A $7 million Series A has been raised by legaltech firm Definely to further develop its AI-powered software, which promises to assist lawyers in understanding and editing documents.

Octopus Ventures led the round, with other angel investors, Cornerstone VC, and Zrosk Investment Ltd. also participating. Microsoft and Google were among the investors who contributed $4.5 million to the business in the past.

Definely intends to focus on growing its US operations and develop further AI-based products with the funds.

The funding round follows a run of large investments from legal tech entrepreneurs, who are vying with one another to be the first to use AI to automate time-consuming tasks like document screening and drafting.

The CEO and cofounder of Legaltech, Nnamdi Emelifeonwu, claims that the industry is currently in a “race.” Winners and losers will be present. The winning startup will be the one that uses AI to benefit customers in a significant way.

Founded in 2020, Definely provides a set of solutions that can enable lawyers cross-reference data across various document formats. These products include an AI-powered drafting tool, proofreader, and PDF scanner. Everything is provided as a Microsoft Word plugin.

Legal professionals, businesses, and consumers can purchase Definely through a subscription approach. It usually runs between £75 and £90 a month for individuals, depending on the bundle.

Sifted is informed by the company that it has forty thousand active users who are from law firms and companies in the UK, Europe, US, Canada, and Australia. This comprises attorneys from Slaughter & May, Dentons, Deloitte, and P&O Cruises, among other firms.

The startup has its sights set firmly on the US market, where it presently generates thirty percent of its sales, despite the fact that the majority of its revenue currently originates from the UK and Europe.

He told Sifted that there are 1.3 million registered attorneys in the US compared to 205k in the UK, saying that “the US legal market is about 10 times the size of the UK’s.” “The US will play a lot more importance as we grow.”

Development of Legaltech Using AI

One of the main goals of the new money will be to grow into the US market; the other is to develop more AI-powered goods.

According to Feargus MacDaeid, cofounder of Emelifeonwu, “law is a linguistic-based profession,” thus there is a lot of room for efficiency gains with language-based technologies like generative AI.

As a result of the current level of competition in this market, Definely is keeping quiet about specific plans regarding their AI legaltech product roadmap. However, Emelifeonwu and MacDaeid report that the company is exploring the use of generative AI and natural language processing to help link queries across multiple documents.

According to MacDaeid, Definely has also recently started utilizing a model from the French GenAI firm Mistral to teach its software to handle documents in several languages and respond to queries. “Mistral have trained their model on a corpora of six European languages, so they’re incredibly well placed to provide that kind of information.”

However, the European AI legaltech market presents the firm with fierce competition that is getting more and more well-funded.

Luminance raised $40 million last month, and Temasek, Plural, and Revolut Nik Storonsky’s family office QuantumLight were among the investors who contributed £20.6 million to RobinAI in January.