Leading Australian law firm and Linklaters alliance partner Allens has announced the participants in its inaugural legaltech accelerator. Seven startups developing solutions in document automation, smart contracts and AI-driven knowledge management have been announced as the first participants in Auctus, which received over 120 applications for its eight-week virtual programme.
The final seven were chosen from a shortlist of 15 who pitched their offering to a panel of expert judges from Allens and Collective Campus, which was engaged to help attract and source potential accelerator candidates.
The startups – which are headquartered in four different countries – will now work with mentors and experts from Allens on their legal, growth and innovation strategies as well as attending masterclasses, testing and receiving feedback on their products from the firm, and participating in facilitated strategic introductions to Allens’ extensive networks. For some startups, we’re told that there may be opportunities to discuss further strategic engagement with the firm or potential investors at the conclusion of the accelerator.
‘Our first cohort of startups blew us away with the potentially transformative solutions they’re building to some of the most pressing issues faced by our firm and our clients,’ said Penelope Barr, Allens’ head of legal product lab.
‘We are excited by the potential of our first group of startups to not only add to our own legal tech offering, but to meaningfully contribute to the Australian legal landscape more broadly.’
The startups are:
Avvoka: a next-generation document automation, negotiation and analytics tool for in-house legal, law firms and business teams;
BuildSort: a smart legal contract platform initially targeting the construction sector;
Hutly: a smart contract platform that is simplifying contract management with a way for general tenancy agreements to be completed, issued, tracked, and digitally signed in minutes;
Inpact: an AI-powered enterprise software platform that turns contracts into structured, easily-analysable data to uncover new business insights;
Summize: a lightweight assistant to the contract lifecycle which creates instant, easy-to-read summaries of uploaded contracts;
Syntheia: an end-to-end knowledge solution that helps to collect, manage, share and apply knowledge from documents and experts; and
Wage Buddy: a legal technology platform that simplifies Australian Fair Work Awards by analysing, interpreting and codifying Awards to facilitate automated reasoning.
