A weekly newsletter with links to articles from around the world that help legal tech startup leaders (and their customers and their investors) succeed in business
LTSF Newsletter -- October 27, 2025 -- Issue #365
October 27, 2025 -- Issue #365
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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And, when planning to attend this FutureLawyer USA event later this week, don't forget the complimentary and discounted ticket offers we posted last week, and that the event's organizer, Cosmonauts, has kindly made available to members of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus community. As a refresher:
Obtain a 10% discount on a ticket to the Future Lawyer USA event if you're a member of the team at a legal tech solutions provider by using the code LTSFVENDOR10 when registering for the event at: https://www.futurelawyerusa.com
Subject to the qualification requirements stated below, and also subject to a ticket-quantity limitation also stated below, obtain a complimentary ticket to the Future Lawyer USA event when registering for the event at: https://www.futurelawyerusa.com/express-registration.
(Please note, the above complimentary ticket offer is only available to (a) private practice legal professionals who are licensed lawyers at the senior associate level or above, or (b) in-house legal department team members who are licensed lawyers or legal operations professionals. Please also note, only twenty (20) complimentary tickets are on offer on a first-come/first-served basis.)
Conferences and Other Events
◾ Here are some very special offers available for the FutureLawyerUSA event next week in Boston, MA, USA to members of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus community:
Obtain a 10% discount on a ticket to the Future Lawyer USA event if you're a member of the team at a legal tech solutions provider by using the code LTSFVENDOR10 when registering for the event at: https://www.futurelawyerusa.com
Subject to the qualification requirements stated below, and also subject to a ticket-quantity limitation also stated below, obtain a complimentary ticket to the Future Lawyer USA event when registering for the event at: https://www.futurelawyerusa.com/express-registration.
(Please note, the above complimentary ticket offer is only available to (a) private practice legal professionals who are licensed lawyers at the senior associate level or above, or (b) in-house legal department team members who are licensed lawyers or legal operations professionals. Please also note, only twenty (20) complimentary tickets are on offer on a first-come/first-served basis.)
◾ To all community members who are legal tech vendor/solutions-provider leaders:
The very good folks at Cosmonauts, the company behind the FutureLawyer USA event coming up on October 29-30, 2025, in Boston, MA, USA (https://www.futurelawyerusa.com/), are making yet another great offer available to legal tech companies whose team members are part of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus community. This offer provides a 5% discount on the cost of a company sponsorship for the event.
Go to this link to see what companies are currently on the event's sponsorship roster: https://www.futurelawyerusa.com/sponsors.
But, for this discount offer, DO NOT apply to become an event sponsor by clicking on the "Become a 2025 Sponsor" button on the page at the link above. Instead, if you'd like to avail your company of this 5% sponsorship discount opportunity for the FutureLawyer 2025 event, email me at charlie@legaltechstartupfocus.com, and I'll pass on your discount request to the Cosmonauts folks. In your email to me, please be sure to include your company's full name, and please also provide the first and last name of a company contact, as well as that contact's work phone number and job title.
Do hurry if you're interested in taking advantage of this discount, the event is this week!!
Exit/M&A
◾ Law.com reports:
“Global contract review startup LegalOn announced Tuesday that it acquired Munich-based artificial intelligence governance management company Fides, the startup’s first acquisition.
“With its acquisition of Fides, LegalOn aims to offer products that bolster governance for in-house legal departments and better serve international customers by expanding operations to Germany, building on its current operation within the U.S., the U.K. and Japan.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/10/21/contract-review-startup-legalon-acquires-german-ai-company-fides-/
◾ Reporting from Law.com:
“On Thursday, legal tech startup Eudia announced its acquisition of alternative legal service provider (ALSP) Out-House.
“With the acquisition of Out-House, an ALSP focused on supporting corporate legal departments in areas like outside counsel management and contracting, Eudia hopes to bolster its expertise regarding in-house legal departments.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/10/22/legal-tech-startup-eudia-acquires-alsp-out-house/
Fundraising
◾ From Law.com:
“Syntracts, an on-premises contract intelligence platform, announced a $5.3 million seed funding round Tuesday. The round was led by Hyperplane, and included participation from Khosla Ventures, Top Harvest Capital and Fortitude Ventures, as well as existing investors Myriad Venture Partners and Point 72 Ventures.”
