaking-news-baretzbrunelle-acquires-lexfusion/​

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◾ From Artificial Lawyer:
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“StructureFlow, the pioneering visual modelling system, has acquired Blue J Diagramming, a visualisation tool used by accountancy and tax experts. The software-only deal will see StructureFlow add this new capability to what it offers already, while the wider Blue J company will continue as usual after the divestment. (For more on the deal see CEO Tim Follett interview [available at the link below].)”
​https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/02/18/structureflow-buys-blue-j-diagramming-tim-follett-interview/​

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Fundraising

◾ "Patlytics, an AI-powered patent workflow platform founded just last year, said today that it has closed a $14 million Series A round, on top of a $4.5 million seed round last April, bringing its total funding to $21 million, all within a nine-month span.

"This latest round was led by global venture firm Next47, with participation from existing investors including Google’s AI-focused venture fund Gradient, 8VC, Alumni Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Myriad Venture Partners."

More from the LawSites blog here: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/02/ai-powered-patent-platform-patlytics-raises-14m-series-a-round.html​

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◾ “WilsonAI, a new legal tech startup co-founded by former Clifford Chance private equity lawyer Gus Neate, has raised $1.7m in pre-seed funding to help inhouse teams streamline workflows and handle repetitive needs.
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“The company, which is co-founded with Alex Wang, who was previously at quant trading house D.E. Shaw, ‘eliminates legal bottlenecks by handling routine contract reviews, responding to frequently asked legal questions, and integrating seamlessly with internal legal knowledge bases’.”
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“‘. . . the idea is WilsonAI is an ‘AI paralegal that takes the first stab at things’.”
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More from Artificial Lawyer here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/02/24/wilsonai-raises-1-7m-pre-seed-for-inhouse-ai-paralegal/​

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◾ From Jurimesh's press release today, February 27, 2025:

"Legal due diligence has long been slow, expensive, and prone to human error.

"Belgian legaltech company Jurimesh is changing that.Jurimesh is today announcing the closing of a €1.6 million pre-seed funding round, led by international investment network Syndicate One and joined by several business angels. The funds will be used to further fine-tune its AI-driven due diligence platform and expand geographically."

The entire press release can be accessed at this link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/80581611?utm_source=manual​

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Hiring/New Hires​
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◾ Here’s a link to Legaltech News’ legal tech rundown. Hiring news, partnership news, product development news and more.
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/02/28/legaltech-rundown-lexisnexis-expands-partnership-with-openai-ballard-spahr-unveils-gen-ai-tools-and-more-/​
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LegalEd

◾ From community member, Joel Bijlmer:

"I still remember the first time I asked ChatGPT to do something I would normally hire a person for. I only had to “ask” it to write short product descriptions for my online web shop. I was skeptical, how could a few lines of algorithm-generated text replace human creativity? But I was also surprised. The results weren’t just passable; they were actually good. “Faster and cheaper than a human,” I thought, and I found myself wondering, “Is this the beginning of a bigger trend?”
​https://thelegalwire.ai/are-we-ready-to-prefer-ai-over-ourselves/ "

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Product Development

◾ Exclusive reporting from Bob Ambrogi at his LawSites blog:

"When legal intelligence company vLex released a major upgrade to its Vincent AI last September, I wrote that it might just be the most capable generative AI assistant in the legal market. Now, vLex is releasing another major upgrade to Vincent AI that pushes it further beyond traditional legal research and document analysis, with distinct capabilities and coverage not available in other AI assistants.

"The Vincent AI upgrade released today – which vLex is calling its Winter ’25 release – introduces multimodal AI capabilities for audio and video analysis, expands its jurisdictional coverage to 17 countries, and adds several new litigation-focused workflows powered by its Docket Alarm database of litigation data."

Read the full analysis here: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/02/exclusive-with-its-latest-release-out-today-vlexs-vincent-ai-adds-multi-modal-capabilities-litigation-workflows-and-coverage-for-four-new-countries.html​

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◾ From the LawSites blog:

"Earlier this month, a legal tech startup called Fortuna Arbitration launched what it says is the first true AI judge – an automated arbitration system called Arbitrus.ai that the company claims can fully replace human arbitrators in resolving legal disputes. The system promises to cut the cost of arbitration from an average of $100,000 to just $10,000, while delivering consistent, unbiased decisions within 72 hours.'"

"On this week’s LawNext, our guests are two of the founders behind this ambitious project. Brian Potts is a partner at Husch Blackwell and an experienced commercial litigator. . . . And Kimo Gandall is the CEO of Fortuna Arbitration and a current third-year Harvard Law student who, along with third co-founder Kenny McLaren, has been working on AI legal prediction systems since well before he went to law school."

