In two excellent examples of how BigTech and the niche world of legal tech are slowly combining here’s two neat news stories.
First, DocuSign the giant e-signature company has placed its CFO, Mike Sheridan, on the board of legal AI company Seal Software.
The move follows the recent $15m investment in Seal, and also follows an earlier partnership agreement between the two companies.
Sheridan said: ‘I have tremendous respect for Seal’s innovative AI technology and what they have achieved so far. I look forward to working with the other board members as the company continues its trajectory.’
Is this a big deal? Yes, it is. Nearly all investors in another company seek some direct influence over it, such as having a board member. But, they don’t always place their CFO on the board of what is a much smaller company – even if in the legal AI world Seal is one of the clear leaders. No doubt the CFO of a company the size of DocuSign is already a very busy person – so this shows how seriously they are taking the relationship with Seal.
This means the two parties will be working ever-closer together and with Sheridan, a financial expert, there it also suggests that DocuSign is focused not just on AI, but in how Seal operates as a business. Will be interesting to see what happens next.
And for those of you who follow BigTech economics, DocuSign is a NASDAQ listed company with revenues of around $700m.
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The second story is the news that robotic process automation (RPA) pioneer, UiPath, which many lawyers have only just got to know the name of, has been valued at $7 Billion…….
Yep…worth saying twice….valued at $7 billion!
It’s a software company that helps corporates and professional services firms automate narrow process activities, such as shifting key client data from incoming emails and filing it away in a CRM system, for example.
The company, which started life in Romania…..yes, that was an interesting factoid AL had not known before as well…..just completed its series D funding round and bagged $568m – which means that the company many legal tech people are only now starting to chat to is in fact now worth more than all the world’s legal tech companies combined.
Not bad, eh?
And, if you thought lawyers were not interested in RPA, think again. It’s still new for many, but its ability to synch with data stores and leverage the output of AI extraction has started to earn some serious interest. Still very early days for RPA in the legal world, but Artificial Lawyer has been contacted just this week by a specialist firm that focuses on helping lawyers leverage RPA….so, something is clearly happening now……