November 24, 2025 -- Issue #369
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
◾ Who else but Robert Ambrogi (writing at his LawSites blog) can post a summary of a legal tech conference as good as this summary. The post covers the recently concluded TLTF Summit. Well worth reading because of the superb coverage this summary offers and because the Summit deserves coverage of this caliber.
https://www.lawnext.com/2025/11/from-who-luck-to-whos-here-the-tltf-summit-continues-to-excel-even-as-it-expands.html
Exit/M&A
◾ From Law.com:
“On Wednesday, contract lifecycle management provider Icertis announced its acquisition of contract intelligence startup Dioptra.
“Dioptra’s agentic artificial intelligence capabilities and other automated features will bolster Icertis’s contract capabilities available on Vera, its AI-powered platform.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/19/-icertis-acquires-agentic-ai-contracting-startup-dioptra-/
◾ More on the recent Tradespace acquisition of Paragon, this time from the LawSites blog by Bob Ambrogi:
“Tradespace, the San Francisco-based AI-powered intellectual property management platform, has acquired Paragon, an AI patent-drafting startup founded by three Princeton University computer science students.
“The acquisition, Tradespace says, makes it the first AI-powered platform to support the complete IP lifecycle, from initial invention disclosure through patent drafting, prosecution, portfolio management and commercialization.”
Read the entire LawSites post here: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/11/tradespace-acquires-paragon-a-patent-drafting-startup-founded-by-computer-science-students-to-round-out-its-end-to-end-ip-platform.html
Fundraising
◾ From Legaltech News:
“On Thursday, New York-headquartered regulatory artificial intelligence company Norm Ai announced that it received a $50 million investment from Blackstone and Stonecroft Management, and that it is launching a New York-based LLP, Norm Law. The company further stated that Norm Law will work directly with Blackstone to develop Norm Law’s legal service offerings.
“The new investment follows Norm Ai’s raising of $48 million in a March funding round led by private equity firm Coatue. The company had previously announced an $11.1 million seed round and a $27 million Series A in 2024. Blackstone will be providing its new investment through Blackstone Innovations Investments and funds affiliated with Blackstone Growth.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/20/norm-ai-announces-50m-investment-launch-of-new-law-firm-/
◾ From Legaltech News:
"Patent analytics provider Juristat announced a new growth investment led by Advantage Capital on Thursday. The amount of the investment, and whether other investors participated in the funding, was not disclosed.
"Launched in 2013, Juristat offers patent-related data analytics that allow users to make data-driven decisions around business development, patent prosecution strategies and predicted prosecution costs, among other areas."
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/20/juristat-announces-growth-investment-from-advantage-capital-/?kw=Juristat+Announces+Growth+Investment+From+Advantage+Capital&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=afternoonupdate&utm_content=20251120&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A
Honors and Awards
◾ Time to consider applying for an appearance on the Startup Alley pitch competition stage on March 25, 2026 at the forthcoming ABA TECHSHOW:
“Applications are now open for a spot in the 10th annual Startup Alley at 2026 ABA TECHSHOW, a competition that has helped catapult the success of a long list of legal technology startups and become a seminal event of the American Bar Association’s annual legal technology conference.”
“Applications must be received by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, Dec. 26, 2025.”
More about Startup Alley and access to the application at this link: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/11/attention-legal-tech-startups-applications-now-open-for-the-10th-annual-startup-alley-and-pitch-competition-at-aba-techshow-2026.html
Investing
◾ I’m so very happy to link below to a LinkedIn post from Zach Posner, cofounder and Managing
Parner of The Legal Tech Fund. In this post Zach announces that his fund has closed Fund II, this one a $110 million investment vehicle.
Congratulations to Zach and his team for this marvelous achievement.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/zachposner_gratitude-strategy-and-a-110-million-signal-activity-7396179592824164352-XPBf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAACjKkUBuYvfoBWwBGd7KKABZw3jrdiBcc0
JusticeTech/A2J
◾ Yale News reports on how Scott Shapiro, co-founder of the Yale Legal AI Lab at Yale Law School, is using theorem-prover “rule-based” AI tooling to increase access to justice.
$$Quote: “‘One idea I find really exciting is that we could give these kinds of tools to pro bono attorneys,’ Shapiro said. ‘Lawyers who want to donate some time on weekends, but don’t know the area of law where help is needed. If they could use a tool that gives them accurate answers to questions, they could then explain it to clients who are in desperate need of legal services’.”
https://news.yale.edu/2025/11/12/yale-law-schools-ai-lab
LegalEd
◾ From the Rubi press release yesterday, November 19, 2025, that announces Rubi's launch of its M&A training program for junior lawyers:
"Two Former BigLaw M&A Attorneys Launch rubi, a Virtual Apprenticeship in Transactional Law--and Texas Law is Offering the Platform to the Entire Law School"
"Today marks the launch of rubi, a legal tech startup founded by M&A attorneys Geetika Jerathand Madison Keeble to reimagine legal apprenticeship for the next generation of lawyers."
