April 8, 2024 -- Issue #284

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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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Exit/M&A

🔳 “On Tuesday, CRM provider TRĒ AI announced that Todd Miller, founder of gwabbit, an enterprise relationship management (ERM) company that was bought by Intapp in 2019, has acquired a majority stake in the company and will become its new CEO.” https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/04/02/gwabbit-founder-todd-miller-acquires-majority-stake-in-crm-provider-tre-ai/​

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Fundraising

🔳 “Luminance has raised $40m Series B funding led by Santa Monica-based growth-stage venture firm, March Capital, with participation from National Grid Partners and other existing investors, including magic circle law firm Slaughter and May.” https://legaltechnology.com/2024/04/02/breaking-news-luminance-raises-40m-series-b/​

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🔳 Good friend, Russ Korins, at the NYC-based Cohen Tauber Spievack & Wagner law firm, is hosting another virtual fireside chat; this one on Monday, April 22, 12 noon to 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
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During this chat Russ will be speaking with Vance Dekker of Techstars. The discussion should be of great interest to legal tech startups (and startups in other verticals too) because it will focus on pre-seed funding trends and tips.

You can register (and find out more) here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yIvVWl8xRSKhGEZhcajGtg​

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🔳 From the StrictlyVC newsletter:
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“Ivo [formerly Latch], a San Francisco startup whose mission is to use generative AI to streamline the creation, negotiation, and management of legal documents, raised a $4.8 million round co-led by Uncork Capital and Fika Ventures, with previous investors Daniel Gross, GD1, and Phase One Ventures also taking part. The company has raised a total of $6.2 million.“ https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240404371942/en/Ivo-a-Generative-AI-Legal-Contracting-Solution-Raises-4.8M-to-Accelerate-Expansion-of-Existing-Platform​

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Honors and Awards

🔳 From community member, Kara Peterson of descrybe.ai: "EXCITING NEWS! We are officially a nominee in the The Webby Awards (AI, Metaverse & Virtual - Public Service & Activism category). The Webbys are the Internet's most coveted awards and there are two chances to win — The Webby Award is chosen by the Academy the People’s Voice Award is chosen by YOU. We hope we can get your vote!
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"This recognition is good for the whole #legaltech (and justice tech) ecosystem — let’s show the world that it is time to start paying attention to our sector!"https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2024/ai-metaverse-virtual/ai-apps-and-experiences/public-service-activism\​

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JusticeTech/A2J

🔳 "Justice tech founders told Legaltech News that three main regulatory hurdles often hold investors back when it comes to putting money into their ventures, creating a more difficult financial landscape for them to flourish like their traditional legal tech cohort. The hurdles include the unauthorized practice of law, fee-splitting restrictions for lawyers and law firm bans on accepting investment from nonlawyers."
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/04/01/regulatory-challenges-deter-investors-from-justice-tech-startups-but-the-opportunity-is-massive/​

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Product Development

🔳 “As a cloud-based CRM and marketing platform for law firms, Lawmatics has always featured a standard dashboard where users can get an at-a-glance overview of their activity and metrics. But now, the company has introduced custom dashboards, enabling firms to create their own unique dashboards showing the precise data they wish to track.”

Much more analysis of these new features at this link: “As a cloud-based CRM and marketing platform for law firms, Lawmatics has always featured a standard dashboard where users can get an at-a-glance overview of their activity and metrics. But now, the company has introduced custom dashboards, enabling firms to create their own unique dashboards showing the precise data they wish to track.”​

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🔳 As part of what the firm calls its “Winston 3.0” initiative, BigLaw’s Winston’s & Strawn’s “Winston Legal Solutions aims to address client cost concerns by providing an alternative to the outsourced legal provider marketplace that combines firm-trained attorneys, established processes, advanced technology and generative AI tools.”
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Captive ALSP for the win. Note too, legal tech startups, the intention to partner with outside legal tech solutions providers. https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/04/03/winston-strawn-launches-winston-legal-solutions-a-tech-powered-right-staffing-venture-for-low-complexity-work/​

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🔳 TechCrunch sifted through Y Combinator’s winter 2024 cohort’s 86 AI startups to select what TechCrunch some of the most “interesting.” Ami g those startups selected is “Hazel,” described in the linked article as a “solution is to use AI to automate the government contracting discovery, drafting and compliance process.“

Read more about Hazel here: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/03/ycs-winter-2024-demo-day-confirms-that-we-are-indeed-in-an-ai-bubble/​
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Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

🔳 From community member, Martha MacPherson: "eDiscovery Assistant is the only ediscovery case law database and resource center for attorneys and legal professionals. Designed by practicing ediscovery attorneys, eDA curates ediscovery case law, rules, checklists, forms and a learning center that deliver on-demand, practical knowledge to give litigators and the professionals that support them the ability to get up to speed quickly and credibly. eDA curates its data from more than 40 sources. Case law decisions are manually reviewed by our team and tagged using our proprietary system of ediscovery issues so users find cases in a few clicks.

