Ohio-based legal innovation consultancy CuroLegal has announced the launch of an AI-assisted online platform for its outsourcing division, Custom Counsel, after partnering with Legal.io, a Stanford CodeX-backed Silicon Valley startup.
Custom Counsel, which was acquired by CuroLegal in 2015, offers lawyers easy access to the entire range of legal support, including freelance attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants. These professionals are available on demand to other lawyers and have an average of 13 years of experience in the legal industry.
CuroLegal partnered with Legal.io to bring to its customers a platform that uses a machine learning algorithm to produce the best matches between a client’s need and a provider’s skill set, which will continuously improve as freelancers are engaged through the platform.
Custom Counsel, which was founded by CuroLegal’s now chief strategy officer Nicole Bradick in 2011, was acquired to augment Curo’s CuroAssist paralegal and legal assistant services. The launch of the new Custom Counsel platform, which will remain an ‘invitation only’ closed network, is the culmination of the integration of those two services.
“We are thrilled that our vision of a single source for all of a lawyer’s agile staffing needs is now available to the public,” said CuroLegal’s CEO, Chad Burton.
“Over the past five years, Custom Counsel has built a strong reputation in the market for the quality of its talent, and we will continue working to make the process of engaging on demand help as seamless as possible through continuous client feedback and improvement.”
Legal.io was launched in 2011 by Stanford University law, science and technology Masters students Tony Lai, president of Legal.io, and Peter Gunst, CEO. The company received its first angel investment by the end of 2012.
In early 2013, veteran software engineer Daniel Lo came on board as Legal.io’s chief technology officer and the first major legal network, Tradelab, began using its software later that year. Now, Legal.io employs a team of lawyers, designers and engineers, most of whom work out of the company’s offices in San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighbourhood. Its advisers include board director Van Dang, who was most recently deputy general counsel at Cisco.