Read the rest of Bob Ambrogi's article and get access to the podcast episode here: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/02/on-lawnext-is-arbitrus-ai-the-first-true-ai-judge-the-future-of-dispute-resolution.html​

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◾ “Intapp, a global company that provides cloud-based software tailored to legal, accounting and financial services firms, has unveiled DealCloud Activator, an AI-enabled growth platform designed to help professional services firms adopt and sustain successful business development practices.”
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Getting new clients for a law firm is difficult. Any tech tool that can systemize the workflow and at the same time mesh with the way that lawyers think and operate his welcome.
​https://www.lawnext.com/2025/02/intapp-launches-ai-powered-dealcloud-activator-to-enhance-business-development-for-professional-services-firms-announces-other-product-updates.html​

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Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

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◾ Introducing the first in a series of podcast episodes from Legal Tech StartUp Focus that feature legal tech power users.

Discover the transformative power of legal technology with Karl Seelbach, the visionary litigator who co-founded the Austin, Texas-based Doyle Seelbach law firm (https://www.doyleseelbach.com) and Skribe (https://skribe.ai), a legal tech startup committed to revolutionizing depositions and enhancing litigation practice efficiency. Listen as Karl shares his journey from the courtroom to the forefront of legal tech innovation. Learn how Karl's passion for personal injury defense and drive to modernize legal processes sparked the creation of Skribe;

Show notes and access to the podcast episode at this link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/80336583?utm_source=manual​

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◾ LTSF'er, Yuri Kozlov, posts about an event that took place on February 27, 2025: "🚀 Live Demo: Witness AI Resolving Legal Disputes in Real Time! ⚖️🤖

"Join us on February 27, 2025, for an exclusive live demonstration of JudgeAI, the world's first fully automated dispute resolution system.

"🔍 What to Expect:
✅ Live Case Resolution – Watch JudgeAI process a real dispute from start to finish in minutes.
✅ AI-Driven Legal Reasoning – See how the system analyzes evidence and renders decisions without human intervention.
✅ Behind the Scenes – Get insights into the legal algorithms and AI models powering JudgeAI.
✅ Q&A Session – Engage with us, ask questions, and explore the future of AI in law.

"📅 Date: February 27, 2025
⏰ Time: 1:00 PM (EST)
📍 Location: Linkedin Live

"This is not just a demo—it’s a glimpse into the future of justice. Don't miss out!

"🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/events/livedemoofjudgeai-howartificial7297988923719344129/theater/ "

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◾ “UK Top 20 law firm Mishcon de Reya has chosen Silicon Valley-founded AI invoice-to-cash platform Oddr to help transform its billing and collections operations, we can reveal. This is the first UK customer that Oddr has announced.”
​https://legaltechnology.com/2025/02/24/mishcon-de-reya-selects-ai-invoice-to-cash-platform-oddr-in-first-uk-win/​

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◾ Below is a link to Part 2 of Legaltech News’ wide-ranging interview with Wilson Sonsini‘s CIO (and, I’m delighted to say, recently-joined member of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus community), Annie Datesh. The interview covers such topics as the law firm’s legal process tool, Neuron,
the firm’s employment law software affiliate, SixFifty, benchmarking AI and the advantages of having a tech-forward client roster such as the one that Wilson Sonsini has.
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A very good read.
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/02/25/wilson-sonsinis-cio-talks-ai-benchmarking-avoiding-the-innovators-dilemma-trap/​

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◾ From Louisiana Court of Appeals Judge Scott Schlegel:
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“I'm pleased to share "Navigating AI in the Judiciary: New Guidelines for Judges and Their Chambers," recently published by The Sedona Conference. Working alongside my esteemed colleagues—Hon. Herbert B. Dixon Jr., Hon. Allison H. Goddard, Prof. Maura R. Grossman, Hon. Xavier Rodriguez, and Hon. Samuel A. Thumma—we developed a framework to help judicial officers responsibly incorporate AI into court processes.”
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Read the full Substack at the link below and also get access not only to the Sedona report, but also to a link to register for a discussion among Judge Schlegel and some of his colleagues of matters related to “AI-in-the-Judiciary” on March 18 at 1 p.m. EDT
​https://open.substack.com/pub/judgeschlegel/p/navigating-ai-in-the-judiciary-new?r=1cv2&utm_medium=ios​

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◾ From Legal IT Insider:
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“A first-of-its-kind in-depth GenAI benchmarking study out today (27 February) has measured the performance of four legal AI tools compared with a human lawyer control group, with Harvey receiving the highest overall score, followed by Thomson Reuters CoCounsel. The other two evaluated tools were Vincent AI from vLex and Oliver from Vecflow. Lexis+AI from LexisNexis withdrew from the report, in a step that will, rightly or wrongly, be interpreted as a fairly damning indictment of its results.”
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$$Quote:
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“In terms of ‘what now’, [Rayan] Krishnan [co-founder of Vals AI, the company that conducted the study] says: ‘I’m just fascinated because now there’s a line in the sand of roughly the things which you probably shouldn’t be doing as a human. You wouldn’t do a three digit by three digit multiplication by pen and paper; you’d use a calculator. And so similarly if you need a one paragraph summary, you’d toss that into a generic AI tool. But I think there are some more sensitive things, especially on redlining, where I wouldn’t want my lawyer using a tool like that out of the box.’ ”
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The article at the link is deeply reported and well worth a full read: https://legaltechnology.com/2025/02/27/harvey-and-cocounsel-receive-top-scores-in-first-major-industry-genai-benchmarking-study/​

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◾ “LexisNexis Legal & Professional and OpenAI today (27 February) announced their plan to deploy OpenAI’s APIs and fine-tuned models across the LexisNexis ecosystem of products like the Lexis+ AI legal workflow solution and LexisNexis Protégé personalized AI assistant.”
​https://legaltechnology.com/2025/02/27/lexisnexis-to-deploy-openais-apis-and-models-across-its-ecosystem/​

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◾ vLex has issued a press release today (February 27, 2025) about the Vals AI benchmarking survey (about which I posted earlier today, see: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/80592808).
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The press release is interesting for how it encapsulates some of the survey’s results and also for how it demonstrates what kind of marketing potential at least one of the evaluated legal tech companies sees in the survey results.
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Here’s a link to the press release: https://vlex.com/blog/Vals-LegalAI-Report​

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◾ Legal research has long been about knowing where to look. With vast databases of case law, legislation, and expert commentary, finding the right information is often a process of searching, filtering, and piecing together answers. KAILA, the new AI legal assistant from the Danish Karnov Group, is designed to change that process – not by replacing legal expertise, but by making it easier to access and apply.

Read the full article here: https://thelegalwire.ai/kaila-a-smarter-way-to-work-with-legal-information/​

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Regulatory Reform​
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◾ “KPMG gained approval to practice law in Arizona, making it the first Big Four accounting, tax, and consulting company set to operate a law firm in the US.
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“The Arizona Supreme Court today granted KPMG a license to operate a so-called alternative business structure. KPMG Law US will be an independent law firm operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company.”
​https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/kpmg-becomes-first-accounting-firm-allowed-to-practice-law-in-us​

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Startup Management

◾ "In this episode of AI + a16z, Aatish Nayak, head of product at Harvey, sits down with a16z partner Kimberly Tan to share his experience building AI products for enterprises — including the legal profession — and how to address areas like UX, trust, and customer engagement. Importantly, Aatish explains, industries like law don’t need AGI or even the latest and greatest models; they need products that augment their existing workflows so they can better serve clients and still make it home for dinner."

This is another, spectacularly informative, interview with a senior member of the Harvey team that every legal tech startup leader should listen to. Here's a link to access the podcast episode: https://a16z.com/podcast/agents-lawyers-and-llms/​

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◾ From community member Lily Schurra: "Hello, all!
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"I'm excited to announce an education-focused community for early-stage legal tech startups".

"Legal Tech Founders Club (LTFC) is a community designed to provide education and resources to early-stage legal technology founders. LTFC offers a educational masterclasses, curated resources, and expert guidance to help innovators overcome their toughest challenges—from fine-tuning product readiness and identifying ideal customer profiles to devising effective sales strategies.
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"LTFC is more than just a resource hub—it’s a virtual community where founders can connect, collaborate, and anonymously share insights with one another and with seasoned industry experts. Members will have exclusive access to a private forum, meaning they can pose questions and receive authentic feedback without compromising their competitive edge.
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"To introduce these benefits, LTFC is rolling out a beta program starting April 14th. This early access phase invites founders to experience the club’s offerings firsthand before its official launch later this year. Interested innovators can join the beta program waitlist by visiting www.lolilegal.com/ltfc.
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"We'd love to have you join us!
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"Lily Schurra
Founder, LOLI (Legal Operations and Legal Innovation) Consulting
Co-Founder, Legal Tech Founders Club
​lily@lolilegal.com"

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◾ From Legaltech News:

"Legaltech News caught up with DraftWise chief customer officer Will Seaton to discuss model selection and what law firms and legal departments are really looking for."

​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/02/26/do-law-firms-care-which-llms-you-use-a-chat-with-legalweek-speaker-will-seaton/?kw=Do%20Law%20Firms%20Care%20Which%20LLMs%20You%20Use%3F%20A%20Chat%20With%20Legalweek%20Speaker%20Will%20Seaton&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=newsroomupdate&utm_content=20250226&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&slreturn=20250227-31745​

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◾ “Legaltech News caught up with Daryl Shetterly, managing director of Orrick Analytics, to discuss how he juggles prioritizing innovations, staying ahead of the legal technology curve, and improving user experience for legal professionals.”
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$$Quote:
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“So there's this open question about how all of this [legal technology] will be structured in the future, wherever that time is that we get this all right. Right now we're just seeing that dimly, but I believe that it's going to include that the lawyer's going to work most naturally with the technology, they don't have to go out six clicks in to get to the solution they want. So we're really focused on building an intuitive user experience for the attorney.”
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From the quote above, do make sure you understand: so much of legal tech adoption is the user experience and the user interface. What is “intuitive” is what gets adopted.
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​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/02/28/how-orrick-is-embracing-innovation-a-chat-with-legalweek-speaker-daryl-shetterly/​
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