9 innovative lawtech startups that are disrupting Britain’s legal sector

Silicon Canals reports…

Lawtech is less mature than other fields of digital disruption, especially fintech, healthtech, and others. In lawtech, the growth areas include legal project management, legal analytics, contract management, and governance and compliance. Of late, the legal and tech community have restructured and reinvented legal services, to cater to the needs of evolving demands in the digital world.

Valuable lawtech startups in UK

Talking about global investments in lawtech, this sector stands at $926M (nearly €787M) with 26 lawtech deals, claims a report by The Law Society. Of this, a bigger sum has gone into legal solutions that use AI now, while it was $233M a few years back. Having said that, here is a list of lawtech startups in the UK with a valuation of over $50M (nearly €42.4M) as sourced from Dealroom. Do check out!

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Picture credits: ContractPod

ContractPod

Founder/s: Robert Glennie, Sarvarth Misra
Founded year: 2012
Funding: €50M

ContractPod is a London-based AI-powered contract lifecycle management platform combining all the necessary contract tools into a single convenient place. It lets you generate contracts, use AI to review third-party documents, and run reports on existing contracts in one place.

Back in 2019, ContractPod secured $55M (nearly €47M) Series B funding led by Insight Partners along with participation from Eagle Proprietary Investments. Notably, this investment marks the world’s largest legaltech Series B funding round in the contract lifecycle management sector.

 

Picture credits: Elliptic

Elliptic

Founder/s: Tom Robinson, James Smith, Adam Joyce
Founded year: 2013
Funding: €32.3M

Elliptic’s platform identifies illicit activity on the bitcoin blockchain and provides actionable intelligence to financial institutions and law enforcement agencies to reduce bitcoin transaction risk. Elliptic’s technology enables tracing an entity’s transaction activity through the blockchain instantly.

Elliptic’s proprietary database delivers auditable proof of identity for millions of addresses in multiple cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin & others across thousands of real-world entities. Earlier this year, Elliptic secured €5M (nearly €4.25M) funding from Wells Fargo and Company as an extension to the Series B funding that it got last year.

Picture credits: Farewill

Farewill

Founder/s: Antton Peña, Dan Garrett, Tom Rogers
Founded year: 2015
Funding: €31.6M

UK-based startup Farewill is transforming the outdated death industry and the expensive as well as complex processes. In addition to this, the platform avoids legal jargon and eliminates hidden fees and unnecessary friction when people will feel the most vulnerable.

A few months back, Farewill that bagged the ‘best social innovation’ at the 2020 Europas raised €22.1M (nearly €18.8 M) led by growth-stage experts Highland Europe alongside Keen Venture Partners, Rich Pierson of Headspace, Broadhaven Ventures, Venture Founders and previous investors such as Augmentum Fintech, Taavet Hinrikus (TransferWise), and Kindred Capital.

Picture credits: Luminance

Luminance

Founder/s: Dr. James Loxam, Adam Guthrie
Founded year: 2015
Funding: €20.9M

London-based Luminance Technologies uses Artificial Intelligence for the legal processes. The startup’s machine learning capabilities are transforming document reviews for lawyers across the world. It uses technology developed at the University of Cambridge and it is said to read and understand legal language similar to the human brain.

Luminance’s technology can read and create an understanding of legal documentation in any language and jurisdiction, immediately surfacing the most relevant information and vastly reducing the amount of time spent on document review. Back in 2019, Luminance raised $10M (nearly €8.5M) funding from Talis CapitalInvoke CapitalSlaughter and May.

Picture credits: Peppermint Technologies

Peppermint Technology

Founder/s: Arlene Adams
Founded year: 2010
Funding: €20.4M

Legal technology cloud provider Peppermint Technology provides the full suite of legal applications that are delivered as a SaaS product. Last year, the company launched a Dynamics 365 public cloud customer relationship management system that is all set to gain the interest of a majority of enterprise clients of Microsoft.

Back in 2019, Peppermint Technology secured £7M (nearly €7.7M) funding from Silicon Valley tech investment firm Accel-KKR and long-term investors Scottish Equity Partners to accelerate its growth and develop its legal software as a service platform.

Picture credits: DoNotPay

DoNotPay

Founder/s: Joshua Browder
Founded year: 2016
Funding: €16.3M

DoNotPay is an online robot lawyer that allows anyone to automatically claim asylum in the US, UK, and Canada for free. The chatbot was originally built to contest parking tickets but expanded to include other services as well. As a robot lawyer, DoNotPay is a downloadable mobile app that uses artificial intelligence to provide legal services to all users free of charge. It is currently available in the United Kingdom and the United States.

In June this year, DoNotPay bagged $12M (nearly €87M) Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Felicis Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue Management, and Day One Ventures. During the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, DoNotPay’s legality bots help consumers fight for their rights and this meant an increase in the demand for this service.

Picture credits: ThoughtRiver

ThoughtRiver

Founder/s: Tim Pullan
Founded year: 2009
Funding: €12.7M

Contract intelligence vendor ThoughtRiver’s technology brings about automation in the day-to-day routing and prioritisation of decisions in corporate legal functions. It uses machine learning to interpret contracts and assess their risk depending on corporate policies and protocols. ThoughRiver’s automated contract review software enables companies that want to accelerate the process of reviewing, negotiating, and signing contracts.

Last month, ThoughtRiver secured €8.4M (nearly €7.1M) in a Series A funding round led by Octopus Ventures, a European VC that invests in technology innovation leaders. The other investors that support ThoughRiver are Syndicate Room, Entrée Capital, Local Globe, Crane, and angel investor Duncan Painter. With offices in London, Singapore, New York, Cambridge, and Auckland, this startup plans to focus on growing its market share in the US and scale its sales and marketing efforts.

Picture credits: Epoq

Epoq

Founder/s: Grahame Cohen
Founded year: 1994
Funding: €12M

Epoq claims to be a pioneer in the development of online legal document services that are now widely used solutions in the UK. These services that are delivered to customers by insurers, banks, membership organisations, and employers, simplify the access to legal services.

The company has developed a suite of legal services including hundreds of legal documents, contracts, and letters. On the other hand, a team of lawyers handles document reviews and provide legal advice 24/7. Notably, all these are available online or over the phone.

Picture credits: Apperio

Apperio

Founder/s: Nicholas d’Adhemar
Founded year: 2012
Funding: €11.6M

Apperio intends to transform how legal departments are run. The company does this by bringing more clarity, control, and confidence to in-house legal teams. Apperio enables in-house lawyers to track and analyse legal spend across all their law firms, in real-time, in one place. Apperio’s technology gives users control over their budgets.

Back in 2018, Apperio announced that it raised $10M (nearly €8.5M) in a Series A round led by Draper Esprit and supported by existing investors – Notion, IQ Capital, and angels.