Legislate raise $3.6 million to double down on UK sales

UK-based Legislate today announced it has raised $3.6 million in funding for its legal technology company to double down on UK sales and prepare for international expansion this year. 

The round was round led by Parkwalk Advisors, with participation from Oxford Capital and several high-profile angel investors. 

"Legislate has developed a unique solution to simplify contracting for SMEs and mid-market businesses in a way that scales. We’re confident that they are well-positioned to take a significant portion of the market. Their focus on making contracts machine-readable is particularly impressive and we believe it has the potential to be a game-changer in the industry," says Claire Pardo from Parkwalk Advisors.

The startup’s proprietary AI-based knowledge graph streamlines the entire process of contract creation and aggregates data to unlock insights. The outcome is a fully fleshed out, fair agreement that aims to save both sides time and money, and one that can be enforced.

“For scaling companies, keeping track of terms across hundreds or thousands of contracts is a challenge that creeps up on you. Searching for basic information like contract start and end dates, or nuances in confidentiality terms across entire databases of contracts is painfully manual, or impossible. Before working with us, we know that some of our customers would spend weeks doing this” said Charles Brecque, Legislate’s founder.  

“By allowing companies to create their own ontologies of terms and making them semantically searchable, we enable anyone in that business to search for information in contracts, even if they don’t have a legal background. That’s incredibly powerful for scaling companies where business teams need to review terms across hundreds of contracts quickly to understand exposure to risks”, he says.  

With Legislate's technology, contracts are first made machine-readable, this subsequently allows all business users to easily compare, create, query, and sign every contract without the need for outside legal involvement. 
  
“We are proud to back Charles and the team in their mission to use tech to revolutionise contract creation and management. Investing in Legislate is investing in the future of machine-readable contracts. Their patented Knowledge Graph system sets them apart from other technologies and makes it simple for people without legal training to access contracts created by lawyers and manage them effectively,” says Stephen Hampson, Investment Director at Oxford Capital.