The U.K. accounts for 44% of all legaltech startups in Europe.

Investment in key U.K. legaltech startups has nearly tripled since 2017, a new report from Thomson Reuters has found.

During the first nine months of 2019, £62 million was invested into 34 of the U.K.'s growing startups in the legal technology industry.

Standout investments this year have included London-based email security startup Tessian receiving $42 million from venture capital firm Sequoia, and a £10 million fundraising round by Luminance that saw further investment from Magic Circle firm Slaughter and May.

The latest figures far surpass the totals for 2016 and 2017, where just £2.5 million and £22.2 million were raised respectively.

The report also found that the U.K. accounts for about 44% of all legaltech startups across the EU, despite the overall U.K. legal industry accounting for only 23% of the European market.

So far, 2019 has also seen a number of acquisitions and tie-ups by legaltech firms. In July, Thomson Reuters acquired secure file-sharing and collaboration platform HighQ, one of the highly regarded firms in Allen & Overy's Fuse network, for an undisclosed sum.

In the same month, Simmons & Simmons announced that it had acquired Cambridge-based legal engineering firm Wavelength, which uses data science to create solutions that will help the firm work through large-scale projects.