Legal technology saw numerous advances in 2021 as the still-blooming sector saw greater activity, Reuters reported Wednesday (Dec. 29).
Legal tech involves companies making a variety of tools and services for law firms, corporate legal departments and consumers to use. The sector involves products for eDiscovery, legal spend analytics, lawyer selection, document review and contract management.
LegalZoom.com, CS Disco and Intapp all had initial public offerings (IPOs) this year, and multiple legal tech companies attracted venture capital and private equity investors. Some of their funding rounds reached into the hundreds of millions.
Reuters reported that the three companies which went public all address different sectors — LegalZoom works in consumer-facing legal services, Intapp works in professional services software and CS Disco works in eDiscovery.
Meanwhile, Clio and Everlaw each reached unicorn status with new valuations of over $1 billion. There were also numerous mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the sector, which analysts have said indicates a sector on the rise.
Related: APIs Tackle Law Firms’ Collections Conundrum
Scott Mozarsky, managing director at M&A advisory firm JEGI Clarity, said that 2021 saw a much greater amount of capital in the legal market, and that investor attraction has been gaining in recent years.
Per Reuters, some of the additional factors to this growth could include greater pandemic-driven tech usage, with law firms joining the many various industries doing more work online.
“The pandemic has certainly shone a light on tech capabilities that some legal professionals would never have sought out proactively,” said Lucy Bassli, founder and principal of consultancy InnoLaw Group PLLC and a former assistant general counsel at Microsoft Corp.
In November, LegalZoom teamed with Square on a new payments product, intending to get better point of sale (POS) payment software for smaller companies.
LegalZoom customers are now able to get preferential pricing on Square offerings, which may allow smaller companies to better manage their operations.
Read more: Square, LegalZoom Team on SMB Payment Solution
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