March 25, 2024 -- Issue #282

​

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.
​

If you enjoy reading this digest, please forward it to others with an interest in legal tech startups. Readers who aren't already members of the LTSF community and who wish to join can do so here. Please do send me feedback here with any questions, comments or other ideas for this digest . If you're not already a subscriber to this newsletter and would like to subscribe, please email me here to join the subscriber list.
​

Oh, and if you want to unsubscribe to this digest, you can do so by using the link in this email's footer.

Fundraising

🔳 “SingleFile, a startup that offers a platform to automate the compliance filing process, is financially backed [with an extended seed round of $6.5 million] by a number of firms, including Wilson Sonsini, Cooley and others.” https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/03/22/compliance-startup-singlefile-raises-6-5m-with-investments-from-am-law-100-and-tltf/​

​

Honors and Awards

🔳 “Fast Company is out with its annual ranking of the world’s most innovative companies, and of the 606 companies that made the list, just four are from legal tech.” https://www.lawnext.com/2024/03/fast-companys-list-of-worlds-606-most-innovative-companies-includes-four-from-legal-tech.html​

​

🔳 As reported by the LawSites blog from Bob Ambrogi: “A bit late with this, as it was announced earlier this week, but the International Legal Technology Association, in celebration of Women’s History Month, has named five women as its 2024 Influential Women in Legal Tech.” https://www.lawnext.com/2024/03/ilta-honors-five-influential-women-of-legal-tech.html​

​

🔳 A link (below) to a post on LinkedIn from Paxton (whose CEO, Tanguy Chau, and CTO, Michael Ulin, were recently guests on the Legal Tech StartUp Focus Podcast):
​
“🚀 We're thrilled to announce that Paxton AI has been selected as one of the six AI startups to compete at the Ultimate AI Pitch Arena at Amazon Headquarters in Seattle! 🌟”
​
Congrats to Tanguy, Michael and the rest of the Paxton team on being selected! https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lorenzothione_the-ultimate-ai-pitch-arena-at-aws-headquarters-activity-7177125994300936192-W2sG?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios​

​

JusticeTech/A2J

🔳 “Maya Markovich, justice tech executive in residence at Village Capital, sees the justice tech market exploding at a faster rate than the general legal tech sector. The reasons range from social catalysts to growing awareness.” https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/03/15/once-ignored-by-investors-justice-tech-market-sees-new-opportunity/​

​

Partnerships/Business Development​
​

🔳 "Big Four accounting giant PwC has launched a new consulting service around ContractPodAI’s gen AI legal assistant ‘Leah.’" https://legaltechnology.com/2024/03/19/pwc-formalises-new-consulting-service-around-contractpodais-gen-ai-assistant/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email​

​

Product Development

🔳 “On Wednesday, legal analytics provider Lex Machina, a part of LexisNexis, announced the launch of Litigation Footprint, a major expansion of its litigation analytics that triples the total number of cases on its platform.” https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/03/20/lex-machina-launches-litigation-footprint-tripling-its-legal-analytics-coverage/​

​

🔳 From a LinkedIn post by Dan Katz at 273 Venture(entire post at the link below): “Today we are very excited to announce that the Kelvin Legal Large Language Model (KL3M) is now Certified as Fairly Trained. KL3M is the very first LLM (in any category) to obtain such a certification. Fairly Trained is a non-profit certification and auditing organization devoted to the certification of models that uphold the highest standards of respect for copyright.” https://www.linkedin.com/posts/daniel-katz-3b001539_today-we-are-very-excited-to-announce-that-activity-7176254431766749186-dRec?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios​

​

🔳 “Ai.law, a legal technology startup that uses artificial intelligence to generate litigation documents, has added a new module that will draft the complaint to initiate a lawsuit.” https://www.lawnext.com/2024/03/legal-tech-startup-ai-law-can-now-draft-the-complaint-for-your-lawsuit.html​

​

🔳 “KL3M [see below] was released in late February 2024 but today, it earned the distinction of being the first LLM to receive a “Licensed Model (L) Certification” from independent auditing company Fairly Trained, a non-profit founded and led by former Stability AI executive Ed Newton-Rex earlier this year.”
​
As mentioned in previous posts, “. . . KL3M (Kelvin Legal Large Language Model, pronounced ‘Clem’) . . . is the work of 273 Ventures, a two-year-old startup co-founded by Daniel Martin Katz, a law professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and chief strategy officer (CSO) of the venture, and his “frequent collaborator” Michael Bommarito, a legal technology entrepreneur who serves as 273 Ventures’ CEO.” https://venturebeat.com/ai/the-first-fairly-trained-ai-large-language-model-is-here/​

​

Purchasing/Using Legal Tech

🔳 “KPMG sees an opportunity to grow its legal business by outspending major law firms on artificial intelligence tools.”

Many insights (especially aimed, not surprisingly, at the Big Four accounting firms’ encroachment on law firm revenue sources) from Stuart Fuller, KPMG’s legal services head. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/kpmg-looks-to-beat-big-law-at-ai-by-leveraging-size-and-capital​

​

🔳 Analysis of when a legal tech vendor’s use of GenAI should trigger application of your own law firm’s risk management policies (and much analysis), as discussed in the article linked below.
​https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/03/18/ai-risks-are-evolving-and-organizations-may-not-be-keeping-up/​

​

Regulatory Reform​
​

🔳 From The Wall Street Journal: “Arizona launched a program to expand access to legal services for people who can’t afford or find lawyers. Three years later, the program is catching Wall Street’s eye.
​
“Hedge funds, private equity groups and other investors are exploring Arizona’s unusual opportunity to have an equity stake in law firms.” https://apple.news/AKa6XFqvaQGaQCOak8o3LNg​

​

Startup Management

🔳 “AI washing isn’t new to the legal tech industry, but legal tech customers and investors say the practice has exacerbated in the age of generative AI, from providers repackaging decade-old offerings to others launching tools that are essentially ‘ChatGPT wrappers.’
​
“Pitching such solutions will become harder going forward, they say, especially as investors are increasingly bringing their own generative AI experts to the table to review companies’ products.” https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/03/15/not-generative-ai-investors-customers-call-out-legal-techs-ai-washing/​

​

🔳 “So assuming you already know there’s demand for your business and a long-term opportunity in the new market, what does it take to successfully open a new office abroad? Sifted spoke to CEOs who have been through it to find out how it’s done.” https://sifted.eu/articles/how-to-open-new-country-office-startup​

​

🔳 Catch up with LegaltechNews’ latest legal tech roundup. https://www.law.com/legaltechnews/2024/03/22/legal-tech-rundown-robin-ai-integrates-with-claude-3-new-alsp-merger-and-more/​

​