We bring you the latest big legal tech announcements from the past few days.
Fulcrum has been recognised within the top 10 of the business services category of the Fast Company 2024 Most Innovative Companies list, with a listing at No. 7. for simplifying legal spend management. The Chicago-headquartered company has also earned a place at No. 59 on the 2024 Inc. Regionals: Midwest list of fast-growing companies.
In August 2023, Fulcrum released RapidX, which now offers in-house legal teams a similar set of tools to assess risk and compliance, hire outside counsel, analyse pricing, manage invoicing, and execute electronic billing. A company can use RapidX to identify appropriate outside counsel based on a range of parameters (for example, expertise, geography, or size) and invite numerous firms to bid on an assignment. Fulcrum GT says that immediately following the release of RapidX, 10 initial clients generated an incremental $2 million in revenue for the company and it’s now adding Fortune 100 corporations to its roster. Developing the new technology also yielded eight new patents.
Fulcrum joins the likes of Nvidia, YouTube, Taco Bell with its inclusion on the Fast Company 2024 Most Innovative Companies list.
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In terms of the Inc Regionals: Midwest, born of the annual Inc. 5000 franchise, this regional list represents a look at the most successful companies within the Midwest’s independent small businesses sector. Fulcrum earned its rank with a two-year revenue growth from 2020 to 2022 of 197%. From 2021 to 2023, Fulcrum says its growth accelerated by 556%.
“Fast Company and Inc. magazine are gold standards in ranking innovative and high-growth companies that are shaping the business landscape in the U.S., so to say we are proud of this recent recognition is an understatement,” said Fulcrum GT founder and CEO Ahmed Shaaban. “The entire team at Fulcrum works hard every day to create and deliver innovative solutions that support the evolving needs of our clients. Inclusion on these rankings is a testament to that effort and to the resulting growth we’ve achieved. Recognition for our success is very rewarding.”
In other news out this week, Litera announced the launch of Foundation Dragon, a generative AI deal term database that provides legal teams with instant access to relevant data points from prior corporate transactions. Built on the Foundation platform, Dragon creates a searchable collection of relevant data points from unstructured data found in firm documents.
“As happy Foundation users, we see Dragon as an innovative and intuitive technology to help our lawyers leverage firm expertise for maximum benefit to our clients,” said Cindy Bare, chief data and innovation officer at US law firm Frost Brown Todd.
Dragon was developed by Litera’s in-house AI Incubator, in collaboration with several longstanding Foundation customers.
“We’re thrilled to be an early adopter of Litera Dragon as we see extensive potential in Gen AI and Foundation,” said Patricia Johansen, managing director of knowledge & innovation for business law at Goodwin.
Elsewhere, Aderant announced yesterday (10 April) that it has partnered with Vanderbilt Law School in a bid to drive greater awareness of AI among law students and law firms.
The Vanderbilt AI Law Lab (VAILL) was launched last year to explore how artificial intelligence intersects with the delivery of legal services and access to justice.
Housed within the school’s Program on Law & Innovation (PoLI), VAILL’s mission is to harness AI to expand access to legal services and knowledge and improve the delivery of legal services. Its objectives include training students to navigate an AI-driven landscape, pioneering ethical applications of the technology, and forging partnerships between academia, industry, and the legal community to bring projects to life.
The partnership kicked off this week, when Aderant’s CTO Andy Hoyt spoke to Vanderbilt students. Aderant will feature VAILL co-director Mark Williams as a speaker during its global Momentum conference in Nashville in May.
Hoyt said: “Vanderbilt Law School has established a global reputation for legal innovation, and their VAILL initiative is very inspiring to us at Aderant. Law students are the lawyers of tomorrow, and they play a crucial role in assimilating and adopting modern approaches to legal practice. I am really looking forward to delving into challenges faced by modern law firms and show how state-of-the-art AI technology can solve problems impacting law practice, financial management, billing and more.”
And listed US eDiscovery provider Disco has appointed Eric Friedrichsen as its new president and chief executive officer, effective April 29, 2024.
Outgoing interim CEO, Scott Hill, will transition to the role of board chair on May 12, 2024, after assisting Friedrichsen with the leadership changeover. The appointments follow the departure of founder and CEO Kiwi Camara, who is being investigated for a number of misconduct allegations.
Friedrichsen’s career includes a tenure as CEO of Emburse, LLC, and leadership positions at Marketo Inc. and SAP. He holds a B.B.A. in Management Information Systems from the University of Iowa.
newsroom@legaltechnology.com