November 17, 2025 — Issue #368
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
◾️ From the LawSites blog by Robert Ambrogi:
"Epiq announced today the sale of its Global Business Transformation Solutions (GBTS) division to K2 Services, a managed services provider. The transaction positions Epiq to concentrate more intensively on technology-enabled legal solutions while significantly expanding K2’s operational footprint in the professional services sector.
"The deal is part of a broader strategic move by K2 Services, which simultaneously acquired outsourcing and staffing company Forrest Solutions in a dual acquisition backed by majority investment from Renovus Capital Partners, a private equity firm managing over $2 billion in assets."
https://www.lawnext.com/2025/11/k2-services-acquires-epiqs-business-process-outsourcing-division-in-strategic-realignment.html
◾️ Law.com reports:
“On Monday, intellectual property management platform Tradespace announced that it acquired Paragon, an agentic AI-powered patent drafting startup.
“The acquisition, which Tradespace said cost seven figures, will support the company’s need for patent drafting tools and additional IP and agentic AI expertise.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/10/ip-platform-tradespace-acquires-agentic-ai-startup-paragon-/
◾️ Word on Robin AI from Artificial Lawyer:
“Robin AI, the troubled contract review company, is understood to be very close to securing a rescue buyer after at least 10 approaches were made to it. A recent tax demand from UK authorities is also understood not to be a barrier to any deal, Artificial Lawyer can reveal, according to market insiders.
“Moreover, it’s understood that Robin AI, which is based in the UK and has an office in New York, ‘is not insolvent….and will not be wound up’, at least not yet……with the likely sale of the business to one of its multiple suitors ensuring that any outstanding debts are paid off.”
https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/11/11/robin-ai-very-close-to-securing-rescue-buyer/
◾️ Reporting from Law.com:
“Information services company Wolters Kluwer announced Friday that its legal and regulatory division is slated to acquire Berlin-based AI legal technology provider Libra Technology GmbH.
“According to a press release, Wolters Kluwer agreed to buy Libra for up to €90 million (approximately $104.7 million), with €30 million (approximately $34.8 million) of that paid up front and the remainder to be paid contingent upon certain performance targets being met.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/14/wolters-kluwer-inks-deal-to-acquire-ai-legal-tech-company-libra-/?kw=Wolters+Kluwer+Inks+Deal+to+Acquire+AI+Legal+Tech+Company+Libra&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=newsroomupdate&utm_content=20251114&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&slreturn=20251114132337
◾️ A Law.com post:
“On Wednesday [November 12, 2025], professional and legal services provider Harbor announced the acquisition of Encoretech, a technology training firm focused on the legal sector. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
“Encoretech provides a variety of tech training services, including a subscription-based training-as-a-service offering, discrete training modules, consulting, and change management services. While the company primarily focuses on serving law firms, it also has a number of large corporate clients.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/12/harbor-acquires-legal-sector-technology-training-provider-encoretech/
Fundraising
◾️ From Legaltech Hub:
"Legal technology provider Clio today announced that it has secured an additional $850 million in financing. The company’s latest raise includes a $500 million Series G funding round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from existing investors TCV, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Sixth Street Growth, and JMI Equity, as well as a strategic $350 million debt facility led by Blackstone and Blue Owl Capital.
"With the latest investment, Clio is now valued at $5 billion.
"The news comes as Clio officially completes its acquisition of global legal intelligence and research company vLex. It’s a deal that sent ripples through the legal tech community when it was announced on June 30 of this year and one that indelibly shifts the company’s trajectory and the nature of its offerings."
https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/clio-announces-dollar850m-in-financing-at-a-dollar5b-valuation-as-it-completes-vlex-acquisition/?utm_source=brevo&utm_campaign=Clio%20Announces%20850M%20in%20Financing%20at%20a%205B%20Valuation%20as%20it%20Completes%20vLex%20Acquisition&utm_medium=email&utm_id=48
◾️ Fundraising news reported by Artificial Lawyer:
“NLPatent, an AI-driven patent research engine and intelligence platform, has raised $3m in a round co-led by Silicon Valley funds Draper Associates and Mighty Capital. (See AL in-depth interview with co-founder Stephanie Curcio below about the changing IP landscape and the investment.)
“They said that the funding will accelerate product development, fuel go-to-market expansion across North America and Europe.”
https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/11/11/nlpatent-raises-3m-al-interview/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup
◾️ A post from Artificial Lawyer:
“GC AI, an AI platform for in-house legal teams, today announced it has raised $60m in Series B funding led by Scale Venture Partners and Northzone.
