November 9, 2026 - Issue #419

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

■ 🥁 Drumroll Moment: First Panel Reveal at #LINY​

As a media partner for the upcoming Legal Innovators New York event, Legal Tech StartUp Focus unveils one of the first panels on Private Practice Day: "Transformation Gets Real."

💭Legal AI has moved well beyond pilots and controlled experiments. It's now part of everyday practice across many firms. But where is it truly changing the way law firms work?

This panel offers an honest assessment of where legal transformation stands today, exploring where workflows have genuinely evolved, what impact firms are seeing in practice, and how both law firms and technology partners are defining measurable progress.

🔸Real examples 🔸 Honest perspectives 🔸 Meaningful change.

Sign up today and be among the first to hear who joins the conversation.

, 📅 November 17th-18th, 2026, at Quorum by Convene in New York City

📍 Quorum by Convene, New York, NY

🎫 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻-𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀: https://www.legalinnovatorsnewyork.com/attend​

■ More on what the panels will cover at this month's Legal Innovators New York (LINY) event. This time, we're looking at a panel on In-House Day (Day 2 of LINY): "From Function to Force: Meet ‘The Agentic Legal Function’"

"Here’s the million-dollar question: when AI agents stop waiting for instructions, what becomes of the legal function?

"That’s the conversation we’re bringing to Legal Innovators New York 2026.

"And the room is already shaping up in an interesting way, think enterprise meets legal tech in motion. We’ve got voices from Verizon and Clio already confirmed, with more cross-industry perspectives still joining the table. That blend alone says a lot about where this conversation is heading.

"Our panel explores how agentic AI is reshaping legal, from automating workflows and building a “legal brain” powered by institutional knowledge, to governing enterprise-wide agents, enabling self-service, and even solving problems before they surface.

"We’ll separate today’s reality from tomorrow’s promise, examine the opportunities, confront the limits, and map where this is all heading.

"Join LINY 2026, and tell us: what should an agentic legal function look like?"

📅 November 17th-18th, 2026.

📍 Quorum by Convene, New York, NY

🎫 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻-𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀:https://www.legalinnovatorsnewyork.com/attend​

◾ Contracting gets its due on the second day of the Legal Innovators New York event that’s kicking off in NYC a mere eight days from today. As you’ll learn below, there’s a panel on Day 2 of the event that dives very deeply into “what happens when AI meets the realities of contract review.”

I’ve heard it said, and I agree, that many lawyers can be described as “machines for turning coffee into contracts” (guilty as charged, in my own case). For lawyers who meet that description, there will be much to learn from the panel discussed below, which considers a “new contract paradigm.”

A New Paradigm for Contracts? It May Already Be Here.

“Contracts aren't just being drafted faster, they're being reimagined. As AI becomes part of the in-house legal toolkit, it is moving legal teams from reactive review to more proactive, data-informed decision-making. But the gap between capability and consistent impact remains wide.

“At #LINY In-House Day, our panel, "A New Paradigm for Contracts," explores what happens when AI meets the realities of contract review. Bringing together leaders from Oracle, eBrevia, and other leading organizations, this conversation reflects perspectives from the companies building, deploying, and scaling AI-powered contracting in the real world, not just talking about its potential.

“From playbooks and legal data to automated redlines and AI-generated first drafts, our speakers will discuss what's delivering measurable value, where expectations have fallen short, and how leading legal teams are building smarter contract workflows.

“Join us in the room and share your perspective: What has AI genuinely changed in the way you think about contracts?”

📅 November 17th-18th, 2026.📍 Quorum by Convene, New York, NY

🎫 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻-𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀:https://www.legalinnovatorsnewyork.com/attend​

Fundraising

■ Juritas, a "contract intelligence" startup founded by Legora alum Michelle Cotter, has closed a €1.4 million pre-seed raise, as reported in a post at Silicon Republic.

From the post:

"Juritas, an Irish-founded and Stockholm-based “contract intelligence” start-up, has raised €1.4m in pre-seed funding.

"The company has developed an AI-driven platform designed to help finance, procurement and legal teams monitor contract commitments and spot payments that are due. The platform helps these teams “find and act on what their contracts say they’re owed”, according to the start-up.

"The funding round was led by Passion Capital with participation from Blackwood, Araya Ventures, Baseline, Angel Invest and the ByFounders Angel Collective."

Read the entire Silicon Republic post at this link: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/irish-founded-juritas-raises-e1-4m-for-contract-intelligence-tech​

■ Starting with some "thoughts on Harvey's and Legora's IPO plans," Artificial Lawyer (AL) posts its weekly "end-of-business-week" legal tech wrap-up called, quite fittingly, the "Wrap."

