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Unlike sharks, killer whales hunt collaboratively.  Is this the right approach to the legal tech vertical?

Why aren’t more law firms investing in startups and/or launching corporate venture arms? Is corporate venture capital (CVC) a good fit for the legal industry? If not, is there a better model? And then, finally, what does all of this have to do with killer whales?

In this essay, I’m going to attempt to answer each of these questions. I will start by giving a brief introduction to CVC and then I will outline the current models of law firm venture investments, highlighting both strengths and shortcomings. In the second half of this essay, I’ll suggest an alternative model, a collaborative industry-wide approach which I have dubbed “Investing like Killer Whales.” This is the strategy we used when we syndicated an investment in AI-based contract benchmarking startup TermScout.  See Abramowitz, “As Promised, Our Second #Legaltech Investment Announcement This Week,” Zach of Legal Disruption, May 5, 2022 (describing collaborative syndicate approach and why worked well for TermScout).
Continue Reading Sharing my playbook for Legal Tech investment (324)

Source:  Gravity Stack [Click on to enlarge]

Sophisticated investors are betting on contract tech. It’s about business, not the intricacies or importance of law.

Today’s post (256) and last week’s (255) are a two-part series on the burgeoning legal tech sector.

Whereas Post 255 focused on the explosion in the legal technology market over the past year—five new #Legaltech Unicorns, three companies go public—this post looks contract tech, which is arguably legal tech’s hottest subsector.
Continue Reading Because Everyone Else Cares: Why legal should be paying attention to contracts (256)

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Five New #Legaltech Unicorns.  One Unicorn Nearly Doubles in Value.  Three Companies Go Public. 

It might be unfair to say that legal technology arrived in 2021. After all, law firms and law departments, the primary target buyers of legal tech, have been preparing for the impact of AI and automation.

In 2018, Amlaw 100 firms like Reed Smith and later Wilson Sonsini began creating dedicated tech-focused subsidiaries. See Post 213 (Zach Abramowitz’s overview of law firm-led legal tech.  In late 2019, the chairman of an AmLaw 50 firm told us, “We know there is new stuff, we know that our clients know about the new stuff. The question is how we become proactive so that our clients don’t bypass us on the way to the new stuff.”
Continue Reading How the first half of 2021 signals the maturity of an ecosystem (255)

Photo Credit: ESA/NASA
The 4th Industrial Revolution is here (even for lawyers).  A look at what digital transformation actually means for legal markets — and the investments tomorrow’s winners are making today.

Today’s post is the final part in the 5-part series #GreatExpectations for the #GreatReset.  (Like the vaccine rollout 💉 and my workout plan 😁, this post is a bit delayed 🥺.  A million thanks to Bill and the Legal Evolution audience for the patience!)
Continue Reading #GreatExpectations, Part V: Cloudy with a Chance of Digital Disruption (220)

Is it time to take a fresh look at how we sell legal tech?

Clients and lawyers are attracted to technology because of the enormous potential for better, faster, and more efficient legal work.  No one in the legal industry disputes that technology is integral to our future.  Despite this relatively positive and uniform outlook, however, legal tech as an industry remains notoriously risky, primarily because of long sales cycles, limited exposure to potential issues and concerns of end-users, and lengthy deployments that fail to deliver on the many promises made in order to make the sale.
Continue Reading A product-led growth strategy for legal tech, explained (197)