NewMod firm, Norm Ai, has raised a $120 million Series C round at a $1.2 billion valuation, led by Khosla Ventures, the first institutional investor in OpenAI.
Blackstone, Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), Craft Ventures, Coatue, Vanguard, Jeff Hammes (former Chairman of Kirkland & Ellis), and Fenwick LLP also participated.
The company has raised more than $260 million since its founding less than three years ago, they said.
Norm has two parts, a law firm and a tech company.
Norm Ai builds agentic law for high-stakes work by bringing AI engineers and attorneys together to embed law into AI agents. Norm Law, LLP, an affiliated AI-native law firm running on the Norm Ai platform, uses those AI agents to serve clients as outside counsel, with senior attorneys supervising, calibrating, and improving the agents, they explained.
Because Norm Law runs natively on Norm Ai’s agentic law technology and prices based on outcomes rather than hours, the benefits of AI can flow directly to the client. This creates a client-aligned incentive structure, unlike model providers, whose economics are tied to token usage, and traditional law firms, whose economics are tied to billing hours, they added.
They’ve also hired many senior lawyers, such as Mike Schmidtberger, the former Chair of the Executive Committee of Sidley Austin. Other Partners include the former Global Head of Real Estate at Sidley Austin, a senior M&A Partner from Ropes & Gray, the General Counsel from Bain Capital Ventures, and lawyers from Kirkland & Ellis, Simpson Thacher, Paul Weiss, Davis Polk, Skadden, Cleary Gottlieb, Latham & Watkins, Paul Hastings, Proskauer, and Pillsbury.
Clients representing more than $30 trillion in assets under management use Norm Ai, deploying legal AI agents directly for their in-house legal teams, they added.
‘As AI capabilities race forward, one of the greatest opportunities is to build the interface between AI and the most legitimate encapsulation of human values: law,’ said John Nay, founder and CEO of Norm Ai. ‘We are building that interface in an increasingly agentic society to (1) align legal services with the client, and (2) align AI with human values.’
‘AI will not transform regulated work until institutions trust it, and that trust is the hardest thing to earn in this market,’ said Samir Kaul, Managing Director at Khosla Ventures. ‘The most demanding buyers of legal services in the world already rely on Norm Ai. We led this round because John has built the only credible path to AI-native legal work at institutional scale.’
AL View
If you thought NewMods were A) going to stay small, and B) not going to have an impact, then think again. You can do a lot with $120m. And they already have an incredible team of both senior Big Law partners to provide credibility and client contacts – plus many junior Big Law lawyers as well.
As noted, Norm has two parts, the tech company and the law firm. The money – naturally – goes to the tech part. But, that cash can really help them to build out their offering to clients in a way that many larger traditional firms would struggle to match.
It’s especially interesting that Jeff Hammes, the former Chairman of Kirkland & Ellis – which is having its own major legal AI moment, and tech and IP focused law firm Fenwick LLP also participated in the investment round.
Plus, of course, if you take this much money, then growth is the order of the day. You cannot take so much cash and sit on it. They will be coming for Big Law market share – as otherwise what is the point in all of this?
AL has written about Norm since the start when they initially focused on using agents to police other agents. The strategy has now become a lot more significant, with major hires, targeting of mainstream legal work – and all underpinned by now a lot of cash.
Expect a lot more to come.
Also, this move will drive more interest in other NewMods that AL has written about, such as Crosby, General Legal and many others.
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Come and join us in New York and London this November at Legal Innovators!
Legal Innovators UK – London, Nov 4 and 5
And, then Legal Innovators New York – Nov 17 and 18.
After another fantastic Legal Innovators California, where we had speakers from OpenAI, Y Combinator, Google, Meta, and many more pioneering organisations; and our stellar inaugural event in Paris this June, we are now looking forward to the landmark conferences in London and New York, both in November, and both across two days: Law Firm Day, and Inhouse Day.
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