September 15, 2025 -- Issue #359

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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Sponsorships:

The Legal Tech StartUp Focus (LTSF) community's platform (this newsletter, the podcast, and the community's website and LinkedIn following) is now accepting sponsors for the fall. If you are interested in reaching LTSF's audience of startup leaders and other legal innovators, send me an email at charlie@legaltechstartupfocus.com.

Conferences and Other Events

◾ Long-time legal tech commentator and long-time legal tech conference attendee, Bob Ambrogi describes what made "the inaugural Kaleidoscope conference in Austin last week" from legal tech company 8am (formerly, Affinipay) such a success. Click on the link below to find out, as Bob himself puts it, what were "[a]mong the nice touches that made this [conference] feel so polished and professional."

​https://www.lawnext.com/2025/09/why-did-this-first-time-conference-feel-like-deja-vu-all-over-again-my-thoughts-on-8ams-kaleidoscope.html​

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◾ From community member, Sejal Thakkar of ZentLaw: "Legal leaders, legaltech founders, and investors—we invite you to join us at TECH WEEK by a16z for candid AI + law insights and exclusive networking, October 8th.
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"We are teaming up with TECH WEEK by a16z, ZentLaw, Law Innovation Agency and Chief LegalX to bring you AI + The Next Era of Legal: Unplugged at #SFTechWeek.
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"This dynamic conversation will be moderated by Monica Zent, Managing Director of Law Innovation Agency and Founder & CEO of ZentLaw—a recognized thought leader in legal technology and services, investing, and legal innovation.
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"The panel will feature fellow legal innovators/game changers sharing actionable insights and strategies to bridge the gap between law and technology, with a focus on practical implementation and opportunities created by #AI.
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"Join us for candid conversations, a dynamic panel chat, and an exclusive networking mixer with GCs, VCs, Legal Ops leaders and LegalTech founders.
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RSVP here: https://partiful.com/e/h5poS2VHKPJtzggAt0Kh "

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Exit/M&A

◾ PE firm acquires UK commercial law firm:
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“Private equity investor LDC has completed its investment in full-service commercial law firm Harper James.”
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“Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Birmingham, Harper James delivers tailored legal support to SMEs across the UK through what it describes as a transparent and cost-effective subscription-based model that can scale according to client needs. The firm gives clients access to a team of fully remote lawyers – with an average of 17+ years’ experience – reportedly at a fraction of the cost of traditional city law firms.”
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​https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/westmidlands/news/2102151-pe-backing-from-ldc-to-accelerate-growth-of-sme-focused-law-firm​

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Honors and Awards

◾ The LawSites blog posts:
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“Forbes is out this week with its 10th annual Cloud 100 list, tracking the top companies in cloud computing, and four legal tech companies made the list, while one dropped off from last year.”
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Check out the companies awarded a place on the list by visiting this link: https://www.lawnext.com/2025/09/four-legal-tech-companies-make-the-forbes-cloud-100-and-two-others-are-rising-stars.html​

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◾ Legal Tech News reports:

"We're excited to announce the call for nominations for the 2026 Legalweek Leaders in Tech Law Awards. We've added a few new categories this year, including Most Innovative Law Firm/Client Tech Collaboration, Innovations in Arbitration/Mediation Technology, Best Custom Legal Technology Development, among others.

"The deadline for nominations is November 24, 2025 at 5pm EST. Click here for the Legalweek Leaders in Tech Law awards site, with information on categories, nomination forms and the awards dinner at Legalweek 2026."

"Categories available this year are available for Law Firms, In-House Legal Departments, and Providers. You can find all the categories here on the awards site and the criteria for nominations here. Please note that to view full nomination forms and questions, you'll have to register and log into the Awardsforce platform for each category."

