Hi,

It’s been a minute, or even more. 

Legal Zoom’s recent IPO move. On June 29th, LegalZoom, a leading online platform for legal and compliance solutions in the United States, with a goal of democratizing the law announced the pricing of its first public offering (IPO) of some shares of common stock at $28.00 per share to the general public. LegalZoom has also announced the concurrent sale of more shares of its common stock in a private placement to businesses linked with TCV, an existing stockholder, at the same price per share as the initial public offering price. Legalzoom has over 20 years of experience navigating complex regulations and simplifying the legal and compliance process for its customers, and it operates in all 50 states and over 3,000 counties in the United States.

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In today’s newsletter, we will be looking at some interesting news in the past month :

1. We read our book of the month : and here are the top 3 highlights from the book
2. We now have a legaltech unicorn. Guess who?
3.  1 legaltech idea that I think should be worked on (problem & solution)
4. Some exciting stories we read about.

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Three lessons learned from the Book of the Month: Law and the Media by Tom Crone

1. The law of defamation protects the reputation of a person from defamatory statements made about him to a third party without lawful justification. A statement is defamatory if it tends to lower the claimant in the estimation of right thinking members of society generally (Sim v Stretch (1936)).

2. A person who publishes a libel knowing it to be false may be sentenced to a fine and a period of imprisonment (Section 4 of the Libel Act 1843). A publisher who did not know a libel was false may also be sentenced to a fine and a sentence of imprisonment (Section 5 of the Libel Act 1843).

3. Copyright does not protect ideas, news or information from being copied. Instead, it protects the material form or manner of expression of that idea or information.

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Now, we have a legaltech unicorn : Clio

Clio, a cloud-based legal technology business, has become the first global legal tech unicorn, having raised $136 million CAD ($110 million USD) in a Series E round valued at $1.6 billion USD. Clio’s total fundraising to date has been $503 million CAD, with a minor, undisclosed part of secondary capital.

Clio’s mission is to modernize “expensive, obsolete on-premise solutions” with cloud technology that makes managing firms, cases, and clients easier for lawyers. According to the Burnaby, British Columbia-based company, the funding makes it the world’s first legal practice management unicorn. It’s also the second tech startup to achieve unicorn status in Canada with the first being Clearbanc. Finally, according to Jack Newton, the cofounder of Clio, he says, “It’s exciting to see that there’s so much enthusiastic investor support for the vision we have for the future of legal.”

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Legaltech Idea

Problem : Before the Twitter Ban in Nigeria, we saw on a daily basis, a report of missing persons, their details and pictures. If you are part of those that still access twitter with a vpn (giving you a side eye), you will still see these tweets. In some cases, the missing persons are found and in some other cases, they are not. Maybe we just don’t get the memo.

Solution : A website or app that curates the list of all missing persons reported on any social media platform or other sources of information and  verified by the Police.Where the person is found, the details of such a person is taken off the Missing list or greyed out. I know whospottedme.com does something like this but I wonder if they are still in operation. I also came across Toutiao Xunren from China and Laapata on Google Play.

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Stories we found interesting: 

1. The Annual Africa Law Tech Festival is set to hold virtually from 5th to 7th of this Month with the theme : Digital Policy for Economic Growth
2. Westlaw Edge launched a new research tool for legal practitioners that help in identifying weaknesses in the written arguments of the opposing counsel. In other words, Quick Check Contrary Authority Identification (that’s the name of the feature), with the use of Artificial Intelligence, a lawyer is able to analyze and identify relevant authorities omitted from the brief of the opposing counsel.
3. Anu, a legaltech startup that uses AI to match startups with the lawyers best suited to work with them, has shutdown for various reasons including that they could not find the right business model.
4. 10 Candidates were shortlisted for the second stage of the NBA-SBL Innovation Hub Challenge.
5. Disco,the legaltech company from Texas has become the latest legaltech vendor to file for an IPO with an estimated market size of $42bn. Disco uses AI and cloud computing to help lawyers and legal teams to improve legal teams. Let’s just say they give what we would call e-discovery as a Service.
6. TWCC : Must-Read Conversations on Law, Tech & Innovation
7. LexisNexis, has expanded its analytics offering to the Finance space. With the launch of its solution for researching and comparing recent and relevant transactions, finding on-point precedent and clause language, and evaluating specific deal points for more thorough document drafting and more successful negotiations.
8. We are launching our Youtube Channel 🙂

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Thank you for reading!

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Regards,
Kelechi.