Legal Tech Trends Newsletter: #42
Surprising GenAI Stats, Sensemaker Academy, Mega Fundraises, and Podcast IRL
Happy Tuesday, and welcome to the 42nd edition of Legal Tech Trends!👋
This edition comes to you earlier than our usual Friday morning slot, as I take advantage of a rare breather between delivering AI workshops, with seven this week!
I’m excited to spend more time in London this month, including Factor’s Sensemaker Academy London briefing. Request an invite: LINK (more details below)
Are you heading to LegalTechTalk? For the second year running, I'm teaming up with Mike Kennedy and Alex Irschenberger for our pre-conference run - this time tagging onto the folks from Harvey. Join the fun: LINK 👟
📊 Curious Charts
According to Bain’s regular GenAI surveys, the adoption of GenAI in legal departments remains relatively low, below 10% in active use, but it shows promise, with an additional 20+% of teams currently piloting or developing projects.
Despite market perceptions of rapid progress, this data indicates that enterprise AI adoption across many departments, including legal, continues to be challenging.
Intuitively, and based on many client conversations and the data shared in other market surveys, this 10% figure feels extremely low.
As always, I encourage a healthy dose of scepticism for any survey. No survey is perfect, but this one is useful. The cross-department comparison and consistency of Bain's regular surveying gives a helpful benchmark to surface trends.
Data: Surveys had ~200 respondents each, previously identified as corporate executives.
But what about law firm adoption rates?
The Skills.law survey of 100 large law firms found that a market-wide adoption rate for ‘AI Legal Assistant’ solutions (e.g. Harvey, CoCounsel, Legora, etc.) is just 20%, reinforcing that GenAI is still only impacting a small minority of the market.
While some firms report impressive adoption rates of 75-100%, the clear takeaway is that most lawyers currently lack access to a legal AI assistant.
You can find the full report, which includes an overview of popular legal AI solutions across various use cases here: LINK
Sidenote: Unrelated to this survey, I've heard some generous definitions of "adoption”, like accessing a product once, or logging in once a month - I care far more about weekly or daily usage. Reminder, always clarify what "adoption" really means, as varying interpretations lead to dramatically different stats!
My Work - Building Real AI Capability in Legal
As the charts above show, the spectrum of AI adoption in the legal market varies significantly. Access to suitable tooling is a good start, but even then, many struggle to drive widespread and consistent usage.
Over the last few months, I’ve worked closely with Factor to solve this challenge. On June 25, I'll join Factor, Professor Dan Hunter (King’s College London), and legal leaders from across the industry for a Sensemaker Academy live briefing in London, exploring how legal teams can progress from AI awareness to practical capability.
The Sensemaker Academy is the first practitioner-driven GenAI training programme tailored specifically for lawyers. We built the academy on insights from 20 in-house legal departments, helping teams move from hesitancy to hands-on fluency through realistic simulations and role-specific workflows.
The London briefing will cover:
Key behaviours driving measurable GenAI capability.
Safe-to-fail training environments using real legal scenarios.
A structured curriculum covering AI mindset, interaction techniques, reasoning models, and practical implementation.
A live demonstration of our proprietary AI training guides.
If you're leading AI upskilling in legal and want to experience truly effective training, request your invite here: LINK
AI
🔍 LegalZoom Announces Strategic Partnership with Perplexity to Offer Legal Services to AI Search Customers
Perplexity Pro subscribers will receive discounted access to LegalZoom's services directly within Perplexity’s AI-powered search platform, which processes over 150 million queries each week. These types of announcements are particularly relevant for law firms serving consumers and small businesses. LINK
Sidenote: Given OpenAI’s investment in Harvey, it’s interesting to imagine a world where ChatGPT partners with Harvey (who have plenty of ex-BigLaw attorneys), or a legal service provider, to create a seamless bridge from ChatGPT legal queries to expert human support when needed.
🎥 Microsoft Demos Contract Builder Agent + Fine Tuning
The continued and growing interest from BigTech in legal is encouraging, and given Microsoft’s dominance in law firms’ tech stacks, any move they make is important. GenAI usually shines in demos but faces hurdles in production - yet in this instance, the demo’s legal output quality failed to impress many. LINK
🧠 Expanding Harvey's Model Offerings
In a notable strategic shift, Harvey has expanded its platform to incorporate additional foundation models, now featuring offerings from Anthropic and Google. The domain-specific vs frontier general-purpose model debate has been ongoing for several years, and this announcement adds weight to the argument that frontier models typically outperform legal-specific models. LINK
Sidenote: I really liked Daniel van Binsbergen’s (CEO of DraftPilot) post on the topic of AI models “trained for legal” vs. frontier models, with lively discussions in the comments. LINK
✅ German Bar Association (DAV) endorses BRYTER for legal AI
The German Bar Association (DAV), representing over 60,000 lawyers, has officially partnered with BRYTER, offering members discounted access to its Beamon AI tools. This marks the DAV’s first endorsement of AI technology for practising lawyers. LINK
Private Equity
🚀 Lawfront scoops up sixth regional UK firm LINK
💸 Harbor announces majority investment from BayPine LINK
Podcasts
🎙️Beyond Billable | From metrics to magic: Driving real legal AI adoption
My first in-person podcast was extremely fun, and Pim Betist did a great job covering new ground in this episode. In-person adds a new dimension - I get quite excited as we discuss important inflection points that have shaped my views and AI usage.