Awards website here: https://www.event.law.com/legalweek-leaders-tech/home​

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JusticeTech/A2J

◾ Very pleasing A2J story here with the creation of the Fire Fairness app using the website /app building tool, Lovable.
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“Shalini Ananda, an AI Researcher, turned her backend engineering skills into real-world impact with Lovable. With zero frontend experience, she built Fire Fairness—an “insurance equity engine” that helps non-profit legal aid groups process wildfire insurance claims 360x faster while eliminating bias through multi-agent AI coordination. Already used by attorneys supporting victims of the 2025 Los Angeles fires, Fire Fairness demonstrates what’s possible when Lovable builders use algorithms for advocacy.”
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H/T to Richard Tromans of Artificial Lawyer for bringing this story to my attention by way of a LinkedIn post.
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​https://lovable.dev/blog/from-command-line-to-community-impact​

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Partnerships/Business Development​
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◾ Legal tech news seems to include a lot of reporting about business partnerships among legal tech vendors. Here’s Artificial Lawyer with a post on LawVu and ClauseBase “partnering up.”
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As Artificial Lawyer notes in the linked post (below):
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“Is this a big deal? Well, there’s a few aspects here. First is the way that companies on different sides of the planet are working so closely together. Another point is that we are seeing more and more partnerships between legal tech companies – and that points to growing client demand for broader, connected solutions, but not necessarily a desire for the legal tech companies to merge together. For example, see the recent inhouse-focused deal between Juro and Wordsmith.”
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Full post here: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/09/08/lawvu-partners-with-clausebase/?jetpack_skip_subscription_popup​

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◾ And speaking of legal tech partnerships, no sooner does the “ink dry” on the post from Artificial Lawyer about the a LawVu/ClauseBase partnership, there comes AL’s post about a Thomson Reuters and Icertis partnership tie-up.
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​https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/09/08/thomson-reuters-icertis-form-ai-partnership/​

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◾ From Legal Tech News today:

"On Monday, Deloitte Legal, a U.K. law firm that operates as a unit of global consulting and professional services firm Deloitte, announced a partnership with Stockholm-based legal artificial intelligence platform Legora. The organizations will partner to help U.K.-based legal teams develop and implement AI strategies and deployments."

​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/09/08/legora-partners-with-deloitte-legal-in-the-uk-/?kw=Legora+Partners+With+Deloitte+Legal+in+the+UK&utm_position=1&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20250909&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&slreturn=20250909081848​

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◾ A LegalTech News legal tech rundown graces our Friday posting on the LTSF website. Noteworthy are: new product launches, hirings, business partnerships, and Harvey’s announcement of its mobile app release plans. .
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​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/09/12/harvey-to-release-mobile-apps-for-ios-and-android-thomson-reuters-partners-with-icertis-and-accenture-and-more/​

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Product Development

◾ Word from Artificial Lawyer:

“After doing multiple contract AI deals with vendors such as Evisort, Harvey, Dioptra, and most recently Thomson Reuters, CLM company Icertis has now launched its own contract AI tool – Vera. But not just that, it comes with a host of related tools, including a bunch of agents as well.

“So, what is Vera?

“They explain that it is a ‘smarter AI for contracts…powered by one of the largest repositories of contract data in the world, Icertis Vera reflects the true intent of agreements with unmatched accuracy through deep contextual understanding of the business relationships captured in contracts’.”

Entire article here (very much worth a read): https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/09/10/clm-icertis-launches-own-contract-ai-system-vera/​

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◾ From Legal IT Insider:
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“International law and arbitration research platform Jus Mundi today (10 September) announced the launch of Jus AI 2, its second generation arbitration agent.
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“Jus Mundi was founded in 2019 and is used by leading firms including Freshfields, A&O Shearman, White & Case, Quinn Emanuel, Three Crowns, Wong Partnership, and Al Tamimi
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“One year after launching Jus AI – its AI assistant built for legal & arbitration professionals, we’re told that Jus AI 2 now combines agentic reasoning with deterministic search control.”
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Read the entire piece here: https://legaltechnology.com/2025/09/10/jus-mundi-launches-legal-research-agent-jus-ai-2/​

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◾ Bob Ambrogi’s LawSites blog has a humdinger of a post that discusses in depth what legal tech timekeeping company, Ajax, now offers. Very brief sample below of what’s covered by Bob’s post. Do read the entire piece at the link, also below.
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“The problem of legal timekeeping is as old as the billable hour itself. Lawyers either interrupt their work to record time contemporaneously, breaking their flow and concentration, or they reconstruct their time retroactively, inevitably missing billable work and resulting in weaker narratives for clients.
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“Enter Ajax, an AI-powered time-tracking platform that aims to solve this age-old dilemma through what co-founder Jack Weinberger calls “the smart approach” – continuously monitoring everything lawyers do on their devices and automatically generating polished time entries in real-time.”
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​https://www.lawnext.com/2025/09/the-smart-screen-reader-how-ajax-is-automating-legal-timekeeping-with-ai-powered-activity-tracking.html​

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◾ Legal Tech News here:

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"On Tuesday [September 9, 2025], practice management software provider AllRize announced the introduction of agentic artificial intelligence capabilities into its platform.

