Legal Tech Trends Newsletter: #35
Legal's GenAI spend significantly smaller than other departments, new AI assistants launch, Litera acquire Office & Dragons, and much more!
Happy Friday, and happy Thanksgiving to all our US readers. Welcome to the 35th edition of Legal Tech Trends!👋
At TITANS we’ve been heads down recently, supporting clients to shape AI strategies, procure tech, and deliver exciting GenAI pilots.
I hope to send one more newsletter edition in 2024, but let’s see if time allows!
📊 Curious Chart
As the end of the year fast approaches, we’ll see a steady flow of year-in-review reports dropping. This “2024: The State of Generative AI in Enterprise” report from Menlo Ventures surveyed 600 U.S. enterprise IT decision-makers and produced a few insightful charts. LINK
My top three highlights:
💸AI spending surged to $13.8 billion this year, more than 6x the $2.3 billion spent in 2023
⚖️ The legal department accounted for 3% of the enterprise GenAI budget.
🎯 More than a 1/3 of respondents don’t have a clear vision for how GenAI will be implemented across their organization. (Menlo interpret this to mean that we’re still in the early stages of large-scale transformation).
One might argue that we can’t draw many concrete conclusions about legal from this chart. Smaller departments are obviously more likely to have a lower tech spend. To determine whether GenAI spending is relatively high or low, we would need to compare it against each department’s total tech expenditure. Plus, spending doesn’t reflect adoption levels or impact!
However, even as a standalone data point, it’s interesting that legal departments’ GenAI spending is half the size of the next closest department. Let’s see how this data point stacks up against the other year-in-review reports.
Data source: Survey of 600 U.S. IT decision-makers at enterprises with 50 or more employees conducted between September 24 and October 8, 2024
AI
🚀 Ironclad Officially Launches New GenAI Assistant Jurist
The AI legal assistant supports with contract summarization, editing, translation, and drafting. The product’s browser editor and ability to import and export .docx files is called out as a differentiator.
Interestingly, their website states Jurist is sold as a standalone offering and in conjunction with the Ironclad CLM. We’ve seen this trend of CLM providers selling standalone GenAI products with ContractPodAI’s Leah and SpotDraft’s VerifAI LINK
⚖️ Trellis Launches Trellis AI for Trial Court Litigation
Trellis has extensive data for US trial court data and offers several tools for legal research and litigation analytics. Their new AI product helps to automate litigation tasks like motion drafting and case evaluations. LINK
✨ Thomson Reuters CoCounsel Drafting Launches For UK Lawyers
The UK has traditionally been one of the most advanced for LegalTech, however, we now frequently see AI products available in the US several months before their UK launch. TR’s CoCounsel Drafting Word add-in is now available in the UK. LINK
💫 TR first to customise o1-mini model
Thomson Reuters has announced that they are the first to have an enterprise customization of OpenAI’s o1-mini model. It’s not clear what exactly “enterprise customization” refers to here, and what, if any, alterations they have made to the standard o1-mini model, but it highlights their appetite to continually adopt the latest frontier models. LINK
🔍 Lexis+ AI respond to Canadian professor claims
Several legal research providers have faced some heat this year as users publicise issues encountered with their GenAI features. This article covers commentary from the latest such incident to make the headlines. LINK
Sidenote: I often think of a quote from a 2019 LawNext podcast with Axiom founder Mark Harris: “Directionally accurate in legal will get you fired, you need precision accuracy, and that’s why I don’t think you’ll ever get people out of the solution”. QUOTE LINK
Although the quote refers to contract data, and was said before the latest breed of AI, it’s an ever useful reminder of the potential impact of errors in legal.
Roundup
🤝 Clarilis teams up with Addleshaw Goddard to launch automated Early-Stage Investment Suite for the VC market
In a market dominated by AI discussions, it’s easy to forget that document automation is a tried and trusted approach for document generation! This suite is based on the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Associations’ (BVCA’s) revised model form documents, with Addleshaw Goddard adding market-standard content. LINK
🚀 Burges Salmon Launches ‘Digital Enablement’ Programme + Inks Wexler Deal
The UK firm has launched a programme covering GenAI, data, processes, and other tech. It’s particularly nice to see Burges Salmon's focus extend far beyond just AI.
I recently spoke with Wexler’s CEO Gregory Mostyn, and he gave me a tour of the product that tackles fact extraction within litigation. An interesting problem space and product to follow! LINK
🎓 Hotshot Launches M&A Simulation
The popular video-based learning platform has launched an M&A simulation which gives law firms the tools needed to run their own experiential M&A training programs for associates. This offering targets the demand from law firms for interactive, learning-by-doing training programs they can run themselves. LINK
Sidenote: This experiential learning is the type of approach which the large consultancies tend to do exceptionally well. In my Deloitte days, our ‘Deloitte University’ training involved sending 100+ consultants to a dedicated facility in Belgium for a multi-day simulated project. On other occassions, actors were brought in to prepare consultants for a variety of demanding simulated scenarios!
