startup desk

Practice management software company Litify announced it has secured a $50 million Series A investment, and it aims to use the capital to expand into corporate legal departments and small and midsize firms. 

The early June announcement came roughly a year after Litify raised $2.5 million from investor Esquire Financial Holdings, a holding company for professional and legal services-facing Esquire Bank in May 2018. Along with its investment, Esquire Financial Holdings also acquired a 5% ownership interest in Litify.

This latest $50 million funding was made by investment firm Tiger Global Management, which is now a shareholder in the company. Litify founder Reuven Moskowitz said the company will address the transparency, automation, efficiency and client experience concerns of corporate legal departments and small and midsize firms.

“When we started Litify, we believed that the broader legal tech market was really in need of disruption, and the problems we solved over the last two or so years in the plaintiffs market are what lawyers everywhere face,” Moskowitz said.

Up until now, mostly plaintiffs firms have leveraged Litify's cloud-based features that include detailing client intake; storing, accessing and managing a legal matter's documents; and data analysis.

While Moskowitz has prior experience with plaintiffs attorneys, and is currently COO of personal injury firm Morgan & Morgan, he noted that Litify will bring its solution to the broader legal industry with preconfigured tools and templates that are “lightweight but enterprise-level tools so they can scale.”

Moskowitz explained there's “a competitive advantage to have that enterprise-level feature in a straightforward and easy fashion for firms that are still growing.”

Litify joins a long list of practice management software providers including Clio, MyCase and Rocket Matter that are targeting midmarket and boutique law firms. However Moskowitz said his company differs because it provides enterprise-level solutions without much technical expertise required to set up and deploy.

He noted that a platform's ease of use and integration with multiple applications is valued by law firms. Indeed, similar to Litify, many other companies have touted and expanded their integrations with other platforms as a key selling point to clients and potential investors.

Earlier this month, knowledge management and e-discovery startup Onna announced it raised $11 million from investors that included Dropbox and Slack. In an interview with Legaltech News, Onna founder and CEO Salim Elkhou said the company plans to add additional integrations for clients to quickly collect and search data. Likewise, Bill4Time branched out from solely offering time management solutions to developing practice management solutions that cover a legal matter from client intake to final billing invoices. Similarly, during ILTACON 2018, OpenText announced it was streamlining how it produces and sells legal products to offer clients a “one-stop-shop” suite of legal tools.