Dynamic start-ups aim to shake up fusty lawyers

The world of legal technology is exploding with start-ups, with investors keen to support companies that promise to help make the fusty legal profession fit for the business needs of the 21st century.

Here, we shine a spotlight on five.
Case studies compiled by RSG Consulting.

WINNER
Reynen Court
With the explosion in the number of legal technology companies in the past two years, Reynen Court’s idea to act as the app store for the industry quickly took hold. The company’s platform allows lawyers to use different legal technologies and supervise them using a single dashboard. Early adopters include law firms Latham & Watkins and Clifford Chance, and technology providers Doxly, Neota Logic and Clarilis. The platform began its beta-testing in August.

DoNotPay

Set up by a British student at Stanford University, California, in 2016, DoNotPay is an AI-powered app with chatbots. It offers legal support to individuals with small claims ranging from disputes over parking tickets to claims against retailers and companies such as Equifax, which this year was fined $700m over a data breach. DoNotPay secured its second round of funding in June — $4.6m. It has 10,000 users a month with claimed success rates of 80 per cent for reclaiming rental property security deposits, and 50 to 90 per cent for retail refunds.

Doxly
The closing process of major transactions can be complex and time-consuming, with some deals needing 100 pages of signatures. Doxly developed a cloud-based platform to track signatures and create a packet of documents accessible to all parties. In August, the three-year-old company was acquired by Litera Microsystems, which helps lawyers manage the lifecycle of documents. One user, law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, says the product saves it six to 10 hours per transaction.

Clause
Founded in 2015, Clause is a platform for smart legal contracts that enables obligations to be captured and stored as data and code. It also automates compliance. The software integrates with other systems to sit within an organisation’s workflow, allowing contract terms to be fulfilled without manual oversight. The platform uses smart clauses triggered by external data, such as market fluctuations.

Ping
Founded in 2016 and used by law firms in the US and the UK, Ping’s timekeeping software monitors computer activity to automatically fill out time sheets for lawyers. The software is integrated with most applications and also uses lawyers’ digital diaries to record billable hours.

Automated timekeeping leads to more accurate records, giving a better insight into how lawyers spend their time.