Raises & Acquisitions
💵 Litera Acquires UK Document Automation Company Office & Dragons to Streamline Document Editing
Office & Dragons is known to be particularly strong in enabling users to edit and generate large volumes of documents. Their impressive client list includes Bird&Bird, Travers Smith, Addleshaw Goddard, Norton Rose Fulbright, Pinsent Masons, and Baker McKenzie. The product will slot in nicely with Litera’s existing Draft, Transact and Kira products. LINK
💶 Nordic Capital to acquire IP management company Anaqua LINK
🤑 Productivity Suite Startup Macro Announces $12 Million Funding Round
Macro has big ambitions of rewriting the Office Suite for the AI era. This raise brings their total funding to $21.3M LINK
Sidenote: Macro is my go-to PDF editing tool. The free version generously gives extensive functionality.
💰 Kuberno closes £9.5M Series A co-led By Barclays and Nasdaq Ventures
Kuberno offers a global legal entity management SaaS product and counts several published US companies as customers. This round of funding will fuel growth through continued global expansion, focusing on the US market and new product features. New AI-powered features will turn entity data into actionable insights for governance, tax, finance and legal teams. LINK
💵 Robin AI announced $25M raise from earlier this year
Having raised a $26m Series B in January, they subsequently raised another $25m, just recently announced. Robin AI is a particularly interesting company, offering a suite of LegalTech products plus services through their in-house lawyers. LINK
💸 Theo AI Raises $2.2m For Litigation Outcome Prediction
The startup helps legal professionals make educated decisions about the likely outcome of cases. They state that over 275,000 new lawsuits are filed daily, and the average mid-sized firm reviews about 650 cases per year, which may take 7-30 days to review manually. They’re hoping to compress this into seconds. It’s certainly an interesting space, and Richard Tromans outlines the potential challenges to overcome in this article. LINK
Sidenote: I was reviewing startups tackling this problem 5 years ago, and two of the biggest problems to overcome include:
1) Getting access to the relevant data, especially as many cases settle before the data ever becomes public.
2) When providing an outcome prediction, lawyers usually want to see a detailed explanation of the AI’s prediction, so explainable AI is key.
🎥 Placing people at the heart of legal innovation
A few weeks back, I had a lovely chat with Hadassah & Marco from The Law of Tech about all things LegalTech. My day-to-day revolves around AI strategy and vendor procurement, so it was particularly nice to discuss some fundamentals which apply across LegalTech.
Topics Include:
✨ Having a problem-first mindset rather than solely focusing on the tech.
🧑🤝🧑 A people-oriented approach that recognises the nuanced needs and desires of stakeholders.
⚠️ Suitable expectation management. (This is amongst the biggest mistakes I see people making!)
You can catch soundbites from this conversation in this 10min video: LINK
🎙️ Pioneering Perspectives - Podcasts I’ve enjoyed
Legal Innovation Spotlight 45 | Gen AI, Growth Challenges, and Corporate Collaboration with Haley Altman
Haley Altman sold her company Doxly to Litera, where she was then Global Head of Corporate Development as they made 10 acquisitions! This episode explores the novel approach she took to building Litera’s new Dragon product, her take on LegalTech valuations and much more. LINK
The AAAi podcast | Ford Motor Company’s AGC Darth Vaughn & Sr. Counsel Whitney Stefko Dover
When I think of forward-thinking legal departments and those most proactive in adopting AI, Ford is one of the first to come to mind. I particularly enjoyed learning about Darth and Whitney’s previous experiences in tech, which undoubtedly contribute to their ability to deliver market-leading initiatives. LINK
Further Comments | Fear and Leveraging Las Agents (ft. Jason Barnwell)
There are no prizes for guessing that Microsoft’s legal department is also among the most advanced in tech adoption. Jason joins Horace Wu and Damien Riehl to discuss AI agents, human-AI collaboration, and frameworks like the Rumsfeld Matrix to determine where AI fits. LINK
Adjacent Interests
📊 Benedict Evans is one of my favourite tech analysts and I always look forward to his annual presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. This year’s edition is titled ‘AI eats the world’. LINK (HT to Michael Grupp for putting it on my radar).
Caveat: Legal features in several charts, but I dug into the source data and slide 51 is potentially misleading. “Legal” should be labelled “Legal & Social Services”, which may include religious workers and other occupations!
📧 As part of the court case between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, many emails between Elon, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and Greg Brockman have been released. I’ve just started reading these, it’s insightful to read their communications at such an early stage of OpenAI’s journey. LINK
That’s a wrap. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed it, please take a second to forward this email to a colleague who might also appreciate it.
Have a great Friday!
About me.
I’m the founder of TITANS, a LegalTech and AI consultancy for leading law firms and new law companies. We help some of the largest legal service providers shape their AI strategies, expedite vendor evaluation, and accelerate user adoption.LegalTech Trends is my fun outlet to share my hype-free positive take on LegalTech and AI market developments, informed by my 10+ years technology consulting with leading corporates and legal service providers.
Connect with me on LinkedIn for more LegalTech market insights Here 👋