Legal Tech Firms to Gain Access to Major Corporates in New Slaughters Programme
Slaughters and its clients such as GlaxoSmithKline, John Lewis and Vodafone will work with legal tech businesses on developing products.
February 27, 2019 at 07:39 AM
3 minute read
Slaughter and May has launched a fresh opportunity for small legal tech companies to test and develop fledgling products alongside some of the firm's major clients, including GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone and John Lewis Partnership.
In April, the initiative, called Collaborate, will select six legal tech businesses that will be given access to the corporate in-house teams as well as partners and lawyers at the firm. The programme will run for three months.
Slaughters clients GlaxoSmithKline, John Lewis, Santander, Standard Chartered and Vodafone have all agreed to test and assess the small firms' products in development.
Slaughters said the selected companies will also have access to two "dedicated mentors" from the firm – one lawyer and one member of the knowledge team – and "dummy data" to develop their products.
Unlike Fast Forward, the firm's other tech initiative, the selected companies will not receive legal advice from the firm.
The programme has also set up what it calls an "industry expert panel" to provide additional advice to companies. The panel will feature: Dr Anna Donovan, vice-dean for innovation at UCL; Catherine Bamford, a legal engineer; and Andrew Burgess, an AI adviser.
Collaborate will be led by partners Anna Lyle-Smythe and Nilufer von Bismarck, and supported by innovation head Jane Stewart, knowledge head Alexandra Woods, and senior technology lawyer Natalie Donovan.
Stewart said in a statement: "What differentiates this programme and what we are most excited about is the level of involvement and partnership with our clients. We are offering legal tech pioneers access to our clients and an opportunity for clients to engage with leading legal tech entrepreneurs to shape, develop and finesse these technologies together."
Slaughters has set up a number of initiatives and investments in disruptive companies in the last three years – particularly in fintech and legaltech.
Early in 2017, Slaughters bought a 5 percent equity stake in U.K. AI company Luminance after trialing the platform in its London office, and went on to join the company's $10m seed round that year.
Earlier this month, Slaughters joined the second fundraising round for Luminance, which valued the company at $100 million.
The firm also launched its Fintech Fast Forward programme in 2016, which offers £30,000 of free legal services to selected startups. The programme opened up to non-fintech companies in its most recent third round of selections last month, and a total of 17 companies have so far been selected by Slaughters to receive funding.
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