Edinburgh-founded legal AI company Wordsmith AI has raised $70m in Series B funding in a round led by Highland Europe and Index Ventures, with participation from existing investors.
Founded in 2023 by CEO Ross McNairn, CTO Volodymyr Giginiak and COO Robbie Falkenthal, Wordsmith focuses exclusively on corporate legal departments rather than law firms. Its platform uses AI agents to organise, route and complete legal work across the business, integrating with systems such as email, Slack, Microsoft Teams and Salesforce to automate routine legal tasks and enable legal teams to handle more work internally.
The company says it is now used by more than 500 organisations, including BT, Canva, Financial Times, Sage, Starling and Trip.com. According to Wordsmith, the platform helps legal departments reduce reliance on outside counsel by automating intake, triage, contract review and legal self-service processes.
The funding is significant not only because of its size but because it reflects growing investor confidence in legal operations technology and the shift of AI spending from law firms to in-house legal teams. While much of the recent legal AI investment boom has centred on companies serving private practice lawyers, Wordsmith is betting that corporate legal departments will increasingly become the primary buyers of legal AI platforms.
The raise comes amid a broader legal AI arms race that has seen companies such as Harvey, Legora and others attract substantial funding and rapidly rising valuations.
Commenting on the announcement, McNairn said: “Wordsmith is the front door that does the work. Requests come in, AI agents process the routine, lawyers approve what needs judgment and every step is recorded as it happens.”
With plans to expand further in the US and grow its workforce from 130 employees to around 300, Wordsmith is signalling ambitions to become the workflow and operations platform for in-house legal teams worldwide.