With GenAI poised to drastically transform first-year lawyer workloads (along with clients' continuing reluctance to pay for first-year lawyers' "training-on-the-client 's-dime"), the question for law firms becomes how to accelerate first-year lawyer skill development. Rubi may indeed have part of the answer with its M&A apprenticeship training. See the entire press release at the link below to learn more about Rubi. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/two-former-biglaw-ma-attorneys-launch-rubi-a-virtual-apprenticeship-in-transactional-lawand-texas-law-is-offering-the-platform-to-the-entire-law-school-302619985.html
Member Introductions/Questions
◾ New community member, Martin Georgiev, introduces himself: "Product Marketing Manage in legal-tech SaaS, focused on turning complex legal workflows into clear strategic value.
"I am passionate about improving how legal teams leverage technology. I’m here to share ideas, learn from the community, and contribute to conversations around innovation in legal operations." Welcome, Martin. And, if you'd like to get in touch with Martin, you can do so at this link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/about-me-93853503?utm_source=manual
Partnerships/Business Development
◾ The Legaltech News weekly legal tech rundown:
“Legaltech Rundown: Good2bSocial Announces Acquisition, Norm Ai Opens London Office, and More” https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/21/legaltech-rundown-good2bsocial-announces-acquisition-norm-ai-opens-london-office-and-more-/
Purchasing/Using Legal Tech
◾ Provocative post, to say the least, but one that doesn’t surprise me or offend me very much (if at all). Here’s a post from Richard Tromans at Artificial Lawyer that kicks off with:
“A lawyer told me recently that they would rather use AI than give work to a new junior associate. Here’s how they explained it.”
Read the whole post (linked below) to find out how the unnamed lawyer explains the preference for using AI.
$$Quote: “In short, this lawyer has stumbled upon an issue that many law firms are only just starting to consider: that legal AI tools are so good now and so too the foundation models they’re based on (see the results for GPT 5.1 for example), that it’s not just the clients who may grumble about ‘training junior lawyers on my work when you could be using AI’, it’s some of the more senior lawyers at law firms as well who are wondering if there is a better way of doing things. And that’s going to be a very difficult dilemma to navigate for all involved as it goes right to the heart of legal education and training.”
Again, do read the entire post here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/11/17/id-rather-use-ai-than-give-work-to-a-junior-lawyer/
◾ Reporting from Law.com on the challenges that in-house legal teams face in measuring the impact of AI use on lawyer performance.
“The lack of outcome-based performance metrics makes it more difficult for in-house teams to track the impact of their growing gen AI adoption. Only 28% of respondents track time to resolution for legal matters,12% track outside counsel performance metrics, and 12% track technology adoption return on investment.
“‘Overall, I think that what we're seeing is that general counsel is deriving benefits from the use of AI in running the law department and the metrics associated with that are lagging behind,’ Chuck Kellner, a senior strategic discovery advisor at Everlaw, told Legaltech News.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/11/17/in-house-teams-are-struggling-to-measure-impact-of-gen-ai-/
◾ From Legaltech Hub’s Stephanie Wilkins and Nicola Shaver:
“Legal AI company Harvey today released a newly commissioned report entitled “Defining the Impact of Legal AI: How Customers Realise Value,” conducted by independent UK research firm RSGI Limited (the “RSGI Report”). The goal of the report is to analyze how law firms and in-house legal teams are defining and measuring the return on investment (ROI) of using Harvey in practice.”
Access to RSGI’s full report and more analysis from Stephanie and Nikki here: https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/take-away-my-coffee-instead-harvey-releases-roi-report-detailing-customer-usage-rates-stickiness/
◾ From Bloomberg Law:
"As Proskauer Rose celebrates 150 years, the New York law firm’s leader is trying to position it for the “equivalent of the Industrial Revolution” being brought on by the rise of artificial intelligence.
“,We can’t hide from it, and we’re running towards it as fast as we possibly can,' Timothy Mungovan, the firm’s chair, said of Proskauer’s approach to using AI tools.
“'I do believe that it’s only a matter of time before there is consensus on the demand side—the buy side of the legal economy—where they will expect practitioners to use it and to be able to deliver results better, faster, and cheaper ,' he said in an interview. “'Firms that are able to do it first and best are going to separate from the pack.'”https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/proskauer-chief-revolution-is-coming-not-everyone-is-ready?source=newsletter&item=body-link®ion=text-section
◾ From Legal IT Insider:
"Linklaters has formed a team of 20 AI lawyers to deploy across its global network, helping practising lawyers to identify use cases and create and embed new working practices with tools such as Legora.
"The first cohort is largely formed from internal lawyers and Linklaters has also hired in a handful of roles, in a significant investment for the magic circle law firm. Internally, lawyers were selected based on factors including recommendations from their practise groups, focusing on people who have intentionally engaged with GenAI tools in their free time and who have already developed some proficiency in the area." https://legaltechnology.com/2025/11/24/exclusive-linklaters-launches-20-strong-global-ai-lawyer-team/
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