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LawVu Ltd., a startup behind software to boost efficiency of in-house legal teams, has hired David Lancelot as its first chief legal officer and head of advocacy.
Lancelot, a former general counsel for QVC’s UK arm, joined LawVu last month. His new role involves being an evangelist for a platform the company provides that uses Microsoft Corp.’s Azure OpenAI artificial intelligence software.
“In order to be a really integrated, strategic business partner with a vision and purpose that gets you in leadership team meetings, you need to have a scalable engine room,” Lancelot said in an interview. “It’s only recently the technology to do that has become possible for the majority of in-house legal functions.”
The New Zealand-based LawVu is entering a fiercely competitive space where a range of companies—past and present—have laid claim to having software that will solve the legal industry’s efficiency issues. In the in-house arena, potential enterprise legal management rivals include Themis Solutions Inc.’s Clio and Thomson Reuters Corp.’s HighQ.
A critical test for LawVu will be whether it can use generative AI to develop a consolidated technology stack the company can sell to law departments. LawVu’s 2023 technology report found that 61% of in-house legal teams spend over one hour each day jumping between systems and products to determine priorities and gain a more complete view of pressing matters.
LawVu instead wants to be a “single codebase solution” for legal technology needs, Lancelot said. While much legal use of AI currently involves contracts, LawVu expects to expand its suite of products, he said.
“The legal tech market is very fractured right now and at different stages of development,” said Edward Estrada, a former Reed Smith partner who is now an investor in the space. “Many companies have solid products but are unable to gain market share due to competition and users seeming to be frozen in the face of so many choices—and overwhelmed with the prospect of multiple, often siloed, solutions.”
Estrada, who is also an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School, said the enterprise legal management segment of the legal technology market is more mature. “Companies that can address multiple business processes, as LawVu does, will have the most meaningful opportunities for growth,” said Estrada, noting that for in-house legal departments “the need for holistic solutions is accentuated.”
Investments
The company, founded in 2015, announced last week a venture capital investment that brings LawVu’s total fundraising to $40 million. That’s a drop in the ocean toward LawVu’s goal of cracking what it estimates will be a $40 billion legal technology market by 2030.
LawVu set up a hub in Seattle for its growing US business last year after receiving an investment from venture capital firm Insight Partners.
In August, LawVu touted a partnership with Microsoft to integrate its products with generative artificial intelligence. Microsoft has invested $10 billion into OpenAI Inc., parent company of ChatGPT.
LawVu clients include Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Dentsu Inc., Estée Lauder Cos., Etsy Inc., newly public Instacart Inc., and Microsoft’s LinkedIn. The company said 93% of its business comes from outside New Zealand, mostly from Australian, US, and UK companies.
LawVu Calls
Lancelot, 50, who lives in Los Gatos, Calif., home to many of Silicon Valley’s highest-flying startups, has watched many a legal technology services provider come and go during his 25-year career.
He was born in Sydney, grew up in Greece, and went to high school in Orlando, Florida. He’s held key legal roles at Walmart Inc. and eBay Inc. At the height of the pandemic, Lancelot used Zoom to orchestrate the $9.2 billion sale of eBay’s classifieds business to Norwegian online marketplace Adevinta ASA.
He was serving as an adjunct law professor at the University of Florida, his alma mater, teaching a class on international in-house legal leadership when former eBay legal colleague Rosanna Biggs—now the top lawyer at social media startup Linktree—joined him as a guest speaker and told Lancelot about LawVu.
He reached out to LawVu clients Sarah Binder, the legal chief at transportation startup Lime, and Zaid Gardner, general counsel for real estate portal Property Finder. Gardner introduced him to LawVu’s leadership team and chief executive, Sam Kidd, who Lancelot met in San Francisco.
He said LawVu was interested in him because of “my experience and credibility in the market, and because I’ve built significant international legal functions.”
Lancelot’s LawVu legal gig is somewhat of a homecoming. He just returned from a conference in Australia and expects to make periodic trips to New Zealand, a country Lancelot visited while taking an eight-month sabbatical post-pandemic.
While law firms often repeat the same task—and charge for that work—their in-house counterparts want to systematize templates, learning modules, and documents, Lancelot said.
LawVu is looking to differentiate itself by helping those corporate lawyers sift through a plethora of providers offering niche solutions to everything from analytics to contract, knowledge, and workflow management, as well as electronic discovery and billing services.
“I want to be at the cutting-edge of this transformation,” Lancelot said. “AI gets better the more you use it.”
Bloomberg Law competes in this market and sells AI-based tools that provide contract solutions.
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