A UK startup founded by two ex-Magic Circle lawyers has raised 拢5.6 million in Series A funding after a chance meeting led to the generation of a product that solves a problem faced by every lawyer.
Definely was created to make legal documents easier to read, edit and understand.
The 拢5.6m round was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from Cornerstone VC and Zrosk Investment Ltd. It also saw participation from well-known angels Claire Hughes Johnson, Comron Sattari, Ajay Patel, and Babatunde Soyoye join the cap table. Edward Keelan, partner at Octopus Ventures joins CRE Venture Capital and Zrosk Investments on the board.
Available via subscription, Definely鈥檚 suite of productivity solutions assists lawyers at every pre-execution stage of the contract lifecycle, helping its customers draft, proof and understand legal documents quickly.聽
Headquartered in London, and with over 60 employees located globally, the company is now focused on adding to its existing base of 40,000 active users from the largest companies and law firms in the UK, US, Canada and Australia.聽
One of the company鈥檚 products, Definely Vault, already deploys sophisticated AI techniques to create a taxonomy of a firm鈥檚 entire contract repository, extracting all relevant data and clauses to make information readily available to users as contracts are drafted and reviewed.聽
鈥淏efore we built Definely, lawyers that needed to access information and understand contracts would use Ctrl+F keys, multiple windows, scroll through hundreds of pages, or simply print out documents so that they could reference all the information in one place,鈥� said chief strategy officer MacDaeid.
鈥淎s someone who is visually impaired, you can imagine the challenge this represented for me.
鈥淚t sounds like an obvious problem, but you wouldn鈥檛 believe how many hours law firms can spend just looking for the right information.鈥澛�
Conceived after a chance meeting of two former Magic Circle lawyers, Definely鈥檚 co-founders have had a less-than conventional path to creating one of the UK鈥檚 fastest-growing LegalTech startups.聽
Registered as legally blind, Feargus MacDaeid struck up an unlikely friendship with Nigerian migrant Nnamdi Emelifeonwu – when the pair worked together at law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer – that would see the pair develop technology that has now been proven to give lawyers significant daily time savings when working on contracts.聽
The company, which in 2023 was named in the top 25 of the prestigious Deloitte UK Technology Fast50, a list of the UK鈥檚 fastest-growing tech companies – launched its first product in September 2020 and now serves a global elite of law firms and Fortune 500 companies including Allen & Overy (now A&O Shearman), Slaughter & May, Dentons, Deloitte, P&O Cruises and many more.
鈥淩unning Definely is the first thing I do when opening a contract. It is both a tool for reviewing and proofing, but more importantly, something I use in real-time when drafting and constructing contracts as a part of my job. This is what sets it apart,鈥� said Ben Brooks, a lawyer at Allen & Overy.聽
CEO Emelifeonwu added: 鈥淒efinely is a testament to the power of diverse perspectives and accessibility first in innovation.聽
鈥淪o we built the simplest delivery possible for our tech, incorporating it via a Microsoft Word Plugin so that it integrates with every lawyer鈥檚 existing workflow and tooling.聽
鈥淚t was this in part, that allowed us to become such an entrenched provider of legal technology to some of the world鈥檚 largest law firms and corporations so quickly.鈥