Bigle Legal, the Spanish doc automation company, has launched an office in London, underlining the UK’s importance as a centre to the world’s legal tech companies. It has also received fresh funding from top Spanish firm, Cuatrecasas. It follows Australian doc automation and no-code company, Josef, setting up a base in London in September.
Bigle Legal said that it chose London as it wanted to expand within what is ‘a mature and growing market’. It will be aiming at winning clients in the public sector, as well as among corporates and law firms. The company has clients such as Cuatrecasas, Santalucía Insurance, and Aigües de Barcelona, which provides water to the city of Barcelona.
Bigle Legal provides a broad contracting platform that includes doc automation, digital signatures, and support for the virtual negotiation of contracts in real time.
Sergio Esteve de Miguel, co-founder of Bigle Legal, said: ‘We have an outstanding team and a product that unifies all document automation solutions, so we will go in to compete for the top [in the UK].’
The company has also gained €2m in a funding round led by Adara Ventures, with participation from ICF Venture Tech II. THCap and Cuatrecasas, existing investors in the company, also participated in the round.
While Spain has a steadily growing legal tech market, law firms funding startups is not as regular an event as it has become in the US and UK. Cuatrecasas is also one of the leading firms in Spain and has offices across Europe and in South America.
Is this a big deal? It’s further evidence that London is a key centre for legal tech companies globally. That said, Eigen Technologies, which also covers the financial and insurance markets, has decided to move its HQ to the US to be closer to what it sees as its largest market.
In a quick – and only indicative – Twitter survey, this site asked which city people thought was the best place in the world for a global HQ of a legal tech company. London came out on top very clearly.
One reason for this is that London remains – even in this pandemic-affected and post-Brexit era – a truly global city, in part because it has to be.
The UK is not a giant economy, and London’s financial centre has always sought to be international. The legal sector here is dynamic, highly competitive and operates in an open regulatory environment. This combined together has led to pressures and opportunities that tend to drive legal sector innovation. In turn, this can act as a magnet to legal tech companies from around the world.