Global News
Today, legal technology specialist LawAdvisor Ventures has announced that it has secured USD$5 million of investment across its portfolio of ventures in a seed round involving some of the legal industry’s most influential thinkers.
The capital injection includes investment from Ralph Baxter (former Chairman and CEO of Orrick), Ben Davey (former CEO, Barclays Ventures), as well as leaders from Microsoft and Gilead, and will help scale the team and capitalise on opportunities to revolutionise the practice of law with the aid of technology.
Early last year, LawAdvisor launched two breakthrough new software as service (SaaS) solutions for the legal profession, LegalEye and Fibonacci. These solutions – whose development was informed by a steering group of leading legal teams – are designed to transform how law firms work with corporate in-house legal departments and the way legal matters are managed. Both use technology to enhance collaboration and communication between lawyers and other stakeholders during the course of a legal matter to boost productivity and maximise the time lawyers spend on case work rather than administrative tasks.
Developed by remote teams and launched during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, LegalEye and Fibonacci are already gaining significant market traction – with the company achieving annual recurring license revenues in excess of $2 million on their release, and early multinational clients including Bird & Bird, Simmons & Simmons, Paul Hastings, Clifford Chance, Shearman & Sterling, and Barclays.
As a result of this early traction, LawAdvisor opened up a strategic investment round to accelerate efforts to use its technology to solve the real-world challenges the legal profession is facing.
Ralph Baxter, who since leaving his role as chairman and CEO of Orrick has engaged with a number of successful legal technology companies, sitting on boards of Intapp, Lex Machina, and LegalZoom, believes LawAdvisor has the capacity to revolutionize the way lawyers work with clients. Commenting on the investment, Baxter said: “We’re at a pivotal moment for legal technology. To make a difference, legal tech companies must understand the pain points facing lawyers and their clients, and fashion solutions that meaningfully address them; LawAdvisor does just that, making it an exceptional new contributor to the legal services ecosystem. Led by a remarkable team, LawAdvisor has the potential to change the way legal service is delivered, for the benefit of everyone. I am excited to help the team realise these goals.”
Gary Tully, Head of Legal Operations at Gilead Silences and whose team won Corporate Counsel’s 2021 Best Legal Ops Team - when speaking about the success of LawAdvisor’s digital tools - noted that “the sheer velocity and rate of change facing today’s legal departments has created new challenges requiring new age thinking. LawAdvisor is addressing these challenges with its remarkably innovative tools. Tools that offer organizations the opportunity of achieving operational excellence”.
Investors in the seed round include some of the world’s most respected and celebrated legal and technology minds:
The investors will also form a new advisory panel aimed at helping LawAdvisor further develop its technology especially amidst the legal operations revolution, achieve its growth goals, and capitalise on the significant opportunities to reshape the way the law is practised to the benefit of all parties, be it from the small in-house legal team to the multinational law firm. The advisory panel is being joined by Steve Albrecht, General Counsel Barclays Execution Services, Christopher Grant, consultant and LawTech UK Panel member, Stephanie Hamon, Head of Legal Operations Consulting, Norton Rose Fulbright, and David Kerr, Former CEO, Bird & Bird.
Ben Davey, said: “The LawAdvisor team has built something that has huge potential to transform the legal profession. In an industry that has traditionally been reluctant to embrace new technology and ways of working, the collaborative approach taken to developing solutions to the industry’s trickiest issues has seen the team create something that in a short space of time could become industry standard. Combine that with the outcomes LawAdvisor’s customers see using the technology, and it’s easy to get very excited about where this business is headed. The calibre of the investors and advisors joining me in supporting this venture is testament to just how transformative it could be. I’m very much looking forward to being part of that journey as LawAdvisor continues to go from strength to strength.”
“We founded LawAdvisor to use technology to address some of the fundamental flaws in the way the law was practiced and services were delivered. Having seen those challenges first hand, we brought in some of the leading legal teams around the world to develop solutions to those most pressing problems in collaboration with the leading thinkers in the industry,” said Brennan Ong, founder and CEO of LawAdvisor Ventures. “Since launching LegalEye and Fibonacci this year, we have been blown by the reaction of our early customers and the wider market. We now want to further develop our technology so it can solve even more of the challenges today’s lawyers are facing and roll it out across more legal teams around the world. Our direct expertise of both technology and the law, coupled with our low-code, building block approach has proven to be a game-changer for legal teams. With the support of our investors and advisors, we can focus on growing our team, improving our products, and developing the business to fundamentally transform the way legal services are delivered.”
LawAdvisors’ clients are vocal advocates of the benefits of the technology, driving significant interest and demand from new clients and fuelling the company’s growth strategy. This new investment will be used to not only roll out the solutions to those new customers but further refine the capabilities and micro-services within the platforms to solve an ever-wider range of problems the legal industry is facing; ultimately facilitating what lawyers do best and allowing them to lawyer like never before.
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