Robert Ambrogi Blog
We need your vote! Here is your chance to help pick the legal technology startups that will be selected for the sixth-annual Startup Alley at ABA TECHSHOW 2022. Fifteen companies will be selected to face off in a live pitch competition that will be the opening event of this year’s TECHSHOW, as well as to exhibit in a special Startup Alley portion of the exhibit hall.
In December, we issued a call for entries. From all the entries we received, a panel of judges narrowed down the applications. Now your votes will select the final 15. The 15 startups with the most votes will get the opportunity to be featured at TECHSHOW, which will be held March 2-5, 2022, both live in Chicago and virtually.
Below are the contenders, listed in alphabetical order. Read their pitches, check out their websites, then vote. For those that have a demo video, I’ve included the link.
Deadline for voting is Jan. 28, 2022, at 11:45 p.m. Eastern time. Winners will be announced on Jan. 31, 2022.
(Note: The ballot was supposed to list 25 companies, but because of a tie in the initial round of voting by judges, 26 companies are listed.)
Advocat AI
Founded: 5/10/2019
Headquarters: Seattle, Wash.
Elevator pitch: For enterprise business teams, Advocat AI speeds up contract intake, generation and negotiation. We apply Natural Language Processing and a semantic knowledge graph to the process that attorneys use to research, analyze and write complex legal documents. Our system inherently understands legal relationships and keeps up with changes in the law. We use AI to understand intake conversations, tailor legal documents, and then route them for in-house counsel review and corporate approvals.
How we’re unique: Conversation-driven intake for the internal customers of in-house legal departments.
Demo video: Video on page: https://www.advocattechnologies.com.
Target customer: In-house legal departments and law firm attorneys who serve as outside general counsel.
Pricing: Monthly subscription per user. Business users $49/mo. Attorney users $199/mo. A minimum of one attorney user is required per company to provide legal review.
Outside funding: $1M – $5M in outside funding.
Traction: We have three paying mid-sized customers and have pilot negotiations underway with three large enterprise in-house legal departments.
Akroda
Founded: 7/6/2021.
Headquarters: New York, N.Y.
Elevator pitch: Akroda is a project management and communication hub that centralizes collaboration, workflows and reporting for legal teams that lack software tools built specifically for legal function.
How we’re unique: Current solutions are built for specific departments but not legal functions. We see Salesforce for sales, Hubspot for marketing, and Monday.com for operations, but there’s no hub for legal teams to collaborate, communicate and execute in one place. We understand how legal teams work and the tools required to complete everyday workflows.
Demo video: https://youtu.be/yep5-yuzH60.
Target customer: Law departments in 2022 and expanding into law firms in 2023.
Pricing: Subscriptions (SaaS).
Outside funding: Less than $1M in outside funding.
Traction: We launched in November after receiving a lot of good feedback during our beta test period. From launch, we closed our first customer in December 2021.
Analytica Legalis
(Link not currently working as web site undergoing redesign.)
Founded: 4/1/2021.
Headquarters: Ona, W.V.
Elevator pitch: Judges are like the umpires of the courtroom, but litigators lack the information they need to understand the parameters of each umpire’s strike zone. We help lawyers make evidence-based decisions about the venues they choose and the arguments they make by focusing on the jurisprudence of the judges and courts they interact with. Other products offer descriptions of what happened in the past, but we help prescribe the right course of action for the future.
How we’re unique: While other products are descriptive in nature, we are building the first truly prescriptive set of legal analytics products. We can help lawyers make evidence-based decisions by providing custom-tailored recommendations and analytics, all focused on judges and their philosophies of the law. However, we are merely amplifying the expertise of our users, not replacing it. We put the discretion of our users at the center of our products.
Demo video: https://youtu.be/IqDG55pua58.
Target customer: Medium to large firms, particularly those in the 100-200 range of Am Law’s rankings.
Pricing: We have a two-pronged pricing model that innovates on the traditional SAAS model. One prong is designed to accommodate the needs of lawyers who are paid by the hour (pay per use), while the other is meant for those working on contingencies (subscription). We keep our pricing simple, transparent and consistent.
Outside funding: Less than $1M in outside funding.
Traction: We have done a lot of work on customer discovery and gathered a great deal of positive feedback. However, we have not yet begun selling the products. Thus, we do not have any users or revenues to report to date. Our intention is to begin selling in February, once the backend of our products is in place.
AppearMe
Founded: 9/8/2018.
Headquarters: Berkeley, Calif.
