DraftWise – an AI-based contract and negotiation platform for lawyers – announced a $20 million Series A funding round led by Index Ventures, with additional support from existing investors Y Combinator and Earlybird Digital East Ventures.
The new funding round will enable DraftWise to strengthen and expand its Contract Intelligence platform, which uses generative AI to help law firms create higher-quality contracts in less time by enabling every lawyer with instant access to the firm’s collective institutional knowledge and data. And the platform is considered an essential asset by top law firms in North America, Europe, and Australia, with customers looking to it as an essential tool that elevates all parts of the contract and negotiation process.
DraftWise’s customers use the platform every day for accessing historical and institutional knowledge like decades of deal history, market trends, and client and counterparty-favored terms, that helps make more informed decisions when drafting and negotiating contracts, leading to better outcomes for their clients. And DraftWise enables associates to securely access their firm’s cumulative knowledge and data directly within the documents they’re already working in. This reduces the chances of small errors that can have outsized operational and financial costs while freeing up partners who might otherwise spend time correcting associate work.
DraftWise’s founding team combines world-class AI and engineering capabilities with industry expertise, including an intimate understanding of the large and small challenges lawyers face daily. And former Palantir engineering leaders James Ding and Emre Ozen teamed up with Ozan Yalti, a Stanford Law graduate who has practiced at top global firms like Clifford Chance, to launched the company in 2020. They recognized that contracts are data-rich.
DraftWise helps law firms tap into the power of their data, enabling them to work more efficiently and effectively by enabling lawyers to access their firm’s collective knowledge and historical work in a matter of seconds.
Based in New York City, DraftWise is a growing global team with employees in major cities and countries worldwide. The Series A funding round will support continued investment in engineering, product, and customer expertise, and with strategic investment in growth aimed at expanding the company’s reach and helping it fulfill its promise to customers.
KEY QUOTES:
“We’ve piloted several generative AI solutions and Draftwise really stands out. The tools saves our deal teams hundreds of hours by enabling them to tap data and spot trends with incredible speed and accuracy. Our lawyers give it high marks for value and ease of use, and it’s quickly become a great use case for genAI technology in our practice.”
– Wendy Curtis, Chief Innovation Officer at Orrick
“Contracts are the lifeblood of the legal profession, yet their potential has been constrained by the risk of human error and limited access to data at the time of drafting. Our technology not only streamlines these processes, but it arms the lawyer with their firm’s best language and institutional data, elevating the quality of work product and allowing lawyers to focus on what they do best – advocating for their clients.”
– James Ding, Co-Founder of DraftWise
“The DraftWise team has the perfect complement of AI expertise, legal experience, and customer-obsession that are necessary to build a tool that will be widely adopted and used by lawyers in their day-to-day tasks. The feedback we heard from their early customers has been outstanding and we are excited to partner with them to help them reach out to more customers and continue to expand their product into a full-fledged intelligence platform used across the legal industry.”
– Martin Mignot, Partner at Index Ventures