Catch up on this week's legal tech goings-on by reading this edition of the Wrap in its entirety by going to this link: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/11/06/harvey-legora-ipo-plans-ao-1-1bn-legal-innovators-ny/​

Product Development

■ Litigation-AI tool provider, Litmas, yesterday (November 3, 2026) launched its Litmas AI Agentic Associate, which Litmas describes as "built to work the way a human litigation associate does: drafting, researching and managing facts in a single connected workflow."

More from the Litmas press release that announced the product launch:

“'I've been in the trenches. I know what it takes to win a case, the strategy, the argument, the judgment only a lawyer can bring. But I also know too well that a litigator's time can be quickly eaten up by tedious work that takes away from the valuable strategic element of litigation,' said Jason Weber, CEO and co-founder of Litmas AI. 'Litigators want to argue the case, grow their practice, and still make it home for dinner. We built the Agentic Associate to give them that time back: it supports litigators by producing work comparable to an associate, so they can focus on the precise human judgment critical to their clients and to the case, and not be bogged down by the work that got in the way.'”

$$Quote:

"How long does it take to draft a motion with Litmas AI? Motion drafting time is reduced 60 to 80% using Litmas AI. A fully drafted, court-ready motion for summary judgment, typically a three-and-a-half to four week undertaking even for a well-staffed legal team, can be produced in as little as 90 minutes using the Agentic Associate."

Read the entire press release here: https://litmas.ai/blog/litmas-ai-redefines-litigation-accuracy-and-efficiency-with-launch-of-litmas-ai-agentic/?utm_source=newsletter.thelegalwire.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=courts-faced-with-legal-ai-s-accuracy-problem&_bhlid=eaed9cf1d557224cf46da512d921659a3faac6a0​

H/T to The Legal Wire newsletter for making me aware of this product launch.

■ Over at the LawSites blog, Bob Ambrogi has posted about his interview with Dan Hauck, NetDocuments Chief Product Officer. Of note for me is the discussion around the ". . . proprietary knowledge infrastructure [NetDocuments] launched earlier this year that continuously maps the relationships among every matter, document, communication and person across a firm's entire document repository."
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I find this part of the discussion noteworthy because of my steadfast belief in combining symbolic AI (of which a knowledge graph is an example), with machine learning-driven LLMs to arrive at more well reasoned and less hallucinating LLM output.
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From the LawSites post:
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“As NetDocuments rolls out a completely redesigned user experience, a new Microsoft 365 integration, and real-time co-authoring, LawNext host Bob Ambrogi speaks with Chief Product Officer Dan Hauck in an episode recorded live at the company’s Inspire conference in Orlando in October.”
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“Hauck also digs into the legal context graph, the proprietary knowledge infrastructure the company launched earlier this year that continuously maps the relationships among every matter, document, communication and person across a firm’s entire document repository. He explains how it works, how it helps agents perform better, and how it can dramatically reduce the cost of token consumption.”
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For the entire post, which includes other NetDocuments announcements, visit this link:
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​https://www.lawnext.com/2026/11/netdocuments-cpo-dan-hauck-on-the-companys-redesigned-platform-the-legal-context-graph-and-building-an-agentic-dms.html​
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Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

■ How Stretto Delivers Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Data At Scale

Bankruptcy professionals agree that PACER is full of the most important moments in a restructuring, but those professionals also agree that anyone who has tried to use PACER under deadline and at scale knows the truth: the documents are public, yet the insight is still hard to reach. Your podcast host, Charlie Uniman, joins Randall “Randy” Reese, Managing Director at Stretto (https://www.stretto.com), to unpack how bankruptcy professionals actually find the needle in the haystack and what happens when you turn decades of Chapter 11 dockets into a product.
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Randy walks us through his path from Skadden’s restructuring practice into building a legal tech company around a simple pain point: meaningful Chapter 11 filings often never show up in traditional legal research, and even elite firms struggle to search docket materials across cases. Randy digs into what it takes for Stretto to curate and tag filings at scale, why the metadata that Stretto provides makes such a difference, and how the cross-case bankruptcy research that Stretto makes possible changes the way lawyers draft motions, negotiate deals, and cite real-world precedent.
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The discussion "gets practical" about modern AI. Randy explains how Stretto is connecting its bankruptcy docket data into the tools lawyers already use via MCP connectors, so research, citations, and source links can flow directly into AI-assisted drafting workflows. Then the discussion zooms out to "Conductor," Stretto’s RAG-based chatbot designed to answer bankruptcy stakeholder questions from case documents only,
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To close, Randy shares hard-earned advice for legal tech founders whose startups are possible acquisition targets: what you can document, what you can’t, and why trust and shared expectations often decide whether the deal succeeds long after signing.

