Contract Data

Artificial intelligence contract review platform LawGeex announced Tuesday that it had closed a $20 million financing round led by Corner Ventures with participation from La Maison and preexisting investor Aleph.

The news underscores that many businesses are expected to turn to contract analytic solutions to help mitigate risk in an uncertain COVID-19 economy, making the contract technology sector a strong spot in a legal market that has had its share of cutbacks over the past few months.

LawGeex, which automatically reviews contracts for compliance with an entity's deal guidelines, is looking to use the capital raised during this latest financing round to build out its sales and customer success teams. While the company has primarily focused its business on the U.S., co-founder and CEO Noory Bechor indicated that LawGeex is also looking at the possibility of expanding into other English-speaking territories.

Still the legal tech market isn't immune to COVID-19 related shutdowns still in place around the country, with sectors like e-discovery already feeling the pinch. Bechor said that while investors may be more cautious given the virus's impact on the economy, he believes they are still looking for opportunities—and contract review could be a viable target.

"The value proposition of LawGeex really resonates well around digitization, around automating the manual process of reviewing contracts in order to save costs and do more with less," Bechor said.

Corner Ventures, which led this latest fundraising round, echoed Bechor's confidence in the value that contract review tech is carrying in the market.

"LawGeex is seeing high demand for its solution and even further acceleration due to the flexibility, cost efficiencies, and safety-net afforded by digital automation during this challenging time," Marvin Tien, managing director at Corner Ventures said in a press release.

To be sure, investor interest in LawGeex predates the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2018, the platform closed a $12 million dollar series B funding round led by venture capital firm Aleph. That development may have coincided with an industrywide tipping point, with LaxGeex vice president of marketing Shmuli Goldberg telling LTN that the company had seen a interest in AI-powered contract review transition into a demand.

Of course, LawGeex isn't the only player in that market supporting some form of contract review. Knowable, for example, launched its Contracts Data Management Platform in February, which organizes and analyzes a user's contact data. Meanwhile the AI-powered contract platform Evisort announced that it had closed a $15 million Series A funding round last December.

When Evisort's CEO Jerry Ting spoke to LTN in April, he indicated that while COVID-19 had raised obstacles with regards to making new sales, existing customers were still seeking help with contract items such as force majeure or other provisions that could yield cost savings. "We're trying to lean into the [COVID-19] situation as much as we can," Ting said.

LawGeex's own plans for moving forward involves building out the variety of use cases the platform can accommodate, specifically contract needs pertaining to specific industries such as finance, insurance and the tech sector. In the meantime, Bechor expects to see more companies in the contract space continue to draw attention from investors so long as they can demonstrate value and the ability to drive change.

"I think companies that are able to meet these standards will be able to attract investors and continue to grow and even accelerate during this time," Bechor said.