Legatics Hires Ex-BBC News Engineer, Bags Top Swedish Firms

Deal management platform Legatics has a spring in its step at the moment, after hiring as its CTO the former Head of Software Engineering at BBC News, Steve Wheeler. It has also secured three of the leading transactional law firms in Sweden as clients.

With regards to Wheeler, he was also responsible for leading the BBC World Service’s and BBC Weather’s online products. And it’s an interesting move, from a media giant to a very focused legal tech company.

However, the company said that bringing in such an experienced software engineer was just the first step in a plan to expand the tech team so Legatics can accelerate feature delivery for its clients. Looks like we can expect more hires soon.

Meanwhile – and talking of clients – the UK-based company has moved three of Sweden’s leading law firms onto its platform: Cederquist, Mannheimer Swartling, and Vinge.

Is this a big deal? While there are plenty of law firms in the UK still to take up a deal management platform, that Legatics has won three of the main transactional firms in Sweden is a significant step. As more firms make use of a certain platform there is more likelihood that lawyers from other firms on the other side of deals will get curious. In turn this can start to have a network effect where a certain platform becomes ‘standard’.

Legatics also has customers in the Netherlands and Portugal, showing the potential for much broader adoption across Europe. They also have US law firms as clients.

Any road, what do the clients think?

Here’s what Klara Apéria, Innovation manager, at Mannheimer Swartling, said: ‘During the fall last year, we used Legatics on a number of matters and received a lot of positive feedback from our clients. We have found it to be a great user experience and have identified efficiency benefits for the client, for us and for all other parties involved. We are very happy to have established a great collaboration with Legatics through our innovation hub, MSA Innovation Lab.’

And….it’s good to see leading Scandinavian law firms setting up innovation hubs as well. In this case MSA Innovation Lab was established in February 2019 and handles a variety of projects:

  • ‘Supports and collaborates with recently started companies that develop applications for Mannheimer Swartling and the firm’s clients through an incubator for start-ups within Legal Tech.
  • Collaborates with leading researchers in digitalisation.
  • Conducts its own development of digital applications that streamline the advice to the firm’s clients.
  • Develops and provides digital platforms to which the firm’s clients have access.’

Sounds like Legatics has found a customer in Mannheimer that will really engage deeply with them.

But, you may say, what does Legatics do? The best way to explain it is via this AL TV Product Walk Through that was published last month, with CCO Dan Porus providing the commentary on how it all works. The TL/DR version is that it puts transactions into a shared space with plenty of guide rails and process support capabilities to ensure that even the most complex matter is kept on track and everyone knows where everyone is in a deal. That speeds things up, reduces risk, and generally makes the process aspects less of a burden on all involved.

AL TV Productions, Jan 2021.

[ Main photo: Royal Palace, Stockholm, Sweden – pic credit: RT. ]