Elevator pitch: AppearMe is a suite of apps that help lawyers connect, scale and automate their legal practice. As a private-public partnership through the UC Berkeley Skydeck, we have been connecting over 10,000 attorney and 12,000 litigation support providers in real time. Launching January 2022, our AI-driven engine will automate litigation processes like lawsuit and motion drafting, discovery preparation, procedural calendaring and much more by turning days of work into 2-3 minute-long activities.
How we’re unique: Starting from basic marketplace, Amazon+Uber for lawyers, approach, AppearMe is implementing machine learning to automate routine legal work, minimize errors and missed deadlines by targeting the $65B litigation support market and offering free case management tools (a $1.1B market).
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuzIUcFJaekpaJHq3UjE-gg
Target customer: Solo to small firms, legal departments.
Pricing: Both pay-per-use and monthly subscription.
Outside funding: Less than $1M in outside funding.
Traction: Active in all 50 states, we have a network of over 12,000 attorneys, 12,000+ expert witnesses, 300+ court reporters, and 150+ interpreters. We have 20% month-to-month growth for the last 12 months.
BobaGuard
Founded: 11/1/2019.
Headquarters: Twinsburg, Ohio
Elevator pitch: Affordable cybersecurity solutions are lacking and 29% of law firms have suffered a security breach. BobaGuard is a turnkey cybersecurity suite comprised of eight best-in-class services, including cybersecurity training, phishing simulation, AI-based advanced email protection and more. It was built to democratize access to security protections for solo lawyers and small to mid-sized firms, so they can advance their security practices without the headaches, expenses and complexities.
How we’re unique: We don’t compete, we complement. Others get in the door with security, then upsell IT services. We curate the best and update regularly. Others don’t innovate, so you don’t benefit from current, best-in-class solutions.
We are built for solo and small firms and affordability. Others price out this group, which comprises 63% of attorneys, with user minimums and/or monthly spend amounts. We built a suite with simplicity in mind. Others sell solutions one by one, then burden in-house staff for implementation.
Demo video: https://globalmacit.box.com/shared/static/9w2n5qrd2hrw9cjkw7l5mdkiwvo9ppri.mp4.
Target customer: Solo and small to mid-size law firms.
Pricing: Single price, $150 for first user plus $50 per additional user. Enterprise rates available for over 50 users.
Outside funding: No outside funding.
Traction: We have 30+ solo and small law firm subscriptions since coming out of a soft launch in December 2020. We have provided over seven CLE presentations nationwide for local and state bar associations. Our partner program was recently launched and we have begun to establish affinity member benefits with bar associations nationwide, fueled by enthusiastic responses and confirmation of BobaGuard’s need and value by a group of practice management advisors. We continue to listen to our legal user community to develop future functionalities to add that will further enhance and empower the cybersecurity needs of target users.
Clearbrief
Founded: 4/1/2020.
Headquarters: Seattle, Wash.
Elevator pitch: Clearbrief gives litigators a new way to craft their most compelling writing by putting the power of accurate evidence at their fingertips. By leveraging AI, lawyers can quickly see where opposing counsel is misrepresenting the facts and law, and efficiently build a facts section and a table of authorities in minutes. Our customers save seven non-billable hours on average per week by using our tools to enhance their legal writing. We work right where lawyers do, in Microsoft Word.
How we’re unique: Clearbrief provides a new level of access to facts and law, empowering attorneys and courts to create and assess more accurate and securely shareable legal writing. In doing so, it saves (non-billable) time, money, and energy and offers often overwhelmed legal professionals a rare respite from stress. While seamlessly folding into the legal writing process in Microsoft Word, this user-friendly tech promises to modernize the justice system for all.
Demo video: https://www.loom.com/share/d799fa6163b64efea4212cbb5d3ef784.
Target customer: Solo firms, small to mid-sized firms, large firms, judiciary.
Pricing: $150/month per user.
Outside funding: $1M – $5M in outside funding.
Traction: American Legal Technology Awards Start-up of the Year (2021), Washington State Bar Apex Award, Finalist for New Law Company of the Year in the 2021 Legalweek Leaders in Tech Law Awards, patent approved.
CoParse
Founded: 9/1/2020.
Headquarters: USA/Canada (remote).
Elevator pitch: CoParse is an all-in-one Word and PDF processor that replaces Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat Pro, and dozens of plugins. Desktop app for Mac and Windows. Uses DOCX and PDF format and is compatible with existing DMS/CLM/processes. Doesn’t try and be a “collaborative drafting workspace” or CLM – just a modern, purpose-built rethink of Word/Acrobat/Compare/etc. Targeted at everyone who uses documents: law firms, enterprises, ASLPs, corporate legal, startups, and more.