“Syntracts uses proprietary small language models, which are trained on synthetic legal data derived from users’ documents, to organize and structure contract data. The platform is designed to pull documents from firms’ document management systems, such as iManage and NetDocs, and organize them into structured data that can be leveraged by other tools, including data dashboards and artificial intelligence assistants.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/10/21/contract-intelligence-startup-co-founded-by-former-latham--watkins-director-announces-53m-seed-round/
◾ From Axios’ “Pro Rata” newsletter, today October 22, 2025:
“Casium, an immigration law platform for enterprises, raised $5m in seed funding. Maverick Ventures led, joined by AI2 Incubator, GTMfund, and Success Venture Partners. axios.link/4nbBMQP”
Honors and Awards
◾ A link below to a LinkedIn post from Mat Rotenberg of Bloomberg Law’s Dashboard Legal appwhere Mat proudly (and deservedly so) announces that Dashboard Legal is the “ . . . 2025 CODiE Award Winner for Best Legal Solution 🏆 - selected from a field of 70 outstanding products.”
Congratulations to Mat and all the other members of the Dashboard Legal team.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mat-rotenberg-10528537_proud-to-share-that-dashboard-legal-by-bloomberg-activity-7387207004714553345-OTnO?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAACjKkUBuYvfoBWwBGd7KKABZw3jrdiBcc0
Member Introductions/Questions
◾ Charein Faraj, a new LTSF community member, introduces herself to our community: "Hi, my name is Charein Faraj and I am the Founder and Principal of Innovation Attorney and Consulting. I work with legal technology and AI startups, providing guidance on product development, quality testing, security, and data privacy from an attorney’s perspective. I would love to connect and be of service to anyone building or innovating in this space. Feel free to contact me at here or at https://www.linkedin.com/in/chareinfaraj/ or www.innovation-attorney.com."
Partnerships/Business Development
◾ Reporting from Legal IT Insider:
“Thomson Reuters today (22 October) announced a new partnership with AI search engine DeepJudge, which will enable law firms to combine CoCounsel research with their own work product.
“DeepJudge, founded by former Google AI researchers, enables professionals to instantly surface insights across their internal knowledge bases with exceptional relevance and speed. The company was recently recognised as the most recommended legal AI tool by knowledge management group SKILLS.law.”
https://legaltechnology.com/2025/10/22/thomson-reuters-enters-partnership-with-deepjudge/
Product Development
◾ A post from Stephen Embry at Above the Law about Clio’s emergence as a significant player in the legal tech vendor space that includes not only selling to solo/small to medium size law firms, but also selling to the law firms comprising so-called BigLaw. More, the post speaks to Clio’s moving beyond providing “just” practice management tools to providing an all-in-one tool-set rivaling, say, Harvey and Legora - all with Clio’s vLex acquisition.
https://abovethelaw.com/2025/10/clios-metamorphosis-from-practice-management-to-a-comprehensive-ai-and-law-practice-provider/
◾ A product release announcement today (October 23, 2025) from IP solutions provider, Questel. From the announcement:
“Questel, a world leader in intellectual property (IP) solutions, today launched its new AI-assisted Sophia Platform which includes Sophia Search, Document, Query and Lab solutions. Industry-leading Sophia is the first IP-specific AI assistant to leverage Questel’s 40+ years of patent search and proprietary technology development expertise. Drawing upon this vast domain experience, Sophia is a unique and distinctive AI tech for IP that is unmatched in its field. Searching patents, reviewing documents, and simplifying query creation are all accelerated by the secure, confidential Sophia IP AI associate tool.”
The compete announcement can be accessed at this link: https://www.questel.com/questel-launches-new-ai-assisted-sophia-platform-for-ip-including-search-document-query-and-lab/
◾ From Artificial Lawyer:
"Fortune 500 company Workday has launched a Custom AI Model Library for contract needs, powered by its Evisort acquisition. The library will connect with its contract agent and includes more than ‘120 pre-built AI models trained to identify key clauses, risks, line items, and terms in contracts’.
