LawPro.ai Inc., a Brentwood-based artificial intelligence platform for lawyers and law firms, announced in June that it received an undisclosed sum of seed funding.
A handful of venture capital firms participated in the round, LawPro.ai said, including Brentwood-based Scopus Ventures and The Legal Tech Fund, an investment firm in Florida.
Neither LawPro.ai nor Scopus Ventures responded to requests for comment.
LawPro’s automation platform is billed as a way for lawyers to streamline otherwise tedious and routine processes, especially when it comes to medical lawsuits.
For example, when a law firm onboards a potential client, it needs to determine if the client’s grievance makes for a suitable case while building trust. According to LawPro, the platform can organize the specifics of the case and allow the lawyer to spend more time in front of the client. The platform can also analyze medical reports in a secure, HIPAA-compliant environment and flag potential problems in each case.
The fresh funding will go towards scaling the platform and developing new technologies.
“Their platform addresses critical pain points in legal practice and has the potential to significantly enhance productivity and client satisfaction,” Bahram Nour-Omid, managing partner at Scopus Ventures, said in a statement.
Killing the billable hour
While automation and AI tools give law firms the freedom to spend more time with clients and build robust cases, technology’s efficiency is likely to have a profound impact on how law firms charge clients and budget earnings.
Most lawyers track billable hours to determine how much money a client has to pay for working on their case. But verifying AI-driven insights could take hours instead of days or weeks, reducing the number of hours law firms can bill. The ABA Journal, a trade publication for the legal sector, said AI could very well be “killing” the billable hour.
In an obscure industry, billable hours are one of the few ways lawyers can concretely value their time. In a 2023 Bloomberg Law survey, only a third of lawyers bill via an alternative fee arrangement, like a flat fee or blended rate. Upward of 51% of lawyers in law firms said they were “not sure” if their company had a formalized process to measure the value of legal operations, while 48% of lawyers with in-house firms said there was no formal process to measure value.
The same survey found that 47% of lawyers working in law firms and 28% of those in in-house firms are “not sure” if there’s a formalized process for judging the value of technology used in their practice.
While generative AI could very well reduce billable hours, it could also allow law firms to make money taking on more cases.
“We believe when lawyers are empowered with technology, they can better service their clients and expand their business,” Zach Posner, cofounder and managing director at The Legal Tech Fund, said in a statement.