How we’re unique: Many things make us unique, but to name one: We’re taking a big swing at something big. Actually not that big when you compare it to SpaceX or Tesla, but big relative to LegalTech. We’re a team of young and ambitious software engineers who have worked at places like Amazon, Salesforce, Bridgewater, DocuSign, U.S. Army, and more, and more than anything we want to build something awesome.
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8La8d4EMcdY.
Target customer: All.
Pricing: Freemium. Per seat per month.
Outside funding: $1M – $5M in outside funding.
Traction: The company has several clients using the product and pilots underway at a number of large law firms.
Dashboard Legal
Founded: 5/1/2020.
Headquarters: New York, N.Y.
Elevator pitch: Welcome to Dashboard Legal, a collaboration and project management tool built for attorneys. Our new software helps lawyers organize their inboxes, track documents and deadlines, and collaborate with colleagues. Lawyers are running matters with email, which is wholly inadequate to meet the complex demands of current workflow. Project management tools can help, and we’re the first legal tech solution providing comprehensive project management integrated into the Inbox.
How we’re unique: Dashboard Legal turns the inbox into a project management platform. We’re unique in two ways:
- Client/Matter Taxonomy: The structure of our “”boards”” mirrors how lawyers think by breaking down silos in workflows.
- Familiarity of the Inbox: We’re a layer on top of Outlook that allows lawyers to work from the comfort of their email while gaining access to the benefits of popular collaboration tools.
We also integrate with iManage/Netdocs to bring documents into the dashboards.
Demo video: https://www.loom.com/share/6b9a9d340cf74302a8a8c14bf420f496?sharedAppSource=personal_library; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyNHTnUPiQ8&t=18s.
Target customer: Law firms of all sizes
Pricing: $50/user/month.
Outside funding: Less than $1M in outside funding.
Traction: We have 30 active customers, and pilots running with two large law firms.
EmotionTrac
Founded: 3/15/2021.
Headquarters: Boynton Beach, Fla.
Elevator pitch: EmotionTrac is an AI insights software solution that empowers lawyers to deploy facial analysis tools producing premium quantitative data for emotional reaction and engagement.
How we’re unique: We’ve created an economical, fast and easy way to collect insights for cases compared to traditional and costly methods of focus groups and mock juries.
Demo video: https://youtu.be/3gTQbAnNM4A.
Target customer: Firms of all sizes.
Pricing: Transactional (per test/case). Subscription (discount for multiple test commitment).
Outside funding: $1M – $5M in outside funding.
Traction: $160k booked revenue in 2021; 22 customers/users; $350k short-term pipeline; $3+ million mid-term pipeline.
FastVisa
Founded: 3/1/2016.
Headquarters: Dallas, Tex.
Elevator pitch: FastVisa provides an immigration infrastructure for legal and nonprofits that allows for collaboration, efficiency, and transparency to the complex immigration. We empower them to do more with less in immigration. We provide scalable solutions that can be customized to provide services to the immigration social good community. We help immigration legal and nonprofits develop, deliver, and optimize programs and services. We make it easy for people to connect services they need.
How we’re unique: Centralized B2B immigration management platform for legal and SMBs. We help law firms manage the immigration process better and support SMB corp/HR to track and handle immigration from a talent management perspective. FastVisa platform can integrate with other apps that people use every day. We connect FastVisa to other tools people need to run their business.
Demo video: https://youtu.be/ZaSI49kSVio.
Target customer: Small and medium law firms, nonprofit immigration legal departments and law school clinics.
Pricing: Subscription.
Outside funding: Less than $1M in outside funding.
Traction: We have more than 200 users. Our customers consist of nonprofit legal departments, small and medium law firms, local government agencies, and law school clinics. Our 2022 target is $1M ARR.
Fourth Party
Founded: 11/11/2019.
Headquarters: Atlanta, Ga.
Elevator pitch: Fourth Party provides modern solutions to legacy problems within the legal space – particularly alternative dispute resolution. We help negotiators to manage tasks, access case files, and track results securely, anytime and anywhere. The pandemic put on display the limitations of paper-based systems with ADR. FourthParty makes it easy to prepare for and facilitate high-quality mediations with a secure web application from the negotiation table, home office or working remotely.
How we’re unique: Fourth Party’s unique process-mapping features makes it the ideal tool for neutrals at all stages of their careers, particularly early-career neutrals who are looking to build skills quickly in order to accelerate their revenue. Built by neutrals for neutrals, our tool mirrors many of the time-honored traditions of negotiation into a digital environment, making adoption of our tool faster and easier.
Demo video: https://www.loom.com/share/57ae721048004acc91d2f93297e807d2.
Target customer: Solo neutrals (mediators, arbitrators) and ADR firms.
