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Image Credits:Lawhive / Lawhive team (L-R) Jaime van Oers, Pierre Proner and Flinn Dolman
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U.K.-based sound tech startupLawhive , which put up an AI - based , in - menage “ lawyer ” through a software - as - a - service political platform target at small police force firms , has raised £ 9.5 million ( $ 11.9 million ) in a seed round to flourish the reaching of AI - push back table service for “ main street ” law firms .
To date , most effectual tech startups that have deploy AI have digest on the big , gamey market of “ Big Law ” — large law firms that have a presence throughout the country or globally and are dandy on pushing AI into their workflows . Such inauguration include Harvey ( U.S.-based ; stir $ 106 million ) , Robin AI ( U.K.-based ; nurture $ 43.4 million ) and Spellbook ( Canada - found ; raised $ 32.4 million ) . But startup have give scant attention to the thousands of “ main street ” jurisprudence firm , which have far smaller budgets and are harder to monetise .
Lawhive targets small law firms or solo lawyers prevail their own shops . Lawyers can use its software package to onboard and manage their own clients , or can sign up for Lawhive ’s marketplace to be matched with individual customers and small businesses .
The startup says it applies a kind of foundational AI modelling as well as its own in - theater role model to sum up documents and speed up repetitive task such as KYC / AML , guest onboarding and written document collection for both lawyers and their node . The party says its in - house AI lawyer , “ Lawrence , ” is built on top of its own large spoken communication mannequin ( LLM ) , which it claim has passed the Solicitors Qualifying Examination ( SQE ) with an 81 % level against a decease grade of 55 % .
“ Pretty much all of the existing effectual technical school — AI company like Harvey , Robin AI or Spellbook — all go after the incorporated food market , ” Pierre Proner , chief operating officer and co - founder of Lawhive , told TechCrunch . “ That ’s a very minuscule number of big practice of law firms in the U.S. or the U.K. We ’re sample to empty the problem in the consumer effectual space , which is a totally different and separate mart . It ’s served , at the moment , by — in the U.K. — 10,000 small law business firm . ”
Proner said smaller firm have to do mellow price amid a shrinking market . “ They ’ve got high price of staffing , with paralegals , junior attorney and trainees . They only have one - to - three actual elderly lawyers who are realise any money . So the model does n’t work . There ’s this vast exodus of mid - career lawyers from the main - street / gamey - street model , and a lot of them are going freelance or self - use . That ’s where we ’ve sort of seen a lot of adhesive friction . ”
Although the U.K. ’s consumer effectual grocery is worth an estimated£25 billion , like most legal grocery store , it ’s groaning under the weightiness of its own costs . This mean around 3.6 million citizenry have an unmet effectual pauperism involving a dispute each twelvemonth , andaround a millionsmall business deal legal yield on their own . So there ’s a unassailable opportunity for automation to help the sphere dial up productiveness .
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Proner total , “ We do combine [ our model ] with foundational models from OpenAI and Anthropic , as well as open source model . But it is our own model , which has been trained on the data that we ’ve been able to tuck from one thousand of cases . ”
The startup plan to utilise the ejaculate round to enter other markets , per Proner . “ We have our oculus on other markets yet to be publicly break , ” he say .
Lawhive ’s lead investor for this round may provide some clues about which market the troupe may be view : The germ round was run by GV , the venture Washington investment arm of U.S.-based Alphabet . London - based investor Episode 1 Ventures also participated .
In a command , Vidu Shanmugarajah , a partner at GV , said , “ As a lawyer by training , I have experienced first - hand how want technology - labour innovation is in the legal sector . Lawhive symbolize a transformative shift for both attorney and consumers . ”
Previously , Lawhive had raise £ 1.3 million from Episode1 at pre - seed .
