When applied, technology makes life easier, tough operations are carried out more effectively and in a shorter time, and more accurately. We’ve seen technology being used in innovative ways across various sectors and industries from finance, medicine, art, and basically all spheres of life.
Definely, a Nigerian-led startup is changing the legal world with its technology startup. Based in London, United Kingdom, Definely was founded in 2017 by Nnamdi Emelifeonwu and Feargus Macdaeid. Led by Nigerian-born Nnamdi Emelifeonwu, Definely is a legal-tech startup that applies Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make legal operations such as simplifying drafts, reading, and understanding of contracts, easy. Definely works by using Artificial Intelligence to go through all the documents (both hard and soft copies) that lawyers need to go through to lay hold of crucial information that they’ll need, thereby taking away the stress from lawyers and reducing their workload.
Definely has announced that it raised £2.2 million in a seed funding round, bringing the total funds that the startup has raised to £3.4 million. The funding round was led by tech giant Microsoft’s Venture Fund and supported by CRE Venture Capital.
It might be quite surprising to some to hear of a legal-tech startup, but as earlier implied technology can be adopted in any field or sphere of life. Research and studies have shown that law firms that have fully adopted technology in all their operations have more productivity and profitability when juxtaposed with their counterparts who have either not adopted technology or have not fully implemented it in their operations. What Definely does, simply, is that it provides law firms the avenue to increase their productivity and profitability by leveraging on technology. The startup’s software employs Artificial Intelligence which makes some crucial legal operations be carried out faster, more efficiently and accurately, and in real-time.
Since its inception in 2017, the startup has done impressively well. It boasts of a 500 percent YoY rate of growth in the number of people and law firms using its platform. The startup also boasts of some of the world’s legal bigwigs using its platform. Some of these big law firms and multinational corporations using its platform include Dentons, Allen and Overy, and Deloitte.
Speaking about the term “legal-tech”, Definely’s Nigerian-born Co-founder and CEO said that “Legal technology is stepping out of nascency and becoming embedded in how the modern-day lawyer works. Definely not only speeds up the review and drafting process but importantly it allows a lawyer to be more accurate with their output because they never have to leave where they are and lose context when working on a document”.
The startup says that it expects exponential growth in both the demand and adoption of its products across the globe and predicts that legal-tech would, in the future, be a requirement for companies looking to employ the services of a law firm. The world is changing, and technology is bringing about new changes across different spheres of life and the legal world should not be left out, the startup’s CEO believes.
The startup says that the newly acquired fund will be used to “accelerate its product development, expand its world-class team, and drive further expansion into markets beyond the UK”. The startup has big goals in mind.
The startup has had some impressive achievements and some of it include being recognized as one of the 10 most exciting early stage scaleups in the UK during the 2021 Tech Nation Rising Stars competition and being one of the few startups that was selected to be a part of the Google for Startups £2 million fund. The startup also recently won the title of the ‘Most Promising Mature Business’ during KPMG’s Black Entrepreneurs’ Awards.
Definely has a long list of potentials and promises to do well as the sector it is hovering is one of the unexplored.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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