Latest news

BRYTER has hired CrowdJustice’s head of legal and partnerships Joanna Sidhu to lead and build its community platform BRYTER OPEN, which gives non-profits and academic institutions free access to its no-code platform.

When Microsoft announced in May last year that it was investing $1bn in OpenAI to support the build of advanced language AI GPT-3, Forbes said: “At first glance, Microsoft’s $1bn investment in OpenAI does not seem to promise revenue or profit payoffs.”

The founders of legal proofreading company XRef have launched a new tool that will enable lawyers to instantly turn pictures into digital diagrams, enabling them to map out and build digital visualisations of how deals or even cases are going to work.

We speak to Andrew Watts, CIO of Relativity on this year’s virtual edition, and all the inventive flourishes they added to create an engaging virtual experience… including a game of Cards Against Humanity!

Nominations are streaming in for the European Women of Legal Tech Awards 2020, which recognize the impact of women on the digital transformation of the industry.

Heads up, there’s another private equity fund in town. New York private equity fund Lightyear Capital has launched ProfitSolv to sweep up and integrate payment and billing solutions – and one of its first acquisitions is leading cloud-based practice and case management system Rocket Matter.

Email management provider ZERØ has entered NetDocuments ISV partner ecosystem following growing demand from NetDocuments’ customers. The partnership means that ZERØ can now integrate with the cloud-based document management system and help customers to improve productivity, particularly by leveraging its mobile email filing and time capture capability.

Legal IT editor in chief Caroline Hill hosted a webinar with Prosperoware CEO and co-founder Keith Lipman, and solutions consultant Yann Gouillou to look at how you can use Microsoft Teams for matters, including a demonstration of how their solution CAM for Microsoft Teams solves provisioning pain points.

Relativity has named Herbert Smith Freehills’ CheckMate application as the best innovation by a law firm in 2020.

Venture Capital and Private Equity firms may differ in many ways, but they share a similar predicament – increased pressure to cut legal costs as business revenue from M&A and fundraising declines, according to a new Apperio study entitled “Private Equity and Venture Capital:  Two Industries United by Lackluster Legal Spend Management.” 

UK office workers are being asked to again work from home if possible, meaning that law firms and organisations that have begun a slow return to the office are likely to return to lockdown conditions.

Irish-headquartered SaaS document bundling software provider Bundledocs has secured €600,000 in funding from Enterprise Ireland and private investors. Headquartered in Cork and with a newly opened office in Sydney, the company says it plans to double its team in the next three months. 

Don’t miss our chat today (Tuesday 22 September at 3.30pm BST) with Eric Laughlin, Agiloft’s new CEO, who was hired from EY in conjunction with Agiloft’s incredible $45m growth equity investment.

Aside from Elevate’s announcement last week that it is partnering with Lex Mundi, public statements have been few and far between from the legal services company despite a number of senior departures and arrivals, not least the hire of Nir Golan as director of consulting last week. Golan replaces Jack Diggle, who has joined Deloitte as part of a three-strong hire from Elevate.

Litera will be hosting its second The Changing Lawyer LIVE! conference on October 1st and has simultaneously opened nominations for The Changing Lawyer Awards 2020 (note the deadline for submissions is 25 September).

Minerva Portal is helping law firms, particularly conveyancing firms, to digitally onboard new clients, dispensing with old fashioned manual processes. It has recently signed three as yet undisclosed UK top 100 law firms. Here is what you need to know.