"Originally founded as a legal technology advisory firm and managed service provider for law firms, the company publicly launched a practice management platform in September 2024, intended to cover every stage of work from marketing to billing."

​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/09/10/practice-management-software-provider-allrize-adds-agentic-ai-capabilities/?kw=Practice+Management+Software+Provider+AllRize+Adds+Agentic+AI+Capabilities&utm_position=2&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20250911&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A​

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◾ Legaltech Hub does the proverbial deep dive on legal tech startup, Orbital Copilot:
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“Orbital Copilot is an AI-powered platform designed specifically for real estate legal teams, automating and accelerating complex real estate due diligence such as title and survey review, lease reporting, and title boundary analysis.
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Building on this foundation, Orbital set out to solve real estate law’s unique challenges: the complexity of multi-step workflows, the messiness of inconsistent or degraded source materials, and the need to interpret a uniquely physical asset class.
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“By combining deep domain expertise with AI, the company created tools that streamline complex reviews while preserving the precision required in high-value, large-scale transactions. Orbital Copilot emerged as the natural next step—a dedicated AI legal assistant for real estate, built to bring greater speed, accuracy, and visual intelligence to the practice.”
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Much more to the article here (all of which is worth reading, particularly in order to understand what a profound commitment to subject matter expertise can produce): https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/lth-product-briefing-orbital-copilot/
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#ProductDevelopment #PurchasingUsingLegalTech

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Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

◾ Paraphrasing Jack Swigert and Jim Lovell, astronauts on NASA's Apollo 13 mission, "Houston, we have a problem."

In part 1 of a multi-part series, Cheryl Wilson Griffin of Legaltech Hub discusses the implications of ChatGPT's preservation of thousands of chats - online and available publicly:

"Thought your ChatGPT chats were private? Think again. The internet’s most basic rule—nothing truly disappears—just served up a harsh reminder to thousands of ChatGPT users. Conversations many believed were fleeting are now public, archived, and in some cases, embarrassing.

"Among them? Interactions from professionals in legal, compliance, and other tightly regulated industries.

"What happened wasn’t a breach or malicious act. It was something far more mundane—and far more dangerous: a feature designed for convenience that quietly created long-term exposure. Now, with over 110,000 ChatGPT conversations preserved online, the implications for confidentiality, data governance, and professional ethics are impossible to ignore."

Read the entire Part 1 article here: https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/chatgpts-share-feature-exposed-thousands-of-conversations%E2%80%94-including-yours/​

Part 2 can be found here: https://www.legaltechnologyhub.com/contents/the-digital-dirt-the-chatgpt-confessions-that-should-make-legal-nervous/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_zYIHOYpBDpKAQN6WTOSULUP8Z18S9L32k1fqR_EL4z3qv4fo2aanZuISmth4xCVY0a5YqGsLZiD1AqGLP98xiFonNmk5wPHOdJeDlC2ILnmxFPAE&_hsmi=379426213&utm_content=379426213&utm_source=hs_email​

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◾ "AnthroTek, a Cambridge-based synthetic anatomy startup, has closed a £950,000 seed round at a £10.5 million pre-money valuation, achieving this milestone without the assistance of a single law firm. Instead, the company turned to Genie AI’s contract automation platform to handle everything from shareholder agreements to subscription documents, a move that slashed legal costs by 90 per cent."

$$Quote: "[AnthroTek co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer Nazmus Tarequ] adds, 'We completed a complex set of documents in a fraction of the usual time, and with minimal to zero external legal spend with Genie AI. I know that many founders are frustrated by the current legal fee system. My background as a graduate in law helped give me the confidence to do things differently. The market will show no loyalty to traditional legal services if AI systems keep generating more value for the dollar spent. Why should it?'”