My AI podcast player tells me the three reasons you should listen include:
Insights on AI Adoption in Legal - Learn how top firms are integrating AI, including how we apply Facebook’s 7 friend rule.
The future of LegalTech and AI’s Impact. - Our views on ‘AI 2027’ vs ‘AI as Normal Technology’.
Wow Moments. - Stand out observations that have shaped my views, including the ‘I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it directly myself!’ results of my partnership with Axiom.
You can listen here: LINK
🎙️ The Geek in Review | Episode 300: 2025 CounselLink Trends Report with Kris Satkunas and Toby Brown
This episode explores the latest trends in legal pricing, including rising partner billing rates and the 61% rate gap between large and mid-sized firms. LINK
My favourite takeaways include
“Clients don’t buy on price. No one becomes General Counsel by saving money. What clients are buying are results and outcomes.”
Alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) have plateaued around 9-10% of matter billing. Employment and IP have the most AFAs.
“Lawyers do not know how to scope a matter…and I don’t know how you can bill on a fixed fee without scope.”
Acquisitions
🤑 Wolters Kluwer acquires ELM provider Brightflag for €425M
Wolters Kluwer is acquiring Irish legal spend management provider Brightflag for €425 million to bolster its legal and regulatory offerings, particularly targeting mid-sized corporations across the US and Europe. This purchase complements Wolters Kluwer’s existing enterprise-focused ELM solution by expanding its presence in the mid-market segment, where Brightflag generates roughly 60% of its revenue from US-based clients. LINK (Congrats to Alex Kelly and the team!)
💰PERSUIT announces acquisition of Apperio LINK
🤝 Anaqua Buys RightHub ‘AI Native Platform’ In IP Expansion LINK
Raises
💸 Flank Raises $10M to Scale Autonomous Legal Agents - Embedded, Invisible, and Built for the Enterprise
Flank has been all-in on building and beating the AI agent drum for longer than most. They have an ambitious vision for an agentic future, and I regularly check in with their co-founder, Jake Jones, to get his insights and pulse check on the maturity of the latest AI engineering methods they're exploring at scale in production.
They’ve now announced their $10M round and partnership with Simmons & Simmons, who have integrated Flank’s agents to deliver more efficient legal services for their clients. LINK
🤑 Definely raises $30m in Series B Funding
I’ve been a fan of Definely since their early days - they were actually the first LegalTech tool I helped implement when I entered the legal market 5+ years ago! Even back then, their easy setup, strong team, and glowing lawyer feedback made it clear they were onto something big. Fast forward to today: they’ve nearly tripled their ARR in the past year and now support around 100 in-house legal teams and law firms. LINK
Major congrats to Nnamdi, Feargus, Rhys, and the rest of the fantastic team at Definely!👏
💵 Legora hits $675M valuation after $80M Series B raise
This recent round brings their total funding to over $100M. They’ve been on a huge growth run recently, and now serve over 250 law firms and corporate legal departments, including prominent names such as Cleary Gottlieb, Bird & Bird, and Goodwin. LINK
Sidenote: UK firm Taylor Wessing recently announced signing up with Legora following successful pilot LINK
💶 Wordsmith AI Raises $25M Series A and hits $100m
Wordsmith AI aims to deploy a fleet of AI agents across corporate environments. Hitting this valuation so quickly is majorly impressive! LINK
🤑 Due Diligence Startup Marveri Raises $3.5 Million, With Investment From Goodwin Partner LINK
🤑 Theo AI secures $4.2M seed funding for AI-powered litigation predictions
This round comes six months after announcing their $2.2 million pre-seed round in November. The company specialises in AI-driven settlement prediction tools, aiming to provide lawyers and litigants with better insights into case outcomes. LINK
💶 Midpage, an ‘AI-native’ legal research platform, has raised a $4 million seed round, bringing total funding to $6.2 million LINK
💰 Outside Counsel Selection Startup Justice Bid Announces $4M Investment LINK
💶 Germany’s JUPUS raises €6.5M to automate routine tasks of law firms LINK
💸 Ankar IP Platform Raises £3m Seed
Ankar has secured £3 million to help inventors, companies, and IP lawyers streamline their patent processes. The platform enhances efficiency by identifying patent coverage gaps and assessing an invention’s originality, drafting patent submissions, and automating scalable infringement detection. LINK
💵 Carta abandons startup shutdown business, instead backs SimpleClosure’s $15M Series A LINK
💰UK startup Valla raises £2M to increase access to employment law for millions LINK
Adjacent Interests
📈 Benedict Evans | AI eats the world LINK (59 slides)
📊 Mary Meeker | Trends - AI LINK (340 slides)
🦦 The recent history of AI in 32 otters LINK
⚖️ OpenAI - How we’re responding to The New York Times’ data demands in order to protect user privacy LINK (This sounds like cause for concern if you don’t have a Zero Data Retention agreement in place!)
LegalHops Summer Boat Party 🛥️
In Amsterdam on July 1st? If so, join our vibrant LegalHops community for a special summer evening cruising through Amsterdam’s beautiful canals.
Whilst tickets sold out in 12 hours(!), we’re operating a waitlist, so you may get lucky. Join the waitlist here: LINK
🙏 Special thanks to Legora for kindly sponsoring this LegalHops event!
That’s a wrap! Enjoyed this edition? Forward it to a colleague or join the conversation on LinkedIn.
Have a great Tuesday!
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 👋