Lightning Law Technologies, a Seattle startup developing software for remote testimony and legal proceedings, has raised a $1 million seed, which the company will use to accelerate development of its platform.
Founded by Seattle trial lawyer Alisa Brodkowitz, the startup is developing an end-to-end platform for remote testimony, mediations and legal proceedings. The company describes its mission as “to facilitate online justice.”
“The company was founded to perfect remote testimony and solve the problems encountered by attorneys, mediators, parties, judges, and jurors mediating and litigating remotely in real time,” the company says.
The round was led by Darryl Finkton of the End Poverty, Make Trillions Fund, the venture capital arm of an organization whose mission is to eradicate poverty in the United States through promotion of universal basic income.
The Fund invests in entrepreneurs from disadvantaged or underrepresented backgrounds who are focused on solving the pressing problems facing their communities.
Lightning Law says it “brings together end to end solutions for online dispute resolution that create efficient workflows, decreasing the cost of legal services and increasing access to justice.”
Brodkowitz, of counsel to the firm Schroeter Goldmark Bender, where she specializes in representing plane crash victims, says on the Lightning Law website that she founded the company because she was frustrated with the limited tools available to take remote depositions or present witnesses remotely at trial
“Along the way, she found that by innovating in the area of remote testimony she could help increase access to justice and empower court reporters,” the website says.
She has two cofounders in the company: Scott Graff, a software engineer, and Dineen Squillante, a stenographer.
As I reported earlier this year, based on research done by Kristen Sonday, cofounder and COO of legal tech startup Paladin, the number of women founders in legal tech dropped from 66 in 2018 to 57 as of the time of the report.