Pricing: Our pricing model is a per-user, per-subscription model with tiered offerings as well as enterprise.
Outside funding: Less than $1M in outside funding.
Traction: FourthParty has over 2,000 active matters on the platform, and more than 50 users in locations across five states in the southeast. FourthParty was awarded $100,000 by Google for Startups in 2021, was awarded audience choice award $10,000 by Startup runway in 2021, and was featured in Hypepotamus.
Immediation
Founded: 6/15/2015.
Headquarters: Ventura, Calif., and Melbourne, Australia
Elevator pitch: Since 2017, Immediation has been pioneering improved access to justice via highly secure digital legal environments for dispute resolution, hearings, arbitrations and mediation – saving time and money and leading to greater sustainability. Built by lawyers for lawyers. The first and most awarded ODR platform – used by courts, corporations, law firms and more.
How we’re unique: Built by a trial lawyer, Immediation natively looks and feels like home to a lawyer. The technology disappears and the attorney can get on with the matter versus dealing with multiple apps or interfaces. The platform is highly secure, neutral parties can control the breakout rooms, all parties are identified and categorized prior to the meeting (saving time), documents can be uploaded in advance for evidence, and DocuSign is built in to speed action on judgements. We offer managed hearing services.
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaMtHffjnJQ&t=8s.
Target customer: Five verticals: arbitrators/arbitration centers; mediators/mediation centers; law firms (Slaughter & May, others); courts (Federal Court of Australia, Family Court); corporations and associations (Sports NZ – New Zealand’s Ministry of sport).
Pricing: SaaS-based, per-user and enterprise class pricing. Optional customization is priced separately.
Outside funding: More than $5M in outside funding.
Traction: As the most-awarded ODR platform in the world, Immediation garnered notice from across the globe. Along with a trove of media about the platform and founder Laura Keily, this recent TechCrunch article illustrates our growth and trajectory. September 2021 was the first foray into the U.S. market for Immediation and already we see traction among courts, arbitration centers and law firms.
JurorSearch
Founded: 2/1/2020.
Headquarters: Chicago, Ill.
Elevator pitch: Litigators and their teams use JurorSearch to manage and minimize risk from jury selection.
How we’re unique: We are the only collaborative, real-time platform to manage jury selection, integrating the researchers with the courtroom to allow the litigator to make informed apples-to-apples choices for juror strikes. For those litigators who go to trial and pick a jury (a small niche these days) we are the absolute best solution for the team to communicate and minimize the risk of a bad juror slipping through due to incomplete information or poor communication during voir dire.
Demo video: https://www.jurorsearch.com/#video.
Target customer: Plaintiff attorneys, large law firms with a litigation department, in-house counsel managing a large litigation load.
Pricing: Per-trial (up front or contingent).
Outside funding: Less than $1M in outside funding.
Traction: Profitable company with BigLaw clients, plaintiff attorneys and jury consultants.
Jus Mundi
Founded: 1/1/2019.
Headquarters: Paris, France (HQ) and New York, N.Y.
Elevator pitch: Building the global rule of law is everyone’s responsibility. This is why Jus Mundi democratizes access to global legal information and legal intelligence with unprecedented efficiency, thanks to a multilingual search engine that combines international legal expertise with AI. Based in Paris and New York City, Jus Mundi’s turnover comes at 40% from the U.S. and 30% from the U.K.
How we’re unique: Law should be easily accessible. This is why every legal document on Jus Mundi is freely available to everyone via open access. Multilingual search engine in English or French to get the relevant results in all the languages available. Exclusive institutional partnerships with the IBA, ICC, RAC, VIAC, the inaccessible awards are now accessible. Human in the loop: Lawyers at the center of AI development to train the NLP models with the legal vocabulary to ensure highly specific search results.
Demo video: https://tutorial.jusmundi.com.
Target customer: All size of law firms such as DLA Piper, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Three Crowns; legal departments of corporates such as Iberdrola; governments including Japan, Costa Rica, Egypt, and Ghana; and top-rated universities like Harvard University, University of Cambridge, and Sorbonne Université.
Pricing: We tailor plans for all organization sizes. Three types of subscriptions are available annually:
- Legal Research for academics.
- Legal Intelligence for corporate legal teams.
- Legal Practice for law firms & arbitrators.
Outside funding: More than $5M in outside funding.
Traction: Less than 3% churn, 150% net revenue retention, 36% weekly active users. 80k+ users from 190+ counties, 2,800+ client users. We aim to reach €80 million ARR in the next 5 years.
JusticeText
Founded: 4/12/19.
Headquarters: Remote.