"It’s aimed at ‘everything from HR agreements to vendor contracts to sales deals’, they said, and is one of the most visible signs yet that the Evisort deal has translated into new products within Workday, a huge company that provides for a range of corporate operational needs."
$$Quote: "Is this a big deal? As noted, it’s an important sign that Ting and team are having a notable impact at Workday since the acquisition of their pioneering contract AI company. Will this be competition to all the many other CLM and contract-focused AI startups? Well, it certainly adds to the competition. One key advantage they have is that Workday, which is a $8.5 billion revenue business, has a huge client base. Its many clients will thus be able to tap these additional contract skills."
https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/10/22/workday-launches-contract-ai-library/
Purchasing/Using Legal Tech
◾ Law.com reports on the third annual GenAI Strategic Value for Corporate Law Departments report, published by Everlaw and the Association of Corporate Counsel:
“In-house lawyers are using generative artificial intelligence in their legal practice at a dramatically higher rate than a year ago, but they have yet to exert much pressure on their outside counsel to do the same, according to a report released Tuesday.”
$$Quote: “Gen AI still appears to be having a relatively muted impact on the relationships between corporate legal departments and their outside counsel. A majority (59%) of respondents said they do not know whether or not their firms are leveraging gen AI in legal work, and only 19% said they are encouraging firms to do so.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/10/16/in-house-teams-are-quickly-adopting-gen-ai-they-dont-know-if-their-outside-counsel-are-doing-the-same/
◾ From Entegrata’s announcement today, October 21, 2925 - this time it’s a customer-win for Entegrata involving AmLaw 200 firm, Winston & Strawn:
“We’re excited to welcome Winston & Strawn as the 9th AmLaw 200 firm to Entegrata’s
legal-focused data platform. This strategic move underscores the firm’s commitment to
modernizing its data foundation in support of enterprise reporting, scalable analytics, and
emerging AI capabilities.
“Winston & Strawn is focused on creating a unified view of information across its technology
landscape, unlocking data from multiple firmwide systems to drive better decisions, improve
operational insight, and prepare for the next generation of AI-driven innovation. Recognizing
the value of a centralized, analytics-ready architecture, the firm selected Entegrata’s
purpose-built Azure lakehouse platform to streamline this transformation.”
The entire announcement can be accessed at this link: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/92526944?utm_source=manual
◾ Do read the LinkedIn post (link appears below) from Oz Benamram, where he summarizes thoughts expressed during what Oz called a “𝗙𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀” dinner conversation about Preparing for Agentic AI in Law. As Oz writes in his post:
"The Context: We gathered to discuss how to prepare for agentic AI, the next wave in which AI doesn't just respond to prompts but takes autonomous actions."
And don't forget to read the comments on Oz's post - some very worthwhile thoughts can be found there.
◾ Law.com posts an article featuring Timothy Fox, Ogletree Deakins' senior director of practice innovation and solutions, who, at LegalTech Connect's recent innovators and investors event, discussed "lessons learned" in creating custom-made AI apps for the law firm.
$$Quote: " 'Anytime you build something, you have to support it. The more successful it is, the more you have to support it. And so if I have somebody on my team build out a really successful app, I lose 20-30% of their capacity going forward just for support. ... You get that innovator's dilemma: how do you keep building when you have to support all of this stuff?' Fox said."
◾ With all the functional overlap among legal tech apps in the market right now, how does a purchaser decide which app purchase? In this LinkedIn post (link below), Nikki Shaver of the Legaltech Hub offers some advice.
From Nikki’s post:
“Beyond increased startup activity, another reason the #legaltech market is so complex right now - and so impossible for buyers to navigate - is the huge amount of overlap between solutions. Overlap has always been tricky but never more so than since GenAI entered the field.”
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nicola-shaver_legaltech-legaltech-technology-activity-7384554978670956545-G2ZJ?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAACjKkUBuYvfoBWwBGd7KKABZw3jrdiBcc0
Regulation
◾ Below is a link to a LinkedIn post from Nicole Black, Principal Legal Insight Strategist at 8 am (formerly Affinipay), which points out that:
“New York just joined Illinois, Arizona, and Pennsylvania in setting guidelines for how judges and court staff can use AI. The policy covers who can use it, what tools are allowed, and what should (and shouldn’t) be uploaded.”
The rest of the post can, of course, be found at the link below, where in the comments to that post you can also access the article that Nicole authored about these efforts to regulate judge and court staff access to GenAI.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nikiblack_new-york-just-joined-illinois-arizona-and-activity-7386389629026869248-rouk?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAACjKkUBuYvfoBWwBGd7KKABZw3jrdiBcc0
◾ From new community member, Nate Patel: "What AI Governance Really Is (Demystified) | Nate Patel
"Forget vague principles. AI governance is the practical, end-to-end framework ensuring AI systems are lawful, ethical, safe, and effective — from initial design and training to deployment, monitoring, and eventual decommissioning. It translates lofty ideals into concrete actions and accountability.
