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)