Trellis Research, a comprehensive AI-powered state court research and analytics platform built by litigators for litigators, today announced a $14.1 million Series A round led by Headline, with participation from Calibrate Ventures, Okapi Ventures, Craft Ventures, and Revel Partners.
Some of the legal industry’s heaviest hitters participated in the Series A as angel investors, including Colin Stretch, former general counsel of Facebook, Julius Genachowski, the former FCC Chairman, David Hantman, former head of public policy at Airbnb, Eddie Lazarus, EVP Sonos, and Matt Mazza, general counsel at Appfolio. This latest financing brings Trellis’ total fundraising to $20 million.
Launched in 2018, Trellis is a searchable database of state trial court data, offering a powerful AI-driven data analytics platform to legal practitioners. By analyzing data across state courts, Trellis gives lawyers access to information that was not previously standardized nor searchable. Aggregated via Trellis’s two products — Smart Search and Judge Analytics — users are able to seamlessly find past rulings, easily search opposing counsel’s dockets, review influential court documents — such as past motions, and understand a judge’s ruling tendencies and biographical information including evidentiary rules.
“The opacity of the state court system is unacceptable.” said Nicole Clark, co-founder and CEO of Trellis. “By creating a way to aggregate data, and providing legal teams with a streamlined way to access critical case-making insights, we are modernizing the world’s largest court system. Harnessing digitally-accessible data to create successful litigation strategies will be the new baseline for the legal industry.”
Attorney teams, from boutique firms to large corporate legal departments, utilize Trellis to access clearly-distilled information on a judge, venue, or specific law firm’s trial court performance, improving trial outcomes, decreasing research time and reducing case costs.
“Accessing state court data is a major pain point in today’s legal process,” said Jett Fein, Partner at Headline. “Nicole, Alon, and the Trellis team built a platform that completely transformed a decades-old process, and in turn, democratized access to legal insights for litigators and others across the United States. We look forward to being a part of Trellis’ continued momentum as they bring greater access and transparency to state court data.”
Trellis currently aggregates data from 362 trial courts across 12 of the most litigious states in the nation. Every county analyzed by Trellis includes 15 years of historical trial case data, verdict analysis, visualizations, and searchable filed documents. Trellis’ database contains over 90 million documents, serving as the only comprehensive, searchable platform of state trial court data.
"Trellis has harnessed AI to make state trial data accessible and searchable for the first time, putting a powerful tool into the hands of corporate and law firm litigators," said Kevin Dunlap, managing partner at Calibrate Ventures. "We invest in visionary founders who understand that automation will drive every aspect of life going forward, and Trellis co-founders Nicole, a lawyer herself, and Alon, a serial founder, have what it takes to build a leading legal data analytics powerhouse. We're thrilled to support Nicole and Alon on their company-building journey."
The latest funding will be used to fuel product expansion and hiring efforts as the company seeks to extend its reach, focusing on the vast amount of data in trial courts across all 50 states. The financing will allow for Trellis to expand its use cases beyond the legal vertical, and introduce the platform to other adjacent industries that need access to its data — including real estate and property management, financial services and insurance.
Copyright © 2023 Legal IT Professionals. All Rights Reserved.