Elevator pitch: JusticeText is building the first centralized infrastructure to store, catalog, analyze, and share audio and video evidence in the criminal justice system.
How we’re unique: In our increasingly technology-dependent criminal justice system, there is an utter lack of technological solutions built with empathy for the communities most directly affected by it. And that is exactly why we started building JusticeText. As technologists of color, our work is grounded in both a sociological and historical appreciation for the complexities of the American criminal justice system — with its gaping faults and inequality but also its capacity for reform.
Demo video: https://www.loom.com/share/270ca83836df459fa2d0ecc364497eb8.
Target customer: Public defense agencies and private criminal defense firms.
Pricing: $100/user/month for 20 hours of monthly upload.
Outside funding: Less than $1M.
Traction: Revenue: $360K. Users: 300+. Read what our public defender partners in Virginia have to say about us.
Koncord Law
Founded: 4/15/2019.
Headquarters: Delaware, Chennai (India).
Elevator pitch: Autonomous contracts (self-executing smart contracts). Unlike the existing contract management systems, our platform allows the creation of self-enforceable contracts and auto-reconciliation of other systems of data (ex: financial data) with corresponding contractual data thus plugging up leakage in revenue. We are working on “contract performance management.”
How we’re unique: We understood that this reconciliation process can be automated using smart contracts technology. Use of other technology does not give desired accuracy levels, this understanding comes from our own experience in this domain.
Demo video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18B951qFFRxXXi0WdN07i9Q9O-93lcs55/view?usp=sharing.
Target customer: Law department.
Pricing: Licensing model.
Outside funding: Less than $1M in outside funding.
Traction: We intend to generate revenue by licensing the product and also on a subscription basis. From the pro version, we will be able to generate around $50k in a quarter. We have designed our tool as B2B2C. We have already launched our free version of our drafter in the market. Currently working on the enterprise edition. We were a finalist in the R3Corda India challenge 2020 and we have won legal tech hackathon conducted CIIE India
Lawcus
Founded: 1/1/2017.
Headquarters: San Diego, Calif.
Elevator pitch: Lawcus is a modern all-in-one legal practice management platform equipped with every tool and functionality necessary to manage and scale a successful law firm of any size. Lawcus is the only fully customizable user-friendly software that allows attorneys to automate their processes at their desired level of complexity to save loads of time and maximize efficiency within their law practice.
How we’re unique: Lawcus is an all-in-one legal practice management software and CRM that offers the ability to manage and scale your firm through code-free automation while providing the robust tools needed to launch any law firm to success with one single platform.
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5oPWtniuE&t=29s.
Target customer: Attorneys with a law firm of any size, small firms, large firms, solo practices.
Pricing: Competitive pricing. Monthly or annual plans available. Pricing ranges from $34-$69/per month.
Outside funding: No outside funding.
Traction: Lawcus has grown exponentially in the past few years and we are on track to reach over $1 million in 2022. We have about 4,500 users and over 500 law firms. All of our customers include attorneys who have their own practice or larger companies looking for a software for their legal department.
Lawcus initially launched in 2015 and started out by creating websites for attorneys with a plan for something greater. Things took a turn for the two Lawcus partners when one of the Lawcus creators lost their battle to cancer. This left the other Lawcus creator (who was initially only doing this part-time due to his career with Thomson Reuters) with a decision to make. He decided to leave his career with Reuters and invest all of his time into creating an all-in-one software that the legal tech industry was missing. Lawcus then re-launched in 2017 with a new goal and instantly became a hit, simply through word of mouth. We have now grown into a team of 20+ individuals and continue to see extensive growth ahead.
Lawmato
Founded: 1/6/2021.
Headquarters: Dallas, Tex.
Elevator pitch: Lawmato is a one-of-a-kind app for legal consultation, bringing paying clients to lawyers. Think of it as the “rideshare app” for legal services. If a client needs help with a small business, family law, criminal law or any legal matter, no problem, Lawmato helps clients find you quickly and easily. Lawmato empowers lawyers and clients worldwide with secure, encrypted, advanced technology for virtual legal consultation and payment.
How we’re unique: Instead of providing leads upon which the lawyer must follow up or requiring a “free” consultation for marketing to acquire new clients, Lawmato provides the platform for clients to find the right lawyer for their needs and lawyers with good return on investment since every consultation is paid. Additionally, Lawmato allows lawyers to have a chance to gain offline business by providing excellent services during the initial consultation.
Demo video: https://youtu.be/Yl20VrPWBHM.
Target customer: Solo practitioners, small and mid-size law firms.
Pricing: Annual platform access fee and per consultation technology fee.
