Juro, the contract automation platform, has raised $23m in Series B funding – a huge leap in scale compared to the $5.25m round of 2020. Richard Mabey, CEO, told Artificial Lawyer: ‘Our core belief is that lawyers will move away from Word and use Juro.’
He noted that the cash will be used for staff expansion and they would invest heavily in their contract editor capability, which allows lawyers to create and negotiate contracts on Juro’s own platform, rather than having to use Word.
There will also be more integrations so that inhouse lawyers and other parts of a company can easily slot Juro into their contracting processes.
‘We want to connect to tools that people who are not lawyers use,’ Mabey added (pictured).
In terms of the scale of the expansion, they are now about 60 people in the UK and Baltics and they want to get to around 130 in 2023, or more than double the size. Mabey added that they currently have about 40% of their client base in the US and this global outlook will be part of the expansion plan, including more growth across Europe. In fact, the company said its clients now operate in 85 countries.
Eight Roads, the global venture capital fund, which previously invested in Alibaba, Cazoo and Appsflyer, led the round. Existing investors Union Square Ventures, Point Nine Capital, Seedcamp and Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, also participated. Juro’s clients include Deliveroo, Cazoo, Trustpilot and TheRealReal.
Juro is an all-in-one contract automation platform enabling legal counsel and their teams to manage contracts in a single web browser. By providing a single unified workspace, Juro enables clients to ‘avoid a patchwork of online and offline tools and processes, expediting critical business processes’. They also have their own native e-signature system.
Mabey added: ‘Companies use Juro for complex doc automation and integrations, to complete agreements end to end without leaving their browser.’
‘We are an all-in-one tool, we take lawyers out of lots of versions of Word docs and you also do not need five different tools to make one contract,’ he explained.
This site then asked Mabey about the wider changes in the market, especially CLM and how Juro fits into this.
First, he explained that they don’t see themselves as a CLM or as trying to be one. The focus is on contract automation and negotiation. The contracting market is massive and they are going to carve out part of it that will be for companies that want to embrace their non-Word, all-in-one platform approach.
Artificial Lawyer noted that this may mean only gaining a very focused share of the total available contracting market – as Word remains dominant – but that as the global demand for commercial contract solutions is so vast and growing this would still support a major legal tech business.
And to give another sense of scale, Mabey added: ‘In just the last 12 months our customers have processed more than 250,000 contracts in Juro, without leaving their browser. This has saved customers millions of hours in time and helped them to agree terms faster than ever.’
Alston Zecha of Eight Roads, who has become now a Director at Juro, added: ‘Until Juro, there hasn’t been an all-in-one platform which automates contracts and provides frictionless integrations with clients’ workflows. Juro is used by legal, sales, HR and other teams at some of Europe’s best high-growth companies including many in Eight Roads’ portfolio. It has market-leading customer satisfaction scores plus the highest employee satisfaction score we’ve seen at a scaleup. We are thrilled to partner with Richard, Pavel and the Juro team.’
The investment round takes Juro’s total funds raised to $31.5m.