Lawpath Bags $10m, Advances Legal AI Solution For SMBs

Lawpath, the online legal platform, has gained an additional $10m in funding led by Westpac Bank; has hit half a million clients; and is rolling out a more advanced legal AI suite for SMBs which leverages Amazon Web Services and Anthropic. They’re also growing their own accountancy division – to mirror the growth of their legal sector success.

Dominic Woolrych, CEO of Lawpath, commented: ‘Our ambition is to make the law more accessible to small businesses and support them with a broad range of services to help them thrive. Our partnership with Westpac [which is part of the funding deal] marks a significant milestone in our mission to revolutionise how businesses access legal and professional services.’

On the accountancy development, Woolrych told this site: ‘In SMB land clients want everything in one easy-to-use platform.’

Woolrych also told this site that they have a few clients in the US, although have not officially launched there yet, and the UK remains possible, but there are no plans to open there at present. One can see the platform as a bit like LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer in the US, i.e. it provides help where it can, but will also direct customers to law firms.

In fact, on top of using its documents and tech solutions (see below), you can sign up for law firm help on a subscription, which is unlimited and includes contract review.

Lawpath is now used to ‘incorporate 7% of all businesses’ in Australia – which is a big deal, given that SMBs are 98% of all businesses and contribute approximately $590 billion to the economy annually, they noted. It launched in 2014 and has steadily grown since then.

But, for legal techies, the central point is perhaps the development of its Lawpath AI, an SMB-focused legal AI platform, which now handles over 5,000 queries per day.

It offers ‘drafting, document review and proactive insights tools’.

On the use of AI Woolrych added: ‘Lawpath AI has allowed us to unlock legal help at scale. Shifting legal from a one-to-one model to a one-to-many model has meant we can provide legal help on-demand, at scale at a fraction of the traditional cost. Our AI technology is helping to simplify the complexity of starting and running a business, making legal services more accessible and affordable than ever before.’

And one could see this as an access to justice development, as it’s allowing many businesses that may not be able to afford much legal input to get answers and legal outputs more quickly and at affordable rates.

Overall, it’s filling a gap in the market and its growth is clear proof that the concept of providing legal support at affordable prices will see plenty of demand.

In fact, Lawpath underlines the point that if law firms operated this way they would tap into Jevon’s Paradox and expand the market. I.e. plenty of affordable legal AI tools, subscription and fixed fee pricing, and the legal provider sharing the cost risk with the buyer, will all drive up demand. Kudos to Lawpath.