International law firm McDermott Will & Emery announced a USD $10 Million anchor investment with The LegalTech Fund, a venture capital fund that invests in, and helps entrepreneurs build, legal technology companies. McDermott joins as an Anchor Partner in the Fund, a move the Firm made to advance its commitment to propelling client success through innovation and creative counsel.
“We are always working to peer over the horizon for our client—this time through a very crowded legal technology landscape,” said McDermott Chairman Ira Coleman. “We want to fund the best ideas and leverage the exceptional experience of the team behind The LegalTech Fund to shape the legal technology market moving forward. Our phenomenal growth over the last few years has put us in the position to make this happen, and we are doubling down on that success as we look to the future.”
The LegalTech Fund covers the full legal technology ecosystem – from enterprise software solutions for global law firms to the software that clients are using to manage and structure data from their agreements to consumer-facing applications. The Fund invests in early-stage companies (from inception to series B) typically ranging from $250,000 to $1 million.
“The last year and a half has shown very clearly how the next wave of entrepreneurs are building technology that will transform the world of law. Automation, artificial intelligence and data analytics platforms will soon become table stakes for everyone from corporate legal teams to consumers of legal services,” said Zach Posner, Managing Partner and Co-Founder at The LegalTech Fund. “Since we started the Fund, we’ve been investigating hundreds of new technology opportunities each month and that will continue to scale as we move forward. This partnership enables us to work closely with McDermott to uncover the next generation of legal tech innovation and accelerate disruption across the legal tech ecosystem.”
“Not only will this fuel our clients’ success, it will help our people be more effective, creating new efficiencies that enable them to focus on providing highly informed, creative counsel across industries,” Coleman added. “We know that this is what the best lawyers want from their firms, and we will continue to position McDermott as the premiere career accelerant in the legal industry.”
The LegalTech Fund has most recently focused on technology innovation that reimagines agreements, access and legal spend. Initial fund investments include Josef, an Australia-based no-code software platform that enables legal professionals to automate common tasks, as well as SoloSuit, automated software that helps low- and moderate-income individuals respond to debt collection lawsuits.
