White & Case Invests in Saudi Startup Clauze

Global law firm, White & Case, has made a strategic investment into Saudi-based Clauze, a new legal AI platform. It’s been founded by Waad Alkurini, who worked for more than a decade at White & Case, most recently as Executive Partner of the firm’s Riyadh office.

Alkurini (pictured) is also understood to have worked on matters for key Saudi organisations such as Red Sea Global, Aramco, and once had a secondment to the Ministry of Finance in the oil-rich Gulf state, but which is now diversifying into new, often tech-related ventures.

White & Case – which appears not to have publicly announced another investment of this type before – added that she ‘qualified in both New York and Saudi Arabia, [and] advised sponsors, lenders, and government on some of the Kingdom’s largest infrastructure and energy transactions’.

But, what about Clauze?

Well, it’s a comprehensive platform that is designed to handle a wide range of needs for companies in Saudi Arabia and the region.

The AI-powered enterprise legal platform is ‘designed to understand and apply a company’s legal knowledge to help teams review contracts, manage governance, conduct due diligence, identify risks and obligations and make better-informed legal decisions’.

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It has a VDR and plenty more on offer. In effect, it’s designed to provide for a large part of any inhouse team’s needs. It also offers bilingual capabilities, full data residency in Saudi Arabia, and on-premises deployment. So, think of it as a kind of ‘CLM-plus’ platform.

At present, the company is still very new, so one can presume that the investment at this early stage was not huge. That said, it’s interesting for several reasons:

• Clauze is a home-grown legal AI company in the Gulf and that’s good to see.
• It’s been launched by a partner from a major law firm, something that doesn’t often happen.
• White & Case doesn’t do this sort of thing very often either, in fact AL can’t see another example of them directly investing in a legal tech startup.
• And as is implicit, Saudi Arabia is very important as a market to this global law firm. Will we see other law firms invest in local / regional legal tech startups as part of their wider business strategy?

Heather McDevitt, Chair of White & Case, commented: ‘AI is reshaping the delivery of legal services and being at the forefront of this change is important to us in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where we have a long history and deep commitment.’

‘Our investment in Clauze.AI builds on that commitment, and reflects the opportunities created by the Kingdom’s continued focus on digital transformation and innovation under Saudi Vision 2030.’

They added that White & Case is ‘the only international law firm with more than a seven-decade track record of supporting Saudi Arabia. The firm established its on-the-ground presence in the Kingdom in 1989, and currently has around 40 lawyers, including nine partners’ – which all goes to underline how important this market is to the firm and why the investment took place.

More about Clauze here.

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