Legaltech, L.A. Style

It's not the Bay Area, but there are legal tech companies hanging around the City of Angels.

Why is it that Los Angeles is so rarely associated with legal technology? I spent the last few days in that city, and in preparing for my trip, I racked my brain to think of legal technology companies based there.

Sure, there is the 800-pound gorilla of legal tech in Los Angeles, LegalZoom. It was founded in L.A. in 2001 and, with its recent $500 million secondary investment, is now valued at over $2 billion.

There are a few other companies that I knew of from having written about them. If fact, while I was there, I visited one of them, the judicial analytics company Gavelytics, where I recorded a LawNext podcast with founder Rick Merrill and head of sales Justin Brownstone, which will be posted in the next week or so.

I even asked a number of L.A.-based contacts to help me identify legal tech companies based there. No one seemed able to name more than two or three.

So curiosity got the better of me and I decided to see what I could come up with for legal tech companies based in Los Angeles. I did not find much — and I no doubt missed some as there is no easy way to search for legal tech companies by location — but here are the ones I came up with.

Amendment.io. This Santa Monica company has not yet launched, but its website says its product will be a virtual assistant that keeps track of changes to documents as they are emailed back and forth during negotiations.

Everchron. Everchron describes itself as the first collaborative case management platform for litigators. In 2017, the London law firm Mishcon de Reya selected Everchron as one of six legal tech startups to participate in its incubator program, MDR LAB.

Sponsored

FairClaims. FairClaims is a platform for online resolution of disputes valued at $25,000 and under.

Gavelytics. Gavelytics is an analytics platform that provides insights on judges. It currently operates only in California but is working on expanding to other states. Earlier this year, it secured $3.2 million in second-round financing.

HelpSelfLegal. HelpSelf is a document automation bot that uses answers to interview questions to fill in and complete legal documents.

HonestContract. HonestContract is a mobile platform for negotiation and creating clear and fair bilingual contracts. The current beta version is a contract to buy and sell goods, translated between English and Mandarin.

LawDeal. This Long Beach-based company described itself as a DIY legal document service to provide free access to simple legal solutions. Its website is currently not operating and bears a message that a “reimagined” LawDeal is coming soon.

Sponsored

Lawgical. Lawgical is an online marketing, software development and media company for the legal industry. It owns a portfolio of brands and products within the legal industry, of which its best known may be the Legal Talk Network.

LawTake. LawTake is a site for consumers that provides videos about various legal issues. It is also a marketing platform for lawyers, who can upload their own videos to the site.

LegalNature. LegalNature provides legal documents and forms for individuals and small businesses.

Lexicata. Lexicata is cloud-based CRM and client intake software for law firms. You can find several articles about Lexicata at my LawSites blog.

PatSnap. PatSnap provides a variety of products related to intellectual property protection, including tools for patent search, analysis, and visualization.

RPost. RPost is the developer of a suite of products for proof of email delivery, encryption, and e-signatures.

Sagewise. Sagewise, founded by Amy Wan, is a dispute resolution infrastructure for smart contracts.

One other company my research turned up, ipShark, a platform for policing and protecting against intellectual property infringements, appears to have been founded in Los Angeles, but now lists San Francisco as its home base.

One final disclaimer: I am well aware that there are legal tech companies located throughout Southern California. I intended this post to focus on L.A. and did not include companies in cities such as Irvine and San Diego to the south or Santa Barbara to the north.


Robert Ambrogi Bob AmbrogiRobert Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog LawSites.com. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an inaugural Fastcase 50 honoree. He can be reached by email at ambrogi@gmail.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@BobAmbrogi).

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