Legal Tech Trends Newsletter: #41
AI-first law firms, building the AI mindset in lawyers, and a practical guide to building agents
Happy Friday, and welcome to the 41st edition of Legal Tech Trends!👋
We’ve had a focused few weeks, delivering GenAI pilots, executive AI strategy sessions, and an awesome hands-on AI academy.
I’m particularly excited by what I’ve been building with Factor and will join Nicole Bradick and Dan Hunter for a webinar on May 21st to discuss Factor’s launch of the Sensemaker Academy. LINK
🦖AI-First Law Firms - Instead of selling to dinosaurs, you could make them extinct!?
We’ve seen several notable announcements for “AI-first law firms” in recent days.
First, the SRA-approved Garfield AI launched in the UK, aiming to simplify and accelerate debt recovery. Key highlights include:
Recover invoices of up to £10k via the English small claims court.
Pricing as low as £2 for a polite reminder letter and £7.50 for a pre-action letter, resolving an estimated 80% of cases.
Initially, all AI-generated outputs are reviewed by a lawyer, with plans to shift to periodic quality sampling over time.
For further details, check out the FT’s coverage here and a thoughtful analysis by Chris Bridges here, including a sensible take on the insurance implications based on his own experience.
Secondly, Y-Combinator’s latest "Request for Startups" lists "Full-stack AI Companies," explicitly naming law firms as prime targets.
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, LegalTech is becoming increasingly appealing to innovators from outside the industry, and this prominent call-out from Y-Combinator illustrates just how dramatically GenAI has transformed the sector's perception. LINK
🎙️I’d also recommend this great podcast on the topic: Legal GenAI Conversations Series: The Lawyerless Law Firm – Myth or Reality in 2030?
Webinar | Building the AI Mindset in Lawyers
Most legal teams have started their AI journey, but few have a roadmap for building real capability. In this 60-minute session, we’ll lift the lid on Sensemaker Academy, Factor’s practical, hands-on skilling program built to move legal professionals from curiosity to confidence - and from experimentation to impact.
You can find more details and sign up here: LINK
AI
💡 BRYTER Launches ‘Beamon AI’ – Legal Agent Suite
The suite of GenAI tools includes a chat-based assistant, and drafting features surfaced in a Microsoft Word plugin to complement their existing 'Extract' AI tool for bulk document review.
Unlike many GenAI-first startups that are expanding to offer more workflow features, BRYTER's product approach comes from an established workflow foundation to add a broad range of GenAI capabilities. This launch emphasises actionable AI, highlighting BRYTER’s evolution from established workflows towards a broader range of GenAI-driven tools. LINK
🚀 A&O Shearman to roll out agentic AI agents targeting complex legal workflows
A&O Shearman has partnered with Harvey to launch specialised AI agents tackling complex legal workflows, initially targeting antitrust filing analysis, cybersecurity, fund formation, and loan review. The tools will be used internally, offered to clients, and sold to other firms through subscription or usage-based pricing, with A&O sharing in the software revenue. LINK
🧪 Dentons + Bird & Bird Join Swiss GenAI Benchmarking Project
Dentons and Bird & Bird are collaborating with several European organisations, including the University of Zurich, to develop JuriAIindex—a benchmark for evaluating AI effectiveness across different legal practice areas. Launching publicly in 2026, the project aims to set clearer standards for assessing AI-generated outputs based on real-world use cases. LINK
🤝 Dioptra + LawVu Partner For Inhouse AI Contract Review
Hot on the heels of last month's partnership with the AAA, Dioptra has now partnered with LawVu, a cloud-based legal workspace designed specifically for in-house teams. The integration will embed Dioptra's AI engine directly into LawVu's platform. LINK
🤝 Freshfields joins forces with Google Cloud
Freshfields is rolling out Google's Gemini with Google Workspace firm-wide, with plans to also create new AI-driven products. They will use Google’s Vertex AI to create bespoke agents, along with using several other Google products like NotebookLM. They plan to maintain a tech-agnostic strategy, operating both a Google Cloud Platform stack and a Microsoft Azure stack. LINK
Sidenote: Microsoft dominates the large law firm market, so it will be curious to see this one play out!