“Interestingly News Corp also took part. The round values the company at $555m and brings total funding to $73m, they said. This valuation is based on its rapid growth, with the company stating publicly that ‘it has grown from $1m to over $10m ARR in under a year, averaging 23% month-over-month growth in 2025’.”
https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/11/12/gc-ai-raises-60m-at-0-55-billion-valuation/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup
◾️ From Law.com:
“On Wednesday [November 12, 2025], predictive litigation startup Theo AI announced that it raised $3.4 million in a seed round led by Run Ventures with participation from angel investors. As part of the investment, Run Ventures partner PT Ungvichian will join Theo AI’s board of directors.
“With the funding, the startup hopes to hire additional engineering talent and continue expanding its market reach to serve Big Law firms and corporate legal departments with high-volume litigation needs.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/12/predictive-litigation-startup-theo-ai-raises-34m-in-seed-round-announces-advisory-board-/
◾️ From Law.com:
“On Thursday, Greenshoe, a generative artificial intelligence-powered platform designed to help draft U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosures, announced a $3 million seed funding round, as well as the expansion of its platform’s commercial availability. The funding round was led by AIX Ventures and featured participation from Hearst Level Up Ventures, Blueprint FTC, Service Provider Capital and a number of angel investors.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/13/greenshoe-an-sec-disclosure-startup-co-founded-by-a-big-law-alum-announces-3m-seed-round-/
Partnerships/Business Development
◾️ Legal IT Insider reporting:“
Invoice-to-cash automation provider nQ Zebraworks has entered a strategic partnership with Minisoft, developer of ARCS3, a leading legal collections and accounts receivable management platform that is used by just over 40% of the top 200 global firms (according to Minisoft’s data.)
“The partnership extends full invoice-to-cash capabilities to ARCS3 firms, bringing together the collections intelligence of ARCS3 with the cloud-native bill delivery and online payment capabilities of nQ Zebraworks’ BillQ and PayQ solutions.”
https://legaltechnology.com/2025/11/10/exclusive-nq-zebraworks-enters-strategic-partnership-with-minisoft-to-deliver-invoice-to-cash-capability-to-arcs3-clients/
◾️ Busy news day today, here’s a post from Artificial Lawyer about Harvey partnering with Eleven Labs:
“Harvey, the legal AI productivity platform, has partnered with ElevenLabs, one of the world’s leading audio AI companies. The first phase of the deal will allow Harvey to ‘deliver answers audibly in almost any language or dialect’ to its users. Future developments will introduce ‘multi-lingual voice translation, voice mode, spoken trial simulations, and tone customization’. (As illustrated above, via GPT-5, of course.)
“Although the multiple language capabilities will be very useful, AL is guessing that voice mode, i.e. interacting primarily via one’s own voice, will be the one that lawyers really enjoy the most. After all, who doesn’t want to order an AI to ‘mark-up that contract!’.”
https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/11/12/harvey-elevenlabs-partner-for-legal-ai-audio/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup
◾️ Here’s Law.com’s weekly look back at legal tech news - its legal tech rundown. We find business partnerships, hirings and promotions, product developments and more agentic AI launches.
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/14/legaltech-rundown-ironclad-launches-ai-agents-crux-partners-with-law-firms-to-develop-tax-forms-and-more-/
Product Development
◾️ A wide-ranging post from Law.com about White & Case’s recent rollout of its home built GenAI tool. The post covers many several important topics, including the “build v buy decision” and change management and tech adoption.
From the post: “ White & Case has launched Atlas, a conversational AI assistant that is the first application built on its proprietary AI platform, in the culmination of a year of growth and development led by chief innovation officer Isabel Parker.”
https://legaltechnology.com/2025/11/11/exclusive-white-case-launches-ai-assistant-atlas-the-ai-strategy-and-roadmap/
◾️ From the Litera press release:
“CHICAGO - Nov. 12, 2025 - Litera, a global leader in legal AI technology solutions, announced the strategic integration of its GenAI-powered contract review platform, Kira, directly into its transaction management software, Litera Transact. The move creates a single, unified source of truth for deal progress, easing operational friction and risk caused by fragmented legal workflows.”
The entire press release can be accessed at this link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/93586317?utm_source=manual
Purchasing/Using Legal Tech
◾️ From community member, Nate Patel: “The gap between aspirational AI principles and operational reality is where risks fester – ethical breaches, regulatory fines, brand damage, and failed deployments. Waiting for perfect legislation or the ultimate governance tool isn't a strategy; it's negligence. The time for actionable governance is now.
