Nate's News from The LegalTech Fund (December)

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Nate's News

From The LegalTech Fund

TLTF's Funding Universe in Q4 2020 (Oct and Nov)

$623M invested in 36 deals

Founders and investors interested in the space: email us.

💰 In the Money: Fundings

AppClose, an app to set up co-parenting arrangements, raised $1M.
Compliance.ai, a platform for financial service firms to monitor and manage regulation changes, raised $3M led by Cota Capital.
Lightico, which allows companies to offer eSignature and customer identification via mobile devices, raised $12.6M led by Oxx.
Obligo, which provides tenants with alternative agreements to traditional security deposits, raised $15.5M ($13.5M in equity) led by 10D.
Sleek, which helps small businesses incorporate and handle their administrative and compliance needs, raised $4M led by SEEDS Capital.
Smart Protection, a platform to monitor and protect brands from counterfeiting, raised a €10M Series B led by CDTI, Knight Capital, and Swanlaab Venture Factory.
Trust & Will, a platform helping with estate planning, raised a $15M Series B led by Jackson Square Partners.
UpCodes, which provides up-to-date building codes and notices for construction, raised a $3.4M Seed.
Venminder, a platform to manage third-party vendor risk, raised a $33M Series C led by Silversmith Capital Partners.
Verbit, a platform for AI-powered transcription and captioning, raised a $60M Series C led by Sapphire Ventures.
ZenBusiness, which helps companies incorporate and meet necessary regulatory requirements, raised a $55M Series B led by Cathay Innovation.

Acquisitions

CTS, an IT service provider and consultancy for the legal industry, bought City Business Solutions and Sprout IT, both also IT service providers for legal organizations.
Epiq purchased Hyperion Global Partners, a legal operations consultancy.
Onit, which provides legal workflow and contact management software, acquired McCarthyFinch, a provider of AI-powered software for legal operations and contract review.
Hg Capital has purchased a majority stake in Septeo, a legal tech solution provider for notaries, law firms, and in-house legal teams.

IPOs

Nuix, a software provider offering eDiscovery, security, and compliance solutions, plans to raise $705M in an IPO, which would be Australia’s biggest public offering this year.

Accelerators

Allens is launching an Australia-based legaltech accelerator focused on solutions for contract lifecycle management and compliance.

🦃 We hope all our friends in the US had a nice Thanksgiving. We’re grateful for all our readers, and would be even more grateful for new readers to sign up here.

News from the world of law

🥇 Time Magazine named legaltech products FairShake and Upsolve as two of the 100 best inventions of 2020.
📄 Two new apps are helping Illinois and Wisconsin residents automate the process of expunging eligible criminal records.
🎆 Orrick launched its Observatory database, which allows users to compare over 600 legaltech solutions.
After AZ and UT, states such as CT, FL, IL NC, and NY are considering changing regulation around law firm ownership.
Chinese inventors filed over 60% of legaltech patents in 2019, fueled by the needs of China’s online courts and a lawyer shortage 15x worse than the US.
Thomson Reuters opened a marketplace to demo and purchase legaltech products,
A new initiative called Lawtech UK is helping legaltech companies by providing an open sandbox of legal data from law firms and in-house teams.
DLA Piper launched TOKO, a platform to issue tokens for any asset as a proof of ownership.

Laws and Ends

The law student who helped popularize the Zoom School of Law memes has turned her Photoshop skills into a successful side business.
🎶 A German court has ruled that techno legally qualifies as music, which enables nightclubs to receive a tax break on ticket sales.
A research paper advocates for the use of Amicus Curiae in Jewish rabbinical courts.

👂 Listen

Legaler’s Stevie Ghiassi speaks with LawNext about Legaler, Legaler Aid, and the Global LegalTech Report (59 min).

📖 What Else I'm Reading

🧪 DeepMind’s AlphaFold AI program has made a breakthrough in determining protein structures from amino acid sequences, which offers massive new opportunities for medical research and other fields.
Can Shopify compete with Amazon?
💸 Venezuelan citizens, facing massive currency inflation, are turning to online money transfer service Zelle.

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👋 About Nate

I am an investor at The LegalTech Fund and I enjoy seeing how the law affects everyone, from people fighting a parking ticket to companies completing a merger. Nate's News is my own digest that I use to stay on top of meaningful stories in the world of law.