Although they play an important role in companies, many of their legal teams don't have the same technology as those in finance or sales. They rely heavily on email, shared mailboxes, and spreadsheets. LawVu provides them with a cloud-based platform that allows them to share legal advice, documents and communicate with one another or external counsel. They can also create reports for the rest the company, including the CEO. TechCrunch spoke to Tim Boyne, chief strategy officer and co-founder of LawVu.Today, Tauranga, New Zealand's company announced that it raised $17 Million NZD (or $11.9 Million USD) in Series A funding. This was led by Insight Partners. Insight Partners is a venture firm best known for its ScaleUp program, which helps growth-stage startups. AirTree Ventures also participated. The previous funding was a seed round that cost $1.8 million USD, led by Shasta Ventures. This announcement was made in May.LawVu was created by Boyne, an IT specialist and former operations manager at law firms for over a decade, and Sam Kidd (a SaaS project management specialist). LawVu was created for remote workers and distributed teams. This helped to increase adoption in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. LawVu's annual recurring revenue increased by threefold in 2020, and it is still growing. It has users in 30 different countries. However, approximately two-thirds its recurring revenues now come from the United States and Australia. Clients include Telstra, AMP Linktree and Expedia.As it develops LawVus technology, the company will be looking to fill key leadership positions in the U.S.LawVu can be used by legal teams in-house, ranging from one to over 300 lawyers. The fastest way to adopt LawVu is from groups of five to 500 legal professionals.Because in-house lawyers are motivated and have different objectives than their peers in private practice, the startup is able to serve in-house legal teams instead of law firms. Boyne explained that this creates a very different set of requirements for in-house attorneys to be effective in their jobs, especially on the technology front.Private practice lawyers, for example, are able to focus on specific projects and charge clients for the time they spend. In-house lawyers, on the other hand, must balance reactive work (or what their company requests) and proactive work (or anticipating business needs and reducing risk).LawVus Cloud Platform is a legal workspace that integrates all the technology tools required by in-house legal teams. It allows them to manage matter (or legal matters that include advice requests and contract executions or litigation), documents, ebilling, and outsourced work.LawVus analytics provides metrics that help the rest of the company to understand what in-house legal teams do. This data is often hidden in salespersons files or email inboxes.The majority of legal work is invisible. Boyne stated that unlike other industries, legal is only at the beginning of its data journey. As lawyers move their work to our workspace, all data can be captured. The legal function can now see the demand for work, type of work, team capability, future hiring requirements, which law firms are performing well and even areas that can be automated with other tools.LawVu helps in-house legal teams be more productive and also proves their worth to decision-makers. Boyne said that legal teams are often overlooked as cost centers, which don't directly contribute to a company's profit and are usually brought in at the end or during a decision.As a business grows rapidly, it is easy for the legal team to be lost. They have the ability to fight fires but not the time or the resources to engage in strategic planning. Boyne stated that if you don't have the data to support the value of your work, it can be very difficult to obtain additional resources, whether they are tech- or people-related.LawVu workspace allows them streamline their service, have access to information, deliver results quickly, measure, and demonstrate value. This gives them the opportunity to be a valuable member of the business leadership group.Rachel Geller, Insight Partners managing partner, will join LawVus' board. She stated that LawVus' global growth speaks volumes about the company's future and its ability to deliver high-value results to legal teams. LawVu's intuitive user experience combined with excellent customer feedback makes it stand out in legal tech.
