Lawhive, a UK-based legal tech startup that offers AI-based in-house “lawyers” through a software-as-a-service platform aimed at small law firms, raises £9.5 million ($11.9 million) in a seed round. was procured. Expanding the scope of AI-driven services for “main street” law firms.
To date, most legal tech startups that have implemented AI have focused on the large and attractive market of “Big Law.” These are large law firms with locations across the country or around the world that are passionate about bringing AI into their workflows. These startups include Harvey (US-based, raised $106 million), Robin AI (UK-based, raised $43.4 million), and Spellbook (Canada-based, raised $32.4 million). But startups pay little attention to the thousands of “main street” law firms that have much smaller budgets and are harder to monetize.
Lawhive targets small law firms and solo lawyers who run their own shops. Lawyers can use the software to onboard and manage their own clients, or sign up for Lawhive's marketplace to be matched with individual clients and small businesses.
The company applies a variety of fundamental AI models and its own in-house models to summarize documents and speed up repetitive tasks such as KYC/AML, client onboarding, and document collection for both attorneys and clients. It states that The company claims that its in-house AI lawyer “Lawrence” is built on a proprietary Large Language Model (LLM) and that he passed the Bar Qualification Examination (SQE) with a score of 81%. doing. 55%.
“Almost all of the existing legal tech (AI companies like Harvey, Robin AI, Spellbook, etc.) are all aimed at the corporate market,” Pierre Proner, CEO and co-founder of Lawhive, told TechCrunch. “This is a very small number of large law firms in the US or UK. We are trying to solve problems in consumer law, which is a completely different and independent market. At the moment there are 10,000 small law firms in the UK. Our office provides services.”
Proner said small businesses need to manage higher costs as the market shrinks. “Personnel costs for paralegals, junior lawyers, trainees, etc. are high. Only one to three senior lawyers actually earn an income. So the model doesn't work. There's a huge exodus from models, many of whom are freelance or self-employed. We've seen a lot of traction there.”
The UK consumer law market is worth an estimated £25bn, but like most legal markets it is groaning under the weight of its own costs. This means that approximately 3.6 million people have unmet legal needs related to disputes each year, and approximately 1 million small and medium-sized businesses handle legal matters on their own. Therefore, there is a huge opportunity for automation to help increase productivity in this area.
Proner added: [our model] Uses base models from OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as open source models. But this is our own model, trained on the data we've been able to collect from thousands of cases. ”
Proner said the startup plans to use the seed round to expand into other markets. “We are also looking at other markets that have not yet been announced,” he said.
Rouhiyev's lead investor in this round may provide some clues as to what markets the company is considering. The seed round was led by GV, Alphabet's US-based venture capital investment arm. London-based investor Episode 1 Ventures also participated.
Vidhu Shanmugaraja, partner at GV, said in a statement: Lawhive represents a transformative change for both lawyers and consumers. ”