Which companies that pioneered the field of legal AI are still with us as independent outfits and have neither been sold, nor disappeared entirely? As explored in Artificial Lawyer yesterday, most of the first cohort of pioneers are no longer standalone businesses, but who is still out there?
First, definitions. For this site, the first wave of legal AI pioneers means those companies that got started in the early to mid-2010s using machine learning and natural language processing. Then came a second wave, which very approximately started around 2018 and ran to let’s say the arrival of ChatGPT in 2022. After that comes the third wave of legal AI, which is founded on generative AI capabilities.
To complicate things, many of the first legal AI companies that survive, or became a distinct business unit in a larger company, e.g. Kira, have now adopted some genAI approaches as well. Moreover, other companies that were not focused on genAI have now embraced it, such as no-code company Bryter and also proptech/legal tech company Orbital Witness.
And of course, giants such as Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis simply absorb each new wave of tech as it comes along and apply it to help grow their offering.
But, if we stick here to those who started in the first wave especially, we have:
- Luminance – founded in the UK by the now late tech billionaire Mike Lynch, and first trialled at leading law firm Slaughter and May, it was never going to be part of the usual group of legal tech startups. It formally launched in 2016 with a focus on ML/NLP for contract review at law firms. However, with the arrival of genAI the company has reinvented itself as a specialist in legal LLM outputs and has also pushed more heavily into the inhouse world. They remain independent and raised $40m in fresh cash earlier this year.
- BlackBoiler – if there was ever a company that chose to use ML/NLP technology for a very hard task it is this one. It started in 2016 with the aim of using mark-ups to help legal teams better handle the review of new contracts. See below. As far as can be seen they’ve not gone all in on genAI….yet….at least they’ve not mentioned it to AL. (In fact – guys, what are you doing these days..?)
- LegalOn – a legal AI pioneer from Japan that started back in 2017. It’s been focused on helping inhouse teams with contract review and is a very big player in its home market. They’ve also expanded abroad and hired Daniel Lewis, the former founder of RAVEL, which was bought by LexisNexis (see previous article). Like many other early legal AI companies they’ve now adopted genAI capabilities and are growing steadily as a global business.
- LegalSifter – this contract review company can trace its roots all the way back to 2013. It’s focused on the inhouse world. It’s not clear if they’ve gone all-in on genAI yet, with most of their marketing mentioning the original approach to contract analysis.
- LawGeex – this Israel-based company was at the forefront of legal AI and got going back in 2014, focused on contract review, usually for inhouse teams. Later they expanded into the US, including into Utah. In 2022 there was a major restructure with a new contract analysis business, Superlegal, forming, with LawGeex’s co-founder and CEO, Noory Bechor, at the helm. Moreover, in 2023, Robin AI and LegalSifter (above) bought parts of LawGeex’s enterprise division assets. However, LawGeex still seems to have an active website and multiple staff listed on LinkedIn, even if this site has not heard much from them since the big 2022/23 restructure. Some (…most of…?…all…?) these staff may also be working within the new Superlegal brand at the same time, but still, if you thought LawGeex had totally disappeared off the map as a brand, well, it’s still around online at least.
- LegalMation – Founded in 2017, the company started with ‘traditional’ AI and rules-based approaches to help lawyers automatically produce responses during a litigation, e.g. in relation to discovery. They have more recently also brought in generative AI, but still trust in their home-made ML/NLP and rules-based capabilities.
- ThoughtRiver – started in 2016, very much with ML/NLP with the aim of showing inhouse lawyers where the risks were in their contracts. Not clear yet how far they’ve moved with adopting genAI into the platform. But, we will soon hear about it for sure.
Conclusion
When you add this list to those from yesterday, we have an incredible group of people who really did pioneer – and still do – the field of legal AI. (And the list could probably include a couple more – although not that many more…)
As can be seen, genAI has made itself felt, with several of the above adopting this tech and adding it to the ML/NLP offering they had already developed over several years.
And also as mentioned yesterday, we are standing on the shoulders of giants. Many of the above have inspired a new wave of legal tech startups that arrived on the scene as genAI-first companies. And they in turn will grow, evolve, and in time some will merge, be acquired, and a few will get very large indeed. The great cycle of legal tech life will continue.
As to the ones above, the question is: will they, as with their peers who joined other businesses, opt for a sale? Or will they continue as they are? Either way, that first wave of legal AI started something that is still going strong today – arguably even stronger…. and we salute you all.
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Legal Innovators UK Conference – November 6 + 7, London.
P.S. if all of this fascinates you, then….come along to the Legal Innovators UK conference in London, Nov 6 and 7, where generative AI’s growing impact on the legal sector will be explored across multiple sessions. There will also be plenty of the leading genAI companies taking part and they will have plenty to tell you about where things are heading and what they can now do.
For more information about speakers and companies taking part, please see here.
And to get your tickets now, please see here.