Bob Ambrogi

Earlier this week, as I reported here, the online legal services company LegalZoom announced a $500 million secondary investment, the largest investment ever in a legal technology company. It comes as the company continues to expand both its services and its geographic reach. With a valuation of $2 billion and a customer base of 4 million, what will this investment mean for LegalZoom now and into the future?

Two companies that specialize in secure, mobile enterprise collaboration and file sharing for the legal industry are now one, as London-based HighQ today announced its acquisition of Legal Anywhere, a company based in Portland, Ore.

HighQ, founded in 2001, markets three core products: HighQ Collaborate, a cloud-based platform for team collaboration; HIghQ Publisher,…

The legal services company LegalZoom today announced a $500 million secondary investment led by Francisco Partners and GPI Capital, with Franklin Templeton Investments and Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers also participating.

Existing investors will retain meaningful stakes in the company, the announcement said. Global private equity firm Permira will remain the largest shareholder. Bryant…

A Chicago-based, “technology-enabled” national bankruptcy firm that has been under fire for alleged hard-sell tactics and unauthorized practice of law yesterday named a professor of business law and ethics as an independent monitor to oversee its business practices.

UpRight Law, a firm formed in 2013 by the founders of TotalAttorneys, Ed Scanlan and…

The practice management platform Clio yesterday rolled out a feature called Clio Launcher that opens documents for editing on your desktop computer with one click and then saves them back to the appropriate folder in Clio.

It works on both Windows and Mac computers (but not Chromebooks) and for any type of file, including…

Frustration is the story of many a legal technology startup. A lawyer frustrated with the shortcomings of existing products sets out to design a better one. That is the story behind LEA, a new case-management platform designed specifically for criminal lawyers.

Its developer, Kevin Hogle, an Irvine, Calif., lawyer, told me he was unable…

In episode #3 of my new podcast LawNext, I interview two of the founders of legal-research startup Casetext: Jake Heller, chief executive officer, and Pablo Arredondo, chief legal research officer.

An international group of law firms and legal technology companies are joining forces as the first cohort to help launch a public, permissioned, blockchain-based, smart-contract management system, the Agreements Network.

The network is intended to serve as a decentralized platform for law firms to productize contracts as scalable “active” (or…

The cloud-based e-discovery company DISCO today announced that Kristin Zmrhal-Murray has joined the company as vice president of customer success.

Zmrhal-Murray has been part of Google’s in-house discovery team since 2011, most recently as senior legal operations manager, where she developed and oversaw its discovery project management and operations team.

Previously at Google,…

Next month, I will be meeting with a group of state bar officials to discuss what steps they can take to promote legal services innovation and access to justice. In preparation for that, I have been trying to outline the barriers to innovation in law. I figure that the first step to overcoming these barriers…

Microsoft is conducting a survey to understand how and where the legal industry accesses and consumes information about legal operations, legal innovation, and the business of law.

It plans to use the results to identify key content types and delivery channels, gain insight into who is listening to and participating in thought leadership in the…

Here is a round-up of recent investment and deal news involving legal technology companies:

Everlaw raises $25 million. Everlaw, a Berkeley, Calif., based e-discovery and litigation platform, has closed a a $25 million Series B funding round, with new investor Menlo Ventures leading the round and continued participation from Andreessen Horowitz. In 2016, the company raised…