Outside funding: Less than $1M in outside funding.
Traction: After four months of initial market launch in August 2021, Lawmato has successfully connected paying clients to lawyers. The feedback from both lawyers and consumers has been positive. Clients appreciate the ability to find a lawyer based upon specialty and transparent fee information in advance. Lawyers love being paid for consultations. While revenues are in their infancy, Lawmato sees its value to both lawyers and clients. It is an easy, secure way to bring lawyers and paying clients together.
LawWurk
Founded: 10/12/2020.
Headquarters: Victorville, Calif.
Elevator pitch: For too long, individuals have had to compromise their personal justice due to the inability to afford legal assistance. But what if there was a way to get the help you need at a price you’ll be able to pay? LawWurk is a platform for attorneys seeking legal help that introduces them to a network of freelance and independent legal professionals that work at a much lower rate than their traditional counterparts. With LawWurk, justice is one click away.
How we’re unique: As the first to market in this high-demand space, LawWurk is changing the narrative for what it means to get people the qualified legal support they rightfully deserve. We are here to set a new standard in the legal industry with accessibility and justice at the forefront. We help underrepresented individuals and attorneys with the legal support they need through an innovative platform that connects them with freelance and independent support staff all for free.
Demo video: https://content.lawwurk.com/attorney-demo-video.
Target customer: Small to mid-sized law firms and solo practitioners.
Pricing: Subscription model for listed members.
Outside funding: No outside funding.
Traction: We officially launched LawWurk less than a year ago (Sept. 1, 2021) and continue to build a user community in the legal market. Currently we have over 500 listed paraprofessionals, notaries and nonlawyers in our system and continue to grow on a daily basis.
Legal Beagle
Founded: 8/10/2020.
Headquarters: Longwood, Fla.
Elevator pitch: From Integrative App Solutions, Legal Beagle is a digital communication platform that helps clients and attorneys reach each other in a simple, effective and timely manner. In five years, all 80% of all commerce will be done on your phone. This platform will help legal professionals stay current with the fast-moving economic changes.
How we’re unique: We are the only digital platform that allows active clients to be put in front of attorneys instantly. And allows attorneys to close these clients on the initial call. And with Covid this is a product all clients and attorneys will find helpful.
Demo video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DOx-k18RT91ZihP5rewNpN2RCsJGGnZk/view?usp=sharing
Target customer: All firms.
Pricing: Monthly subscription.
Outside funding: No outside funding.
Traction: We are a true start up. This is our launch. At this point we have a very few users on our platform. We have only had it available for widespread use for a week. (Editor’s note: The application was submitted on Jan. 7, 2022.) We have not done any advertising. We do have a few attorneys using the Web version.
Merlin
Founded: 3/7/2019.
Headquarters: Denver, Colo. (Offices in Coimbatore, India, and Melbourne, Australia.)
Elevator pitch: Merlin’s revolutionary new discovery platform integrates keyword and algorithmic search, allowing users to find relevant documents — quickly and easily — without mastering keyword/query logic. We call our engine “Sherlock,” the first AI-powered digital document bloodhound. Sherlock works like Pandora – when you click Thumbs Up, he finds great documents rather than great music. Sherlock offers a faster, easier, more effective way to find relevant documents for investigations, discovery and compliance.
How we’re unique: Sherlock is unique in his speed, flexibility and scalability – capable of analyzing and ranking a million documents in 100 ms. A game changer for investigations, discovery and other document-intensive fields, Sherlock is easier to use and far more effective than keywords at finding relevant documents. Our goal is to revolutionize document search the way Pandora changed how we find new music. Search 2.0, the integration of keyword and algorithmic search, will usher in a new era in document search.
Demo video: Introduction to Sherlock: https://www.merlin.tech/manatees/. Introduction to Search 2.0: https://www.merlin.tech/search2-0/. Read more about Sherlock’s adventures here: https://www.merlin.tech/sherlock-adventures/.
Target customer: Merlin provides a new and better way to search large document collections. While our initial focus is on investigations, e-discovery and regulatory compliance, we believe Sherlock will change search across the board and around the world. In 2022, we will focus on providing our revolutionary search platform to lawyers, investigators and legal professionals from both small and large organizations around the world. Later in 2022 and beyond, we will take Sherlock to other industries including healthcare and government agencies to help them improve their search capabilities.
Pricing: We offer pricing based on the size of the resources needed along with the duration of the platform license. Clients can size the platform to their matter needs and license it by the hour, month or take an annual subscription to manage multiple matters at a substantial savings over traditional discovery platforms.
Outside funding: No outside funding.