Link to episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2454829/episodes/20052067​

■ Artificial Lawyer (AL) has posted a “Bonus Wrap” for the business ended November 6, 2026 with more news of legal tech happenings during that week.
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Among the posted squibs is:
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“Newcode, the ‘configurable AI harness for law firms‘, has announced a technology alliance with iManage. The collaboration aims to help law firms streamline legal workflows by connecting Newcode’s AI-powered workspace with content managed in the iManage platform enabling legal professionals to access and work with relevant documents and matter information without leaving their workflow.
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“The initial integration will focus on connecting the iManage platform with Nova, Newcode’s intelligent workspace, allowing legal professionals to access, draft, review and update documents within their existing workflows. Changes are saved back to the iManage platform, where existing iManage permissions, versioning and security policies continue to apply, they said.”
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I find this excerpt of particular note because I love that Newcode describes its offering as a configurable LLM harness for legal.
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Read the entire AL “Bonus Wrap” post at this link:
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​https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/11/07/bonus-wrap-harvey-jus-mundi-li-ny/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup​
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■ Legal IT Insider (LITI) posts about Addleshaw Goddard’s [AG] selection of “. . . Harvey for a firmwide rollout, in a move that will see the international law firm work directly with Harvey’s product and engineering teams to develop new capabilities, including in areas such as matter management and orchestration.”
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The portion LITI’s post that caught my eye in particular (and that we see in connection with vendor adoption by other large-size law firms) is the influence that law firms like AG insist on having over the vendor’s own product development.
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From the LITI post:
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“For Westland [i.e., Kerry Westland, a partner and head of the AG’s innovation group], the ability to influence the product during the selection process was an important differentiator. “It showed me during the assessment that there was a co-development partnership,” she said. “We’ll be feeding into their roadmap, but there are also specific areas where we’d like to push forward.”
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“AG has secured a commitment from Harvey for dedicated engagement with its product and engineering teams, with the firm identifying particular capabilities it wants to help develop and access early. “We’ve got a commitment from Harvey for dedicated time with their product and engineering team, and we’ve identified specific areas where we want to push forward and get early access,” Westland said.”
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Read all of LITI’s post here: https://legaltechnology.com/addleshaw-goddard-selects-harvey-for-firmwide-rollout-and-product-collaboration/​

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​Startup Management

■ Using as a case study a comparison (conducted by the in-house team at Repsol, a global energy company) of Harvey with both Microsoft Copilot and that team's internally built AI prototype, Lexia, a16z Partner Tugce Erten posts in the a16z News newsletter about how AI applications can successfully compete against general-purpose AI models:

From the a16z newsletter post:

"All AI application companies need to spend time rigorously developing and pricing out these obvious-but-necessary capabilities: Domain expertise, deep integrations, reliable execution, and hard-to-access context. These are all pricing levers that can make buying substantially more attractive. Founders need to understand which advantages their customers actually value, then strengthen and price them." (emphasis in original)

Read the entire a16a post here: https://www.a16z.news/p/how-ai-applications-earn-their-premium?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=13145&post_id=222823782&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1cv2&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email​

■ Anna Guo, AI researcher and founder at Legal Benchmarks, has a post at LinkedIn that discusses what customers think of the legal tech they're using (including, among that tech, Harvey, Claude for Legal, Legora, Microsoft Copilot, and many others).

From Anna's LinkedIn post:

"What do lawyers actually think about Harvey, Claude for legal, Microsoft Copilot, Legora, GC AI and the other AI tools they’re using?
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"Most feedback on legal tech comes through carefully packaged case studies or stays in private conversations.
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"Since launching the open access Legal Benchmarks Legal Tech Directory, we’ve received verified reviews from 131 lawyers."

And here's a link to Anna's post itself: https://lnkd.in/p/gJF-42b6​

■ Josh Kubicki has posted on LinkedIn about lawyers learning to "steer" an LLM that's doing legal work. Josh enumerates the several steps that productive steering entails.

To legal tech vendors selling AI-driven products: take note of what good steering means, and consider incorporating steering lessons into your after-sale customer success efforts.

From Josh's LinkedIn post:

"The test [i.e., the new benchmark that Josh elsewhere mentions in his post, where 'GDPx, from the research firm SemiAnalysis, gave frontier models complete jobs across 11 fields'] asked one AI agent to do an entire legal job alone, start to finish, with no human involved. That might be a useful stress test, but it isn't how AI produces good legal work today. The lawyers getting real results aren't handing off whole matters. They're steering.
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"I teach "steering" to my law students and to lawyers. It is different from prompting."

Read the rest of Josh's post (in which, among other things, you'll get an elaboration of what steering, as Josh sees it, is all about) at this link: https://lnkd.in/p/gA7pNNjN​