Raises & Acquisitions
💶 CMS + Dentons Join €80m Investment into ‘Europe’s Sovereign Legal AI’
Noxtua is positioning itself as Europe's sovereign legal AI, with investors including German legal publisher C.H. Beck, which owns the largest legal database in the German-speaking world. With a strong focus on European market needs, Noxtua’s product provides legal research, document review, drafting, and bulk document processing capabilities. LINK
Sidenote: Whether domain-specific models can compete with the latest frontier models is an ongoing topical debate! It’s worth watching how this one plays out as foundation models continue to advance rapidly.
💵 TrialKit Launches AI-Powered Legal Discovery Platform, Secures $4.25M Seed Funding to Transform Criminal Defense
The AI-powered discovery platform designed specifically for criminal defence attorneys has raised $4.25M to tackle the huge volume of digital evidence in modern criminal cases. The platform rapidly analyses large datasets, and is already trusted by over 20 leading criminal defence firms. LINK
💶 Tomorro raises €25 million, looking to become the European standard in contract management
Paris-based AI-assisted CLM startup Tomorro has secured €25M in its latest funding round, following an €18M raise 18 months ago. With 300 clients including Veja and Nestlé, the company is now expanding internationally, beginning with a new office in Germany. LINK
💰 Dealstack raises $5.5M to help financiers automate their workflow
Specialising in workflow automation for private capital, and serving six of the top ten global private capital firms, Dealstack has now raised $5.5M. Its platform streamlines ownership tracking, equity plan management, and waterfall modelling for private equity firms and their M&A legal teams. LINK
💶 E-Discovery Startup Phaselaw Secures $2.8M in Funding, With Investment From Gunderson Dettmer Partners
Initially focused on advanced redaction, the funding will enable them to expand mid-market and enterprise reach plus add platform capabilities. LINK
💵 Solve Intelligence raises fresh $12M to bring AI to IP, patent workflows
Solve provides an AI-powered, browser-based document editor tailored specifically for IP attorneys, simplifying tasks like patent drafting, office action responses, claim charting, and invention disclosure generation. The product is used by over 200 IP teams across the US, Europe, and Asia - including firms such as DLA Piper. LINK
💰 Dutch legal AI startup Zeno raises €2M
Zeno, founded in 2024, has secured €2M in funding. Their platform aims to help law firms, corporate legal teams, and notaries process documents, conduct legal research, and draft legal texts more efficiently using AI-driven tools. LINK
🤝PERSUIT Acquires Apperio to Provide End-to-End Platform for Corporate Legal, From RFPs to Spend Management
Known for its outside counsel management tools, Persuit has acquired spend management platform Apperio. This acquisition aims to deliver an integrated solution that reshapes how corporate legal departments scope, price, select, and manage their external legal counsel. LINK
💸 Supio raises $60m to power personal injury firms
This Series B funding, with participation from Thomson Reuters Ventures, brings their total funding to $91M. The platform helps personal injury and mass tort firms review medical bills, estimate settlements, streamline case documentation and draft demands. LINK
🤑 AI marketing startup FirmPilot raises $4.7m in funding
Combined with a previous raise of $7m in 2023, their total funding is $11.7m, with participation from Thomson Reuters Ventures and HubSpot Ventures in this round. FirmPilot help law firms boost online visibility and attract inbound client leads, with particular success amongst small and mid-sized firms specialising in areas like personal injury, workers' compensation, family law, immigration, and criminal defence. LINK
Adjacent Interests
🎥 AI's Trillion-Dollar Opportunity: Sequoia AI Ascent 2025 Keynote (28 mins) LINK
🏃♂️ Jevons Paradox: A personal perspective LINK
💡A practical guide to building agents from OpenAI LINK
That’s a wrap! Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed it, 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.Legal Tech 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 👋