{"id":11096,"date":"2019-09-16T16:16:55","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T20:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/?p=603602"},"modified":"2019-09-16T16:16:55","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T20:16:55","slug":"at-1-1-billion-its-already-a-record-year-for-legal-tech-investment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2019\/09\/16\/at-1-1-billion-its-already-a-record-year-for-legal-tech-investment\/","title":{"rendered":"At $1.2 Billion, It\u2019s Already A Record Year For Legal Tech Investment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-477754\" src=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/money-technology-tech-ediscovery-e-discovery-300x213.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"213\" \/>We are only midway through September, with three-and-a-half months to go in 2019. But already the year has set the record for investment in legal technology companies, surpassing last year\u2019s record of $1 billion.<\/p>\n<p>So far this year, the total investment in legal tech is at least $1.2 billion. The actual number is higher, because other announced investments did not disclose their dollar amounts. Last year, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawsitesblog.com\/2018\/12\/20-important-legal-technology-developments-2018.html\">total investment was $1 billion<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 of which half went to a single company \u2014 and the year before, in 2017, the total was a relatively paltry $233 million.<\/p>\n<p>Over at my LawSites blog, I have posted the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawsitesblog.com\/2019\/09\/at-1-1-billion-2019-is-a-record-year-for-legal-tech-investments-and-its-only-september.html\">full data on investments to date<\/a> in 2019, providing details on the companies, amounts, investment types, and dates. The list includes 41 companies, plus two others that did not disclose their investment amounts.<\/p>\n<p>The year so far has been bookended by the two largest investments. We were only a few days into January when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.onit.com\/\">Onit<\/a>, a Houston company that provides enterprise workflow products for legal management, contract management, and business process automation, announced a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawsitesblog.com\/2019\/01\/new-year-kicks-off-huge-200m-investment-legal-tech-company.html\">$200 million strategic investment<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/k1capital.com\/\">K1 Investment Management<\/a>, a Los Angeles private equity firm that specializes in high-growth enterprise software companies.<\/p>\n<p>Until two weeks ago, that stood as the year\u2019s largest investment. Then, on Sept. 4, the cloud law practice management company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clio.com\/\">Clio<\/a> announced a jaw-dropping <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lawsitesblog.com\/2019\/09\/major-legaltech-news-as-clio-gets-250m-investment-adds-avvo-founder-mark-britton-to-board.html\">$250 million Series D funding round<\/a>. It is one of the largest investments ever in a legal tech company and the largest ever in a Canadian technology company. (Clio is headquartered in Burnaby, B.C., just outside Vancouver.)<\/p>\n<p>After those two, the other investments that ranked in the year\u2019s top six to date are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>$115 million for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.icertis.com\/\">Icertis<\/a>, a cloud-based contract lifecycle management company;<\/li>\n<li>$83 million for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.csdisco.com\/\">DISCO<\/a>, an eDiscovery company;<\/li>\n<li>$55 million for <a href=\"https:\/\/contractpod.com\/\">ContractPodAI<\/a>, a U.K. contract management company; and<\/li>\n<li>$55 million for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fadada.com\">Fadada<\/a>, a Chinese electronic signature and contracts company.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Of the 41 companies where the investments are known, at least 12 are focused on some aspect of contracts and contracting \u2014 including contract management, contract review, and contract automation. These include four of the top six \u2014 Onit, Icertis, ContractPodAI, and Fadada.<\/p>\n<p>But other companies span a range of law-related functions. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.notarize.com\/\">Notarize<\/a>, an online notary public service, raised $37 million. <a href=\"https:\/\/farewill.com\/\">Farewill<\/a>, a U.K. platform for creating wills, raised $9.4 million. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.boundless.com\/\">Boundless<\/a>, an immigration platform, raised $7.8 million. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.donotpay.com\/\">DoNotPay<\/a>, which creates legal apps for consumers, raised $4.6 million.<\/p>\n<p>As I <a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/2018\/07\/200m-in-two-months-says-investors-no-longer-snubbing-legal-tech\/?rf=1\">noted a year ago<\/a> in this column, the conventional wisdom long held that major Silicon Valley and New York investors had no interest in legal technology. Last year\u2019s $1 billion in investments suggested that is no longer true. This year\u2019s investment pace appears to prove that last year was not just an anomaly.<\/p>\n<p>To put this year\u2019s $1.1 billion-plus in perspective, consider that, for the seven years from 2010 to 2017, the total investment in legal technology startups \u2014 as charted by <a href=\"https:\/\/news.crunchbase.com\/news\/legal-tech-fails-sustain-deal-counts-dollar-amounts\/\">Holden Page at Crunchbase<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 was $1.5 billion. That included the \u201cfluke\u201d year of 2015, in which over $426 million was invested \u2014 a number skewed by two major investments that year, $125 million in eDiscovery company <a href=\"https:\/\/www.relativity.com\/\">Relativity<\/a> and $71.5 million in legal directory <a href=\"https:\/\/www.avvo.com\/\">Avvo<\/a>. In both 2016 and 2017, funding dropped precipitously from that 2015 high.<\/p>\n<p>Will this investment trend continue? At this point, there is no turning back. The legal industry has turned a corner on its use and adoption of technology. Law firms are becoming innovators, legal departments are demanding efficiencies and process improvements, a cavernous justice gap cries out for better delivery systems, and regulatory reform efforts foretell a new era of private-sector involvement in the delivery of legal services.<\/p>\n<p>It remains to be seen how this year will end up, as more investment news is certain to drop by the end of December. Whatever the final tally this year, I am willing to bet it will be even higher in the coming year.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-421609\" src=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/06\/Robert-Ambrogi-Bob-Ambrogi-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Robert Ambrogi Bob Ambrogi\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/author\/robertambrogi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Robert Ambrogi<\/a>\u00a0is a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.legaline.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Massachusetts lawyer<\/a>\u00a0and journalist who has been covering legal technology and the web for more than 20 years, primarily through his blog\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lawsitesblog.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">LawSites.com<\/a>. Former editor-in-chief of several legal newspapers, he is a fellow of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/collegeoflpm.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">College of Law Practice Management<\/a>\u00a0and an inaugural\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcase.com\/fastcase50-winners-2011\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fastcase 50<\/a>\u00a0honoree. He can be reached by email at\u00a0<a href=\"mailto:ambrogi@gmail.com?subject=Your%20ATL%20column\">ambrogi@gmail.com<\/a>, and you can follow him on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bobambrogi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0(@BobAmbrogi).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"summary\">Will this investment trend continue? At this point, there is no turning back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18763,"featured_media":477754,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[124,66,3262,7],"class_list":["post-11096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-money","tag-robert-ambrogi","tag-tech-investment","tag-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>At $1.2 Billion, It\u2019s Already A Record Year For Legal Tech Investment - Above The Law&#039;s Legal Tech Non-Event<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/legal-innovation-center\/2019\/09\/16\/at-1-1-billion-its-already-a-record-year-for-legal-tech-investment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At $1.2 Billion, It\u2019s Already A Record Year For Legal Tech Investment - Above The Law&#039;s Legal Tech Non-Event\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Will this investment trend continue? 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