It’s back to the future for Noory Bechor and his legal AI contract review startup Superlegal, which has grown out of the ashes of LawGeex. It has now gained $5m in a Seed funding round co-led by Aleph and the Disruptive AI fund. Tom Glocer, the former CEO of Thomson Reuters, and the Google AI Startups Fund also coughed up some cash.
So, what’s this all about? The simple answer is that Bechor and his CTO, Ilan Admon, who together created LawGeex back in 2014 during the first wave of legal AI, then created Superlegal in 2021 to focus on the SMB segment of the market as it became clear that LawGeex, which focused on large corporates, was having problems.
LawGeex’s clients and assets were eventually sold off to LegalSifter and RobinAI in 2023 after a period of turmoil at the Israel-based company. Now with the new money they can really grow Superlegal, and in some ways it really is right back to the beginning.
Artificial Lawyer remembers talking to Bechor in 2016 and being told how LawGeex would be used by small businesses to check whether a contract was ‘market’ or whether a bicycle courier should sign an employment contract they’d been given. I.e. they were looking at the smaller end of the market even back then, at least for part of their client base.
But, LawGeex was also interested in larger businesses, especially in America, and it was there they really focused, culminating in opening a base in Utah so that it could handle legal playbooks for US corporate clients as part of its aim to handle complex contracts for them.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned. That said, we should remember that before 99% of the legal world was even thinking about AI and the law, Bechor and Admon were already pioneering away with early NLP / machine learning systems for text analysis in 2014 – and for a time did very well with it.
Now, they are back to the beginning and Superlegal is ‘AI-powered and lawyer-verified’ and designed to help SMBs handle their contracts efficiently and cost-effectively, as well as ‘accurately review and advance contracts without relying on a legal department or outside legal counsel’.
The company’s patented AI contract review engine was trained using data from the world’s largest legal organizations and includes unique algorithms designed specifically for legal language. Superlegal provides a 90% reduction in legal costs for SMBs, they said.
Interestingly, they have also kept hold of their Utah legal licence and still have an office there. They are also offering fixed fees. And, to some extent they are offering a similar model to LawGeex, in that they give you the reviewed contracts back ‘within 24 hours’, rather than instantly – i.e. this is not pure tech output alone, there are humans in the loop here. In short, this is the same plan as before, but the client focus is small to medium size companies, not giant corporates.
Noory Bechor, CEO and Co-founder of Superlegal said: ‘This investment from three industry-leading VCs with deep passion and expertise in AI serves as a robust validation of our vision and dedication to ensuring that small and medium-sized businesses can access, afford, and adopt the same AI technologies as enterprises. With this funding, we can expedite our growth trajectory and sustain our commitment to innovation, while levelling the playing field between small and large businesses.’
Yorai Fainmesser, General Partner at Disruptive AI, an investor, concluded: ‘The legal sector is one of the major beneficiaries of the Generative AI revolution and Superlegal is positioned to become a market leader with its fully automated solution. Leveraging Superlegal’s proprietary AI to replace lawyers’ involvement in day-to-day business contracts can speed up deal closing cycle for SMBs seeking to drive revenues faster.’
Legal tech companies come and go, but good ideas last. Good luck to Bechor and team.