Blacklaws: Investors focused on reliable legal AI
Investment in UK lawtech companies continues to rise rapidly, hitting a record £189m last year, a 35% jump on the previous year’s record, according to new research.
The figures published by LawtechUK come in the wake of the Ministry of Justice committing to another three years of funding for the initiative, which launched in 2019.
Some 47 UK-founded companies were funded in the year and, in all, LawtechUK has identified 315 UK-founded lawtechs, up 17% from 270 in 2024.
There have also been 12 acquisitions, “a sign of growing investor confidence in the sector’s long-term value”, it said in its latest investment snapshot.
Combined with the findings in the first snapshot, published last October to cover the first half of 2025, the figures indicate that investment slowed down in the second half.
As in 2024, lawtechs focused on documents and contracts were the most popular with investors, but risk and compliance businesses have also become significant targets.
Female-founded companies represented 35% of those raising funds in the second half of 2025, rising from 17% across the whole of 2024
LawtechUK said the industry was facing a pivotal moment in the wake of Anthropic’s launch of an AI legal plugin to its system Claude, which caused shares in UK-listed companies to plummet.
This prompted urgent questions about which parts of the legal technology market were genuinely defensible.
Former Law Society president Christina Blacklaws, chair of LawtechUK’s advisory panel, said: “Throughout 2025, investors were quietly reaching their own verdict. The companies that attracted capital were building the specialist knowledge, structured data and professional oversight that any AI system needs to work reliably in legal practice.
“When a generic AI platform enters the market, the demand for tools that can make it work safely and reliably doesn’t diminish; it grows.”
While London saw the bulk of the deals, Scotland was the standout regional hub.
Beth Fellner, LawtechUK programme lead for Legal Geek, said: “The breadth of investment we are seeing, from Scotland to the Midlands, shows this is genuinely a nations and regions success story.
“The final 2025 figures confirm what serious investors understood throughout the year, that the real opportunity in legaltech lies not in replacing legal expertise but in supporting it.
“The companies attracting capital are those that combine AI capabilities with specialist knowledge and the professional oversight that clients and courts rightly expect.”
LawtechUK highlighted some of the companies that attracted investment last year, such as GitLaw, which provides AI-powered legal agreements to start-ups and small businesses, combining automated document generation with review by a specialist network of lawyers. It raised a $3m (£2.2m) pre-seed round.
Let’s Think has developed a voice-based tool that helps senior lawyers discuss complex decisions and share their reasoning with colleagues, “capturing the hard-won expertise that often walks out the door when experienced lawyers leave or move on”.
It has raised funds from US and UK investors, including London law firm Kingsley Napley, and is expanding into the United States.
TrialView, an AI platform that helps lawyers prepare and present their case, raised £3.1m of late-stage venture capital.
This year has got off to a strong start, with consumer law platform Lawhive raising $60m (£44m) in Series B funding to accelerate its expansion across the US, a little over a year after achieving $40m in Series A funding.
Lawhive, which owns a regulated law firm, has more than 450 consultant lawyers in the UK and US working through its AI operating system. Last autumn, it bought fee-share law firm Woodstock Legal Services and launched an alternative business structure in the US.
The latest round was led by Mitch Rales, co-founder of Danaher Corporation, with participation from TQ Ventures, GV (Google Ventures), Balderton Capital, Jigsaw, Anton Levy and LTS.
Lawhive’s revenue now exceeds $35m, having grown sevenfold in the past year, and already operates in 35 US states.
See also today’s blog: The UK’s global leadership in lawtech is at risk if women are left behind
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