Definely, a UK-based LegalTech company created to make legal documents easier to read, edit and understand, announced it has successfully raised Series A funding. The $7 million Series A investment round was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from Cornerstone VC and Zrosk Investment Ltd. The round also included participation from well-known angels Claire Hughes Johnson, Comron Sattari, Ajay Patel, and Babatunde Soyoye to join the cap table. Edward Keelan, partner at Octopus Ventures joins CRE Venture Capital and Zrosk Investments on the board.
Available through a subscription, Definely’s suite of productivity solutions assists lawyers at every pre-execution stage of the contract lifecycle, helping its customers draft, proofread, and understand legal documents quickly. Based in London and with over 60 employees worldwide, the company is now focused on adding to its existing base of 40,000 active users from the largest companies and law firms in the UK, US, Canada, and Australia. As the company advances in incorporating AI, it will also actively look to expand its highly experienced technical team.
Created following a chance meeting of two former Magic Circle lawyers, Definely’s co-founders have had a less-than-conventional path to creating one of the UK’s fastest-growing Legal Tech startups. Registered as legally blind, Feargus MacDaeid befriended Nigerian migrant Nnamdi Emelifeonwu when the pair worked together at law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. This would see the pair develop technology that has now been proven to give lawyers significant daily time savings when working on contracts.
The company launched its first product in September 2020 and now serves a global elite of law firms and Fortune 500 companies, including Allen & Overy (now A&O Shearman), Slaughter & May, Dentons, Deloitte, P&O Cruises, etc.
One of the company’s products, Definely Vault, already deploys sophisticated AI techniques to create a taxonomy of a firm’s entire contract repository. It extracts all relevant data and clauses to make information readily available to users as contracts are drafted and reviewed.
KEY QUOTES:
“Before we built Definely, lawyers that needed to access information and understand contracts would use Ctrl+F keys, multiple windows, scroll through hundreds of pages, or simply print out documents so that they could reference all the information in one place. As someone who is visually impaired, you can imagine the challenge this represented for me.” It sounds like an obvious problem, but you wouldn’t believe how many hours law firms can spend just looking for the right information.”
– Feargus MacDaeid, Co-Founder & CSO of Definely
“Running Definely is the first thing I do when opening a contract. It is both a tool for reviewing and proofing, but more importantly, something I use in real-time when drafting and constructing contracts as a part of my job. This is what sets it apart.”
– Ben Brooks, a lawyer at A&O Shearman
“Definely is a testament to the power of diverse perspectives and accessibility first in innovation. So we built the simplest delivery possible for our tech, incorporating it via a Microsoft Word Plugin so that it integrates with every lawyer’s existing workflow and tooling. It was this in part, that allowed us to become such an entrenched provider of legal technology to some of the world’s largest law firms and corporations so quickly.”
– Nnamdi Emelifeonwu, Co-Founder & CEO of Definely
“At Octopus Ventures, we’re backing the entrepreneurs who make it their mission to empower people and change industries for the better. Definely is a fantastic example of this – what started as a solution to improve accessibility in the legal industry, has evolved into a product that boosts productivity for all lawyers. By leveraging their powerful AI and strong relationships with companies like Microsoft, Definely is well-positioned to make significant inroads into this $60 billion industry.”
– Edward Keelan, partner at Octopus Ventures
