WilsonAI, a new legal tech startup co-founded by former Clifford Chance private equity lawyer Gus Neate, has raised $1.7m in pre-seed funding to help inhouse teams streamline workflows and handle repetitive needs.
The company, which is co-founded with Alex Wang, who was previously at quant trading house D.E. Shaw, ‘eliminates legal bottlenecks by handling routine contract reviews, responding to frequently asked legal questions, and integrating seamlessly with internal legal knowledge bases’.
Co-founder and CEO, Neate, told Artificial Lawyer that he had studied engineering then worked at Clifford Chance in the private equity field, before a stint inhouse. There he saw ‘the pain points’ inhouse lawyers experienced and got thinking about how they could be solved.
At Entrepreneur First, the startup incubator, he met Wang, and from there WilsonAI was born.
Neate explained that what sets WilsonAI apart is that it’s designed to act ‘as the first line of defence’ for inhouse teams, and it connects into Word, Notion, Slack and other key systems to help do that. It also helps businesses from having to call on the legal team unless they need it, as it’s designed to help people in other areas, such as sales or procurement, handle day-to-day needs, e.g. around contracts. If they need to escalate to the legal team, they can, but the idea is WilsonAI is an ‘AI paralegal that takes the first stab at things’.
Neate added that there is therefore a big emphasis on self-service, with WilsonAI helping staff across companies avoid having to get to that escalation point.
They’re also building a proprietary Legal Large Action Model ‘LLAM’, which enables the product to understand legal workflows and improve automation over time, which they said means that ‘unlike static AI tools, WilsonAI continuously refines its capabilities based on real-world usage’.
The investment was led by Nomad Ventures, with participation from Autopilot Ventures, Entrepreneur First, Transpose, and key strategic angels including Mei Z, several exited founders, and law firm partners.
All well and good, and here’s some more detail on what WilsonAI can do:
- ‘Q&A & Knowledge – Instant legal guidance, living playbooks. Ask anything, update anytime – your legal knowledge evolves with your business.
- Contract review – Lightning-fast contract review, precision-guided by your precedents. Analyze agreements in minutes, backed by your trusted standards.
- AI Triage & Overview – Total legal visibility, intelligent workflow.One pane of glass to track, triage, and transform legal operations.
- Instant Legal Response – Turn 14-day wait times into instant answers through AI-powered automation of routine legal matters.
- Optimize Legal Spend – Reduce external counsel costs and expand legal capacity without additional headcount.
- Proactive Protection – Ensure consistent compliance and risk management through automated flagging and tracking.
- Integrate Workflows – Wilson integrates into your existing work tool, like Notion, Slack and soon email.
- Accelerate Deal Flow – Eliminate legal bottlenecks holding back your revenue – close deals 41% faster.
- Data-Driven Results – Track and improve resolution times, self-service adoption, and cost savings with real-time analytics.’
Early deployments have demonstrated WilsonAI can ‘automate over 50% of routine legal queries and accelerates contract review processes by up to 70%. This translates to significant time savings for legal teams, with inhouse lawyers reporting they can redirect 15 to 20 hours per week to strategic work’, they said.
Wang, co-founder and CTO of WilsonAI, commented: ‘Weʼre building an AI that doesnʼt just answer questions, but actively participates in legal teamsʼ daily workflows. By integrating with inhouse legal data and processes, WilsonAIʼs AI paralegal becomes an invaluable team member, delivering efficiency and consistency at scale.’
And, James Mumma, Founding Partner at investor Nomad Ventures, concluded: ‘WilsonAI is addressing one of the biggest pain points in corporate legal departments: the overwhelming volume of routine legal work. Gus and Alex have built a world-class team that understands both the legal and AI landscapes, and their AI paralegal has the potential to become an essential tool for in-house legal teams worldwide.’
You can find out more about WilsonAI here.