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🔳 A client win press for MaxVal with the startup’s Symphony IP (intellectual property) management software solution being chosen by Atlanta-based law firm Meunier Carlin & Curfman.
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More in the press that can be found at this link: A client win press for MaxVal with the startup’s Symphony IP (intellectual property) management software solution being chosen by Atlanta-based law firm Meunier Carlin & Curfman. More in attached press release below.​

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🔳 More legal tech rundown information from Legaltech News: https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/03/29/legal-tech-rundown-opus-2-updates-haystack-id-m365-launch-and-more/

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🔳 Law firm and corporation training solutions provider Praktio has announced its ". . . latest on-demand course, 'Commercial Contract Essentials' https://praktio.com/products/commercial-contracts-essentials, empowers professionals with the acumen to confidently navigate commercial contracts." As announced in its April 2, 2024 press release (linked below), Praktio's new course ". . . is tailored for non-legal personnel, teaching foundational concepts and practical skills for handling contracts across a range of scenarios." https://praktio.com/blogs/resources/improving-contract-literacy-praktio-launches-on-demand-course-for-marmon-s-business-professionals​

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🔳 A Legaltech News interview with Evan Shenkman, Chief Knowledge and Innovation Officer at Fisher Phillips, and winner of the 2024 Legalweek Leaders in Tech Law Award for “Innovations in Knowledge Management, Law Firm.”
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One several “$$Quotes” from the linked article:
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“The first question many law firms ask innovative legal tech providers is, “Who else is using it?”, and unless the answer rattles off a list of Am Law luminary customers, they’ll pass. Moreover, if firms are actually willing to take a chance on a startup, most then still refuse to go on record and talk about it publicly. To encourage innovation in the legal industry, that needs to change.” https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/04/03/innovations-in-knowledge-management-winner-law-firm-fisher-phillips/​

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🔳 Nora Vinck of Henchman posts: "2024 Legal Tech Trends

"Thought this might be of interest here. With all the buzz around AI, it's easy to lose sight of the key trends shaping our legal industry. Therefore, we've consulted with 8 experts - including legal innovators and practicing lawyers - to present their perspectives on the trends in the upcoming months.
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"Enjoy and share your thoughts below! ⤵
Or if you have anything to add, I'd be happy to hear it.
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"Big thanks to:
Anaïs De Boulle, from Deloitte
Katherine Crowley, from Womble Bond Dickinson (UK) LLP
Cheryl Wilson Griffin, from Legal Tech Consultants
Friederike Wilde-Detmering, from Reed Smith LLP
Peter Duffy, from Titans
Andrei Salajan, from Schoenherr Attorneys at Law
Haley Sylvester, from Pryor Cashman
Jeff Pfeifer, from LexisNexis

"See 🔗 here: https://henchman.io/legal-tech-trends-2024 "

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🔳 BigLaw is big enough to hire “BigConsulting:”
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“Linklaters has hired consultancy giant Accenture for advice on its client strategy—the latest example of Big Law turning to business consultants for guidance.” https://www.law.com/international-edition/2024/04/04/linklaters-turns-to-accenture-for-tech-advice/​

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Regulatory Reform​
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🔳 By calling for a petition to the American Bar Association to cease using the term “non-lawyer,” “Olga Mack, a fellow at the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, and Damien Riehl, vice president and solutions champion at legal tech platform vLex, hope to generate a conversation that will make lawyers think twice about how they refer to their colleagues.” Good for you, Olga and Damien!! https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2024/04/03/petitioners-seek-to-remove-non-lawyer-from-aba-vocabulary-lively-discussion-ensues/​

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Startup Management

🔳 VC firm a16z comprehensively surveys the enterprise market for GenAI. https://a16z.com/generative-ai-enterprise-2024/​