H/T to The Legal Wire for bringing this article to my attention.

​https://techfundingnews.com/anthrotek-raises-950k-seed-round-legal-ai-uk-first/?utm_source=newsletter.thelegalwire.ai&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=studios-vs-midjourney-laws-on-ice-tariffs-in-limbo&_bhlid=9d86ad287ea90f06f88102429fb36c8c28212ec0​

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◾ Legal Tech News Reporting:

"The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has issued rules for judges and court personnel who want to use AI, giving the green light for such uses as summarizing documents, conducting preliminary legal research and drafting initial versions of documents."

​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/09/09/pa-high-court-allows-judges-personnel-to-use-ai-for-document-summary-preliminary-legal-research/?kw=Pa.+High+Court+Allows+Judges,+Personnel+to+Use+AI+for+Document+Summary,+Preliminary+Legal+Research&utm_position=3&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20250910&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A​

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Regulatory Reform​
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◾ “. . . an [Artificial Lawyer] In-depth interview with Jen Berrent, co-founder of one of the first AI-powered hybrid law firms [called ‘Covenant’].”
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$$Quote: “Berrent gave a detailed insight into how it all works and one comment really stood out for AL, which referred to ‘leverage’ – but using the word in relation to technology, not an army of associates. And this is perhaps the central difference between ‘traditional law firms’ and the likes of Covenant, Crosby and others: the leverage is from the AI, not people. There are skilled lawyers there, as part of the offering, and that group will grow, but the ‘engine’, as it were, is not a pyramid base of human legal labour, it’s AI and workflows and data management.”
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​https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/09/11/covenant-the-hybrid-ai-law-firm/​
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Startup Management

◾ Former founder, product manager, and now VC (at a16z), Andrew Chen has lived and breathed customer/revenue retention for 15 years. It's fitting, then, that he should author this Substack about retention and specify specific "iron laws" about same. Illuminating - very!!

​https://andrewchen.substack.com/p/lessons-learned-from-staring-at-thousands?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2401262&post_id=162002620&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1cv2&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email​

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◾ Episode 76 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast - Behnding the Scenes at Roboro: AI- Powered Legislative Intelligence.

From the show notes for the episode: Ever wondered how legislative affairs professionals keep track of rapidly changing bills across multiple states? The answer increasingly involves artificial intelligence, and Paul Rava, co-founder of Roboro (https://reboro.ai), is at the forefront of this transformation.

Link to entire show notes here: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/90534441?utm_source=manual and readers can listen to this podcast episode right here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2454829/episodes/17821195​

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◾ Episode 77 of the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast - From Frustration to Innovation: Building a Modern CLM for the AI Era. From the episode's show notes: Matt Lhoumeau never expected to build a contract lifecycle management platform. After being kicked out of his home at 17 when he came out, he built and sold a gaming website, worked for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and found himself tasked with renegotiating 500 vendor contracts at a major telecom company. That frustrating experience—hunting for contracts in file cabinets, building unwieldy spreadsheets, and missing critical deadlines—sparked the idea for Concord, the CLM that Matt founded and now heads.

Link to the entire show notes here: https://network-295075.mn.co/posts/90594706?utm_source=manual and here's a link you can click to listen to this episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2454829/episodes/17824096

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Teaching/Learning Legal Tech

◾ From Legal Tech News:

"On Tuesday [September 9, 2025], Washington University School of Law in St. Louis launched its inaugural AI Advisory Board to steer innovation efforts and guide legal technology strategy at the law school.

"Board members will meet with law school dean Stefanie Lindquist and the law school’s AI leadership team on a quarterly basis to identify various innovation opportunities for the Washington University’s law program from potential board member-led lectures to tech incubators."

Entire article (including a listing of these inaugural Advisory Board members) here: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2025/09/09/washington-university-school-of-law-taps-law-firm-legal-tech-leaders-for-ai-advisory-board/?kw=Washington+University+School+of+Law+Taps+Law+Firm,+Legal+Tech+Leaders+for+AI+Advisory+Board&utm_position=1&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=morningupdate&utm_content=20250910&utm_term=ltn&oly_enc_id=6788E2252056B4A&slreturn=20250910090243​

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