Salasky: Huge opportunity to improve client experience
Lawtech company Legl – set up by the team behind pioneering funding platform CrowdJustice – has raised $7m (£5m) in Series A funding.
Legl [1] provides firms with off-the-shelf tools that facilitate onboarding, compliance and online payments.
The investment is led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from existing investors Backed, Samaipata and First Round Capital, and angels including GoCardless director Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas; Al Giles, ex-chief revenue officer of legal business Axiom; and Hayden Brown chief executive of freelancer marketplace Upwork.
The funds will go to expanding the team and “enriching Legl’s product and customer base in the UK legal market”, as well as starting international expansion.
Legl, which is now CrowdJustice’s parent brand, only launched in late 2019 [2] but has over 100 law firms clients, including “over a dozen of the top 200”, such as Lewis Silkin.
As with CrowdJustice, it was founded by Julia Salasky, a one-time associate at City giant Linklaters.
She said: “Most legal technology focuses on the practice of law. We’re focused on the operations of law – how do law firms, as unique, regulated businesses, run their business better and deliver a better client experience.
“We saw that there was a huge opportunity to improve client experience, onboarding, ‘know your client’ and payment in a streamlined, beautiful way that also delivers a lot of business insight to the firm.
“There’s a huge opportunity here to reduce the friction that happens for law firm clients and create a better business of law.”
Zoe Chambers, early stage investor at Octopus Ventures, said: “It’s rare to find a founder and team with such insider knowledge to tackle a big industry that has started to adopt technology quickly.
“Covid has accelerated the move to digital in the legal industry, and Julia and team, with deep expertise across legal, SaaS and fintech, are in prime position to win the market.”