Traction: Our beta program, which is just finishing, has about 140 individuals from law firms, corporations, government agencies and international users. Starting last June, we rolled out an early release program for early adopters from several different law firms.
In early 2022, we will formally release the Merlin Integrated Search platform as we finish a full-featured production module. We will be announcing a new VP of operations, formally the VP of litigation operations at FiServe/First Data, and a new VP of sales and consulting, formally a senior salesperson at Catalyst/OpenText.
We are in the process of doing a proof of concept for UC Healthcare and Colorado Children’s Hospital to help medical professionals better search medical records. We are also discussing a proof of concept for HTX in Singapore. HTX is a government agency charged with finding the best technology for their investigations.
Merlin was founded in 2019 by John Tredennick after he sold Catalyst, a leading international e-discovery search company, to OpenText. Rather than retire, Tredennick decided to put the band back together and take a shot at revolutionizing search. He was joined by a team of senior developers from India who had been working with him at Catalyst for more than a decade, and William Webber (Melbourne Australia), one of the top information retrieval scientists in the world. The mission was to integrate keyword and algorithmic search allowing people to find relevant information, faster and more easily, than is possible with keyword search alone.
My Legal Einstein
Founded: 1/1/2021.
Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.
Elevator pitch: AI-powered contract execution platform – for the origination, review, collaboration, negotiation, and execution of contracts – reducing contract cycle time by 80%, with improved contract compliance.
How we’re unique: AI-powered, with UX optimized for the review and comparison of legal contracts, with support for corporate playbooks, contract templates, deviation analysis – ability to view and edit up to six documents at the same time.
Demo video: https://www.mylegaleinstein.com/learn.
Target customer: Enterprise law departments, law firms, individual attorneys.
Pricing: SaaS subscription (per user per month) plus+ enterprise deployment (customer-specific instance).
Outside funding: No outside funding.
Traction: Great traction – we do not disclose details. Partnered with ABA
OneLaw
Founded: 7/1/2021.
Headquarters: Duluth, Ga.
Elevator pitch: OneLaw is changing the view of artificial intelligence being just that, artificial. Amelia is our award-winning cognitive conversational AI. We are augmenting firms and the ability to communicate with clients. Amelia mimics human brain function allowing her to produce human-level conversations and outcomes at the speed and capacity of a machine. Let us help you escape the mundane and keep your humans working on the things that truly matter. With OneLaw, the only limitation is your imagination.
How we’re unique: What is the one complaint consistent over every law firm? Bad communication. Lawsuits are stressful times for people and they should not have to be in the dark about their case. There are plenty of tech companies that help firms to organize clients and keep track of communications, but none that are actually communicating. OneLaw is giving every client a 24/7 legal assistant that is constantly ready to give the client case updates and extract new useful information to help build their case.
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulA92VmY0u4&t=9s.
Target customer: Large firms.
Pricing: SaaS.
Outside funding: No outside funding.
Traction: We have just really kicked off trying to sell this product. We are still in the education stage where we are teaching firms about their limitations and showing them how our product can help.
Standd (formerly Clause Logic)
Founded: 2/20/2020.
Headquarters: Washington, D.C.
Elevator pitch: Standd is a comprehensive platform where teams of lawyers can search for and deploy the data and strategic information they need, organize and curate institutional knowledge, manage tasks, and communicate – all while collaborating on documents in Microsoft Word without having to context switch. Standd creates connections between different tech solutions in a firm’s portfolio to eliminate time consuming, duplicative, and frustrating busy work caused by a lack of interoperability.
How we’re unique: Legal tech is saturated with document automation tools, but hundreds of hours of customer research taught us these tools are only useful for wrote contracts. Lawyers need connection, not automation – legal workflows are overburdened by context switching between too many apps. Standd connects attorneys to information with ML-enhanced global search and the ability to organize and curate their (and their teams’) own store of institutional knowledge for easy access, plus tasks all done in Word.
Demo video: https://standd.io.
Target customer: We are currently targeting mid-size firms and in-house legal departments that do litigation support and beginning to develop relationships with large firms to scale that market segment later this year. We are optimizing litigation workflows first, because it allows us to differentiate and attorneys drafting more complex, client-specific types of documents will realize more value from our current feature set.
Pricing: We are still experimenting with our pricing model, but we are a B2B SaaS company that offers the platform a subscription basis. We are offering our current product at $100/user/month in batches of 10 subscriptions, with enterprise pricing options available for larger firms.
Outside funding: Less than $1M in outside funding.