"Core Components: The Pillars of Responsible AI:
"Accountability: Clear ownership is paramount. Who answers when the AI fails catastrophically? Governance mandates defined roles and responsibilities for every stage of the AI lifecycle (e.g., data scientists, product owners, legal, C-suite). This includes documented decision trails and escalation paths.
"Transparency & Explainability: Can you meaningfully explain how your AI arrived at a critical decision to a regulator, customer, or judge? This isn’t just about technical “black box” interpretability, but about providing auditable reasons understandable to stakeholders. This is non-negotiable under regulations like the EU AI Act.
"Fairness & Bias Mitigation: Proactively identifying and minimizing discriminatory outcomes is critical, especially in high-stakes domains like hiring, lending, healthcare diagnostics, and law enforcement. This involves rigorous testing on diverse datasets throughout development and monitoring for drift in production.
"Robustness, Safety & Security: AI systems must perform reliably under diverse conditions and be resilient against attacks. Governance ensures rigorous testing for vulnerabilities (e.g., adversarial attacks, data poisoning) and establishes protocols for safe failure modes. Protecting the model itself as critical IP is also key.
"Compliance: Actively aligning with evolving legal and regulatory landscapes (EU AI Act, US Executive Orders, NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, sector-specific rules like HIPAA or financial regulations) is foundational. Governance translates complex regulations into operational requirements.
"Privacy: Ensuring AI systems adhere to data protection principles (GDPR, CCPA) by design, minimizing data collection, and safeguarding sensitive information used in training and inference.
"Human Oversight & Control: Defining when and how humans must remain in the loop for critical decisions, ensuring meaningful review, and providing mechanisms for intervention and override.
"Analogy: “AI Governance is the seatbelt and airbag system for your self-driving car.” You wouldn’t push the accelerator to full speed without these safety mechanisms. Governance isn’t about slowing down innovation; it’s about enabling you to innovate faster and more confidently by managing the inherent risks. It allows the engine of AI to deliver value safely.
"Read More: AI Governance: Why It’s Your Business’s New Non-Negotiable
Building Your AI Governance Foundation
From Principles to Playbook: Build an AI-Governance Framework in 30 Days"
◾ “In September, the Italian government passed Law 132, a sweeping national statute for the regulation of artificial intelligence.”
“In Italy, that legislation includes provisions introducing specific protections for children, laying out rules for AI use in sectors such as employment and health care, and imposing prison sentences for harmful uses such as the creation and propagation of misleading deepfakes. Although Italy was the first member state to issue national legislation on AI, others are likely to follow, animated by concerns ranging from sectors of particular economic importance to historical sensitivities.”
https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/10/24/what-does-italys-ai-law-mean-for-developers-and-deployers-in-europe-/
◾ A post from Legal IT Insider:
“The UK Legal IT Innovators Group (Litig) today (22 October) announced the launch of an AI Transparency Charter, under which legal organisations will commit to ensuring that products and services that use generative AI are developed in a safe, ethical, and transparent way.
“The Charter is supported by a Transparency Statement – a standardised template, inspired by Google’s AI “model cards,” under which providers of legal AI tools will set out details of their technology, use cases, data, testing methods, and ethical safeguards at the product or service level.”
https://legaltechnology.com/2025/10/22/litig-unveils-ai-transparency-charter-to-promote-responsible-ai-adoption-in-the-legal-sector/
Startup Management
◾ Law.com reporting here:
“Earlier this month, e-discovery provider Everlaw announced the appointment of Max Christoff as its first-ever chief technology officer. The company simultaneously announced plans to grow its research and development team, which Christoff will lead, by roughly 30% by the end of January 2026.”
Read the interview with Max Christoff here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/10/20/everlaws-new-cto-on-making-the-leap-to-legal-tech-and-investing-in-research-/
Legal Tech StartUp Focus Newsletter
A weekly newsletter with links to articles from around the world that help legal tech startup leaders (and their customers and their investors) succeed in business
November 10, 2025 -- Issue #367 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. If you enjoy reading this digest, please forward it to others with an interest in legal tech startups. Readers who aren't already members of the LTSF community and who wish to join can do so here....
November 3, 2025 -- Issue #366 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. If you enjoy reading this digest, please forward it to others with an interest in legal tech startups. Readers who aren't already members of the LTSF community and who wish to join can do so here....
October 20, 2025 — Issue #364 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. If you enjoy reading this digest, please forward it to others with an interest in legal tech startups. Readers who aren't already members of the LTSF community and who wish to join can do so here. Please...