“This isn't about building an impenetrable fortress overnight. It's about establishing a minimum viable governance (MVG) framework – a functional, adaptable system – within 30 days. This article is your tactical playbook to bridge the principles-to-practice chasm, mitigate immediate risks, and lay the foundation for robust, scalable AI governance.
“Why 30 Days? The Urgency Imperative
- Accelerating Adoption: AI use is exploding organically across departments. Without guardrails, shadow AI proliferates.
- Regulatory Tsunami: From the EU AI Act and US Executive Orders to sector-specific guidance, compliance deadlines loom.
- Mounting Risks: Real-world incidents (biased hiring tools, hallucinating chatbots causing legal liability, insecure models leaking data) demonstrate the tangible costs of inaction.
- Read More: From Principles to Playbook: Build an AI-Governance Framework in 30 Days”
◾️ Law.com announces the opening of its 2025 Law Firm Tech Survey (the survey remains open until November 14):
Every year, Legaltech News surveys leaders at top law firms to take the pulse on the legal industry's most pressing technology issues and top priorities in the coming year. The annual survey is now open, and we want to hear from you!”
A link to access the survey can be found here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/10/15/the-2025-law-firm-tech-survey-is-now-open/
◾️ From the LawSites blog by Robert Ambrogi:
“Callidus Legal AI has rebranded to StrongSuit and launched a significantly upgraded legal research platform that includes automated case validation — what lawyers traditionally call “shepardizing” — marking the company’s evolution from a legal AI tool into what it describes as an end-to-end litigation platform.
“The San Francisco-based company’s new platform automatically verifies that cases cited in legal documents remain good law, ensuring that they haven’t been overturned, superseded or otherwise invalidated by subsequent rulings.”
https://www.lawnext.com/2025/11/callidus-legal-ai-rebrands-as-strongsuit-adds-automated-case-validation.html
◾️ With this post on its website, Harvey introduces its BigLaw Bench: Arena eval system, i.e., Harvey’s “approach to head-to-head evaluation of AI systems on legal tasks.”
From the post:
“Today, we’re introducing BigLaw Bench: Arena (BLB: Arena), which is our internal system for determining which models and systems experts actually prefer through scaled, pairwise comparison. Inspired by open research initiatives such as LMArena, this approach complements formal benchmarks and provides unique perspectives from experts on not just what makes an AI system good, but also what makes it better than alternatives.”
Read the entire post at the link below and get a very detailed view of Harvey’s evals system: https://www.harvey.ai/blog/introducing-biglaw-bench-arena
Regulatory Reform
◾️ From Bloomberg Law:
“McDermott Will & Schulte said Wednesday it is in preliminary discussions about selling a stake in the law firm to outside investors, a novel move that could advance acceptance of non-lawyer backing of Big Law operations.”
“The Financial Times earlier Wednesday said the firm is exploring a restructuring that would let it sell a stake to private equity groups, based on reporting from five unidentified people. The approach under consideration would split the firm into a business owned by lawyers that advise clients and a separate operation that would sell administrative services to the lawyer-owned firm, according to the FT.”
The entire post can be found here: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/mcdermott-will-schulte-considers-outside-investment-in-firm
◾️ Further writing from Bloomberg Law about BigLaw McDermott Will’s consideration of taking on an investment from a private equity firm’s managed service organization (MSO):
“The possibility of outside investors taking a stake in McDermott Will & Schulte nudges rivals to consider a similar step and possibly change the way the legal industry operates.
“Small firms have already begun to embrace the idea of having non-lawyer investors own back-office operations, said Fredric Litwiniuk, chief growth officer at Litco LSO. His Phoenix-based company handles functions such as accounting, technology, and marketing for three firms and plans to add two more by the end of the year, he said.”
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/mcdermotts-outside-investor-talks-augur-big-law-transformation
Startup Management
◾️ The Strictly VC newsletter interviews Winston Weinberg of Harvey. Read the interview at the link below and get access to the podcast from which the interview came: https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/14/inside-harvey-how-a-first-year-legal-associate-built-one-of-silicon-valleys-hottest-startups/
Teaching/Learning Legal Tech
◾️ “Harvey is proud to announce the international expansion of the Harvey Law School Program to the United Kingdom, marking the company’s first formal partnerships with leading UK law faculties. This next chapter in the program reflects Harvey’s global focus and brings together a diverse set of institutions: Oxford University Faculty of Law, The University of Law, The Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London and BPP University Law School. Each represents a distinct pillar of the UK legal education landscape.”
https://www.harvey.ai/blog/harvey-expands-law-school-program-to-the-united-kingdom
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