Traction: Standd (which rebranded from Clause Logic in January 2022) completed closed alpha and beta pilots with positive validation from customers in 2020. We were also selected to participate in the 2020 LexisNexis Legal Tech Accelerator and successfully completed the program. We redesigned and rebuilt the product based on our learnings from those experiences and are beginning to sell our customer-ready product in January 2022. We are negotiating with several firms to be our first paid customers, including one of our alpha customers who reached out unsolicited months after finishing alpha testing about buying the product. We are also gathering feedback from beta testers to continually improve the product as we work towards our first paid customers.
TurnSignl
Founded: 10/1/2020
Headquarters: Minneapolis, Minn.
Elevator pitch: TurnSignl is a Minnesota-based tech company providing drivers on-demand teleconferencing with attorneys during traffic stops and following car accidents. At the touch of a button, the TurnSignl mobile app connects drivers to valuable real-time legal guidance from attorneys licensed in that local jurisdiction. TurnSignl’s mission is to protect drivers’ civil rights, de-escalate roadside interactions, and ensure everyone returns home safe.
How we’re unique: Combating systemic racism, protecting individuals’ civil rights, advancing DEI, and revolutionary legal technology are topics that rarely appear in the same sentence together. We empower attorneys to harness this unique offering to lead the change they’d like to see within their local communities and grow their practice in the process. This scalable social entrepreneurship platform is ready unlock incredible value for our users and attorney partners alike.
Demo video: https://youtu.be/qPKyshMIR3k.
Target customer: Solo, small law, and mid-law segments (1-150 attorney firms). Attorneys who have opted to be featured publicly can be accessed here: https://www.turnsignl.com/attorneys. Attorneys from larger firms are welcome to participate and generally gravitate towards using TurnSignl in a pro bono capacity
Pricing: Fixed cost structure with no lead fees, or additional costs of any kind.
- $50/month per attorney.
- $7/month for app users or free for those who cannot afford paid access.
- Employer pricing available by request based on employee count.
Following the incident, the app user is able to make arrangements for future legal needs with the attorney directly according to their fee structure independent of TurnSignl.
Outside funding: $1M – $5M in outside funding.
Traction: Beyond the paid B2C users on the platform, we had several B2B partnerships including Blue Cross Blue Shield and iHeart Media in the first six months of our product being live that highlight the traction we have seen in 2021 and show our path forward for future growth in 2022 and beyond. We feature these two partnerships as each organization has made an incredible commitment in their own unique way to effect change.
iHeart Media has brought all of their Minnesota employees onto the TurnSignl platform to ensure every member of their team has peace of mind on the road to and from the office, and on weekends. They have also been a tremendous partners by spreading the word about TurnSignl in our home market through their media network. Their commitment to supporting all members of their team is a model for how other organizations can get involved and be empowered.
Blue Cross Blue Shield is providing TurnSignl licenses for all residents of Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minneapolis, by sponsoring a $250,000 pilot program to help drivers of all ages access the TurnSignl platform, de-escalate police and civilian interactions, protect drivers’ civil rights, and get everyone home safe. This initiative is rooted in the desire to address ACEs scores community-wide and to demystify the legal rights of residents.
Attorney partners. Since the TurnSignl App launched six months ago, we have 35+ paid law firms utilizing the TurnSignl App to support the legal needs of our users in Minnesota, our home market, and Georgia, our first expansion state. As we expand nationwide and our user base increases in existing markets, we will increase attorney access to the platform dramatically in 2022. This will be achieved through partnerships with the organizations like the National Bar Association, groups like the Law Firm Anti-Racism Alliance, and nationwide corporate commitments. All provide significant catalysts for growth in 2022 and beyond for TurnSignl as well as our attorney partners ahead of our Series A.
Awards include Twin Cities Startup Week Inclusion Evolution and Startup of the Year awards and finalist for disruptor of the year in the Litera Changing Lawyer awards.
Universal Migrator
Founded: 2/1/2021
Headquarters: Omaha, Neb.
Elevator pitch: Changing practice management systems is hard and risky. What will transfer? What will you lose? And will it be done right?
The Universal Migrator makes your firm’s data portable between 25+ different systems. Whether you want a Clio document backup, a full migration from your legacy system into Smokeball, or to import a newly acquired firm’s data into your MyCase, the Universal Migrator will facilitate your data migration with ease.
How we’re unique: Many people do data migrations, but these projects are treated as complex, one-of projects. We facilitate mass-data portability between platforms requiring minimal technical expertise.
Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3EnyEUmsZw.
Target customer: Law firms that are acquiring other law firms; legal tech consultants; practice management companies’ migration departments.
Pricing: Still figuring it out.
Outside funding: No outside funding.
Traction: We are getting lots of interest from lots of different places. 2021 will have nearly $200k in revenue.