AL Wrap: SimpleDocs, Definely, DysputeAI, Legal Innovators +

Morning everyone, and welcome to the first AL Wrap of the year, which features news, appointments, videos, and information about upcoming events.

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Electra Japonas Appointed CPO For Contract AI Development at SimpleDocs

SimpleDocs has appointed Electra Japonas as Chief Product Officer, formalising her leadership in product strategy at the company, which recently acquired Law Insider where she was Chief Legal Officer. Prior to that role Japonas co-founded the pioneering standard contracts initiative OneNDA.

Japonas will lead the development of what the company describes as ‘the most context-rich legal AI platform on the market’ and will build upon SimpleDocs’ huge store of proprietary contract intelligence.

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University of Southern California Gould School of Law and AmLaw 100 law firm Akerman have launched an ‘Law+AI Initiative’. It is a ‘knowledge-sharing platform merging the theoretical rigor of top legal scholars with the commercial acumen of practicing attorneys deeply experienced in emerging technology’, they explained.

The Initiative aims to help with ‘developing the standards and regulatory path for full-scale AI adoption’.

William Heller, the Law+AI Initiative’s Executive Director and Chair of Akerman’s Consumer Financial Services, Data and Technology Practice Group (CFS+), commented: ‘By partnering with USC Gould, we’re not just reacting to regulations and lawsuits; we will help shape the legal frameworks that will decide how AI systems learn, operate, and innovate. For AI investors and designers, the Initiative is positioned to provide foresight and clarity for deploying capital and code confidently.’

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Definely has appointed Sigurjón Ísaksson as CTO. He joined Definely in 2024 as Head of AI and led the development and release of ‘Enhance’ and ‘Cascade’ – key genAI products for the company that launched in 2017.

Last year they had a $30m Series B round and expanded further into the US market.

As CTO, Ísaksson will continue to lead Definely’s product development as the company plans to scale its technical department with the addition of more AI engineers

Ísaksson commented: ‘I have spent the last two years developing first-of-its-kind AI solutions for complex contract reviewing, unifying Definely’s existing product stack to solve end-to-end workflows for lawyers, and I look forward to doubling down on this as CTO. I am excited to lead an incredible tech team and push the boundaries of deep AI innovation we have achieved in 2025.’

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Norton Rose Fulbright has appointed Paul Orchard as Director of Innovation and Legal Transformation for Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific (EMEAPAC).

He joins from Stephenson Harwood where he served as Head of Innovation and will help to ‘enhance the client experience through matter (re)design, strategic operational improvements and the deployment of new technologies across the region’, they said.

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Legal AI old-timer, Luminance, has appointed Jonty Koekemoer as VP Africa, establishing South Africa as a strategic regional hub to support expansion across the continent, for the company. They said this underlined the importance of Africa as a legal tech market.

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Dyspute.ai has launched Adri V2, an ‘asynchronous AI mediation platform’ – which ‘actively guides parties through the mediation process from intake to resolution’. This is what it does:

‘Adri works to move the parties toward a fair settlement.
Asynchronous, Notification-Based Mediation: Parties engage without needing to be online at the same time, eliminating calendar coordination.
Customized follow-up intake questions tailored to the specifics of each dispute.
Adri kickstarts the mediation by making the first settlement proposal based on each party’s intake responses.
Negotiation Control: In each round, users can choose to vote on a proposal from Adri or make AI-assisted direct offers.
Virtual Mediation Room: A secure space to review proposal history, shared documents, feedback, and offers.
End-to-End Resolution: Parties can finalize AI-generated settlement agreements in-platform and process settlement payments securely via Stripe.’

More here.

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Ironclad Co-Founder Invests in Claims Startup AlphaLit

AlphaLit, which handles legal intake analysis to uncover high-quality claims, announced a $3.2m Seed round. Jason Boehmig, Co-founder of Ironclad, among other larger investors, joined the round. Previous investors include Sequoia Scout Fund and Casetext co-founder Jake Heller.

Founded in 2024 by legal technology veteran and former litigator Anand Upadhye, AlphaLit said that ‘traditional law firms cannot financially justify vetting small cases. As a result, over 64% of calls to attorneys from prospective plaintiffs are ignored. This leaves over 55 million meritorious civil claims unfiled annually, particularly in working-class communities, leaving billions of dollars in potential value unrealized’.

More about AlphaLit here.

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Plaintiff-focused Eve has launched ‘Eve 2.0’, represented by ‘three major innovations that fundamentally change how plaintiff law firms staff and deliver legal work’.

The legal AI company noted that: ‘…rather than software that depends on constant human prompts, Eve now deploys a proactive AI workforce that plugs directly into the firm’s org chart to handle execution, review, and firm-wide intelligence autonomously, allowing attorneys to focus on strategy, judgment, and advocacy.’

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Purpose Legal, a provider of digital forensics, eDiscovery, AI-powered managed review, and specialized legal operations services, has acquired Hire Counsel, a provider of managed review and flexible legal staffing services in the US.

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UK-based 360 Business Law has launched an online AI-driven Contract Review Service coupled with access to over 750 qualified lawyers worldwide through a ‘smart quotation service’, designed specifically for small and medium-sized enterprises.

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And now for a couple of videos, both of which feature leaders in the field of New Model approaches to the business of law.

And,

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Legal Innovators Europe – June 2026

And finally – and there will be plenty more news and announcements in the weeks and months ahead on this theme: we will be holding four Legal Innovators conferences this year, in the US, UK and Europe.

For more information, there is now a dedicated page for all four events: