British contract lifecycle management software company ContractPod Technologies has secured $55 million in Series B venture capital funding in an investment that the company said broke legal tech financing records in Europe and around the world.
The new investment round was primarily funded by New York-based Insight Partners, a venture capital and private equity firm that focuses on supporting tech and software companies.
The financing is the largest Series B legal tech fundraising effort to take place in Europe, according to a company statement, and the largest globally for any contract lifecycle management (CLM) software tool.
The relatively hefty dollar amount underscores the increasing popularity of artificial intelligence-infused legal tech with venture capital outfits.
The AI component of the company’s software “was a huge piece of what got us excited” about the investment, said Insight Partners Vice President Paul Szurek.
The company’s ContractPodAi software automates and helps streamline contract generation, repository, and third-party review processes for in-house legal teams, enabling users to assemble and manage contracts in an “end-to-end” process. It was founded in 2012 and has several offices across the globe.
The program excels in the process still often needed to migrate contracts from paper to digital form, said Szurek, as well as automating contract workflow and even in making sure contracts are routed to the right people.
The need for CLM tools in corporate legal departments is clear, Szurek said. Within the past six months, Insight Partners conducted market research that showed that 75% of medium-sized and large corporate in-house legal teams don’t have contract lifecycle management tools in place—but that almost that many, 70%, plan to purchase one within the next two to three years.
In a broad sense, Szurek agreed with the growing consensus that legal tech is an increasingly venture-worthy sector. “We’ve had our eye on the legal tech category for a while,” he said.
The co-founder and CEO of ContractPod Technologies, Sarvarth Misra, told the popular legal tech blog Artificial Lawyer July 17 that he wanted to make sure his company built a solid client base before it took on major funding, and that finding the right investment partners has been critical.
The Series A funding round last year spurred less than $5 million, Misra said—so the leap in Series B indicates fast-rising investor interest.
About one-third of ContractPodAi’s sales have gone to American legal departments, Szurek said, though he expects that percentage to rise with the new investment round.
Legal tech funding generally has drawn much attention from investors this year. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, funding in this sector topped $400 million, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis.
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