Hello there,
It’s been 302 days since I sent out a newsletter. Yes, I counted.
When I started this, I battled with the question of necessity. Was this something people would want to read? Was it just a waste of time? You know how the questions of self-doubt go.
I recently watched a video by Peace Itimi on 8 lessons she has learned from shooting Founder’s Connect and it gave me the right motivation to give this another shot, and here I am 🙂
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In today’s newsletter, we will be looking at some interesting news in the month :
- More legaltech unicorns
- Norebase : LegalTech or TradeTech?
- Some exciting stories I read about
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More LegalTech Unicorns
I am so excited that since I wrote about Clio attaining the unicorn status, we have had a couple more legal tech companies attain the unicorn status. In November 2021, Everlaw secured a $202 million investment for its Series D round,making it valued at more than $1billion. Everlaw is the world’s most advanced e-discovery software that is used to simplify complex legal work.
ZenBusiness, a US Legaltech startup also announced in November last year that it raised $200 million in its latest funding round bringing the company to a valuation of $1.7million. ZenBusiness makes straightforward legal filings easier and more affordable for small business owners.
Personal Thoughts: As an advocate of the global legal tech ecosystem, I feel super proud of news like this because that validates the profitability of the industry. There is so much room to grow, scale and be profitable. I stumbled on this article listing Unicorns, Soonicorns and Minicorns (I didn’t know there were words like that before now). Sadly, there isn’t any legal tech company from Africa on the list.
This keeps me wondering what’s happening in the legal tech ecosystem in Africa? Are we growing? Are we just stuck? Are we giving up?
What do you think?
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Norebase – Tradetech with a sprinkle of LegalTech
Frankly, I am not sure if this should be included here, but I have a question to ask, and thought to ask here.
On May 4th, Techcrunch posted the news on Norebase raising $1m to allow businesses to start, operate and scale across any African country. Personally, I was excited, both for the company and the legal tech ecosystem or so I thought but alas, I was wrong.
I made a tweet asking if Norebase was seen as a legal tech company, a couple of mutuals agreed with me but Norebase corrected us. They are a Tradetech company.
I checked out the meaning of Tradetech and things got more interesting for me. I checked their website and the products listed are Company incorporation and Trademark & IP Registration. Are we now listing these services under trade than under legal? Probably it puts the company in a better position to be seen as Tradetech than LegalTech.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am in no place to tell a company how to be positioned in the ecosystem. It was just insightful for me. Maybe we could call them, a Tradetech company with a sprinkle of LegalTech.
What do you think?
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Some exciting stories I found interesting:
- Who should be responsible for business development in a law firm? Partners or Associates
- JusticeText is an evidence management software built to help lawyers analyse audio and video evidence in other to enable fairer criminal justice outcomes.
- Congratulations to Leah Molatseli, Head of Business Development, Legal Interact, South Africa was recognised as one of the 2022’s Influential Women in Legal Technology.
- A law student launches the first and only LegalTech Investment syndicate, Cataclysm Ventures aimed at early-stage startups.
- Registered for the upcoming Africa Law Tech Festival? It’s happening from the 5th to 18th of June, 2022.
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Thank you for reading!
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