Tel-Aviv-headquartered startup LitiGate provides dispute resolution teams with a litigation lifecycle platform that automates repetitive tasks and assists with real time collaboration. As Legal IT Insider’s latest startup corner guest, asked founder and CEO Nimrod Aharon to tell us more about LitiGate’s technology, executives, achievements to date, and growth strategy.
How would you describe LitiGate to a friend?
Litigation is like solving a puzzle. Litigators take tons of raw data and turn it into a coherent story. Creating a beautiful image from all the pieces. Now picture creating that puzzle with the help of AI that can classify every piece of the puzzle, flagging possible connections between them and telling you how they fit together. That’s Litigate.
I used to practise commercial litigation at top tier law firms and served as Supreme Court clerk, and I spent most of my time pouring over mountains of documents and pulling the key information from them to build my cases. We launched LitiGate to automate that process and help lawyers all over the world to analyse, explore and manage their cases more efficiently.
And to a techy?
Our powerful AI takes the heavy lifting out of many litigation tasks and connects the dots between the case documents. Leveraging cutting edge technology, including AI and NLP, to help dispute teams to transform their manual data analysis tasks – from early case assessment, through hearing preparations, to drafting and reviewing witness statements.
The heavy lifting starts when a lawyer uploads case documents of any type onto our platform, where they are analyzed, categorized and dated using our proprietary,advanced AI algorithms. Once that is done, our platform dives into very granular data points, going sentence by sentence, to find meaningful events and issues identifying the key actors and timelines of your case.
When were you founded?
We founded LitiGate In 2018
By who?
Nimron Aharon (CEO)
Who are your key managers/senior execs?
Nimrod Aharon, CEO
James Hansen, Director of Sales
Koby Bay, Director of Product
Tom Lev, Director of R&D
Sarah Leicester, Director of Marketing
Who are your target clients?
LitiGate is now used in three continents, across contentious teams in top global law firms, such as Baker Mckenzie, Taylor Wessing and others, and smaller boutique firms. QCs and in-house teams also use our platform. We’ve built Litigate to fit the underlying work you have to do in the majority of litigation cases, whether it’s employment litigation or complex arbitration, early or late stage, in New York or London. A dispute is about controlling the story and we help you to build that story.
What is your plan (growth strategy)?
Our growth strategy is very much product and user led. We don’t charge per case or data and our users can instantly sync all their iManage cases with LitiGate, so usage often grows organically within teams. Our product development plans are influenced by our community of super-users and trainers, who constantly teach us about new exploration flows and exciting applications.
In terms of the markets we serve, we launched LitiGate in Europe initially and we have ambitious plans to grow significantly in APAC and the Americas. We are also expanding our use cases and examples of how our users are using the platform to show how LitiGate’s abilities outside the litigation process.
Key achievements?
We have built a brilliant team of talented, sharp and passionate people who are on a mission to help lawyers win more cases. I’d say one of our key achievements has been building that team of dynamic professionals to lead the next generation of litigation. Our team continuously works with our partners and global community of firms and litigators, who are keen to transform lengthy, manual tasks and data analysis work to win more cases. We’re really excited to see teams embracing our technology and taking an active role in shaping the future of the legal profession.
Have you received investment?
We have raised $6m and are supported by some amazing investors – Brighteye, Firstime and Rhodium -who have been supporting us from the outset and still offer great advice.
Have there been any key changes in direction since you were founded?
We’ve been laser focused on revolutionizing the way litigators work and empowering them to focus on what matters most. Winning cases. But we’re also very aware of the potential of our technology outside litigation, so while we haven’t changed direction, we are excited to see what the future holds.
What are the key challenges in your market?
Mitigating the hype around robot lawyers and AI is still a challenge in our industry. If we continue to compare the litigation process to completing a puzzle in a less tech-oriented market, there is a risk that people might expect the AI to be able complete the puzzle by itself. While current technology can complete the puzzle on its own, complicated text works quite differently. Litigate is a completely new solution for analysing and managing case data and pulling together the story of who did what and when. It is a new way of doing a puzzle, just a more effective, collaborative and sustainable one.
Tell us something people don’t already know about the company?
We’re part of the LGBTQ Career Community. Being part of communities which encourage diverse and inclusive hiring reflects the type of culture we’re building at LitiGate and it’s enabling us to find some of the best and brightest minds out there.