Despite the outright technological revolution we’ve been experiencing since the turn of the century, the legal industry has been mind-bogglingly slow to adopt new innovations. However, despite the uphill battle which is legal innovation, there are plenty of companies out there doing their best to disrupt the industry and usher it into the modern age. In the hopes of shining some light on those companies and perhaps sparking inspiration in a few aspiring entrepreneurs, I’ve put together this list of the 100 most disruptive companies in the legal industry.

While I could have organized the list by what I thought were the most disruptive companies, the order would have been subjective and difficult to navigate. So, for the sake of simplicity I’ve listed them in alphabetical order. -although I will point out a couple favorites along the way. Now let’s dig in.

AccessData

AccessData is one of the oldest companies on this list, founded in 1987. But don’t let that fool you, AD is poised to cause just as much disruption now as the year they founded.

AD provides a variety of digital forensics services to law enforcement, government agencies, lawyers and large firms. Their newest product, AD Labs pairs powerful data analytics algorithms with an artificial intelligence unit that acts as a virtual assistant. It allows even the least-experienced employee to manage forensic data as efficiently as a four man team.

Check out this informative article to learn more about AD Labs and the coming “digital forensics revolution.”

AirHelp

AirHelp is a Y Combinator alumni founded in 2013 to aide airline passengers in securing compensation for delayed, canceled, or overbooked flights. A problem that any regular traveler has experienced at least once.

If a flight is delayed, general airline policy is to hand out some meal vouchers and hope none of the passengers know their rights(I know I didn’t). However, it turns out that passengers can be entitled to up to $680. AirHelp states the average claim made through them totals $450 and the claim can be made up to 3 years after the flight.

This is one company that is disrupting multiple industries with their unique service.

Allegory Law

Allegory Law provides a cloud-based litigation management tool that is used by lawyers, paralegals, huge firms, and Fortune 500 companies. An impressive client-list for the relatively young startup(founded in 2011).

AL allows law professionals to store all of their legal documents in one place, create court-ready exhibitions on the fly, and offers an optional smart service. The smart service is the most compelling advantage AL offers. -an AI unit that streamlines many of the more mundane litigation processes. It’s great news for lawyers, not so much for their assistants however.

Alt Legal

Alt Legal founded in 2013 offers a cloud-based, automated IP docketing solution that caters to lawyers and businesses alike. The software keeps track of all your IP filings and statutory deadlines so you can “set it and forget it.” The AL platform provides instant TEAS filings and a host of tools for easy collaboration. It allows you to focus on improving and creating new IP instead of spending precious time manually managing your assets.

Apperio

Apperio is a matter management company. They provide a smart-analytics dashboard tailored to general counsel and law firms that takes the “guesswork” and frustration out of processing legal fees. The company was founded in 2013 and helped process more than $20 million in fees within its first year.

Apperio provides a realtime view of all matter, billable hours, and expenses so there’s no confusion on either side of a transaction when it comes time to pay the bill.

Avvo

Avvo began in 2006 as a legal services marketplace. Since then it has grown into something of an online legal suite, offering the lawyer marketplace, ratings on 97% of US lawyers, free form templates, and a database of 10.4 million legal questions and answers. It’s kind of like Craigslist, Yelp, and Quora all wrapped into one convenient legal website.

Avvo helps people avoid costly lawyers visits for simple legal questions and has quickly become one of the best ways to both find and advertise quality legal services.

Axiom

Axiom Law was founded in 2000 and has been making waves ever since. The company aides corporate legal teams and law firms in the everyday tasks that take up time and resources so their clients can focus on more pressing “big picture” issues.

Whenever you have a conversation about Axiom the question always comes up, “are they a law firm?” The short answer, no, but we won’t fault you for assuming so. Axiom doesn’t offer legal representation, what it does provide is a plethora of tech solutions and lawyers to aide a corporation or firms existing team in the legal process.

Back in 2013, Axiom also launched ReThink Law, a forum for legal professionals to share ideas and get help in answering complex legal questions.

Beagle

One of my favorite young companies on this list, Beagle was founded in 2013 and has completely revolutionized the way we analyze contracts.

Beagle is an artificial intelligence unit that analyzes contracts to find small errors – and I don’t just mean typos. The unit relies on a massive database of contracts and deep learning algorithms which allow it to spot legal errors and loopholes in a contract. It saves lawyers massive amounts of time and money, proofreading contracts in minutes that would take a person hours or even days.

Blue J Legal

Blue J Legal founded in 2015 is a Canadian company and the creator of Tax Foresight. TF utilizes deep-learning AI that has been taught by computer scientists and law professors from the University of Toronto to analyze tax law and identify issues before they become a problem. The goal was to create an AI unit that would reach the same conclusions when reviewing a tax report as the CRA(IRS).

Blue J Legal aides tax professionals in making accurate judgements for their clients faster than a human possibly could alone.

Brightleaf

Brightleaf founded in 2006 is an automated contract abstraction platform. The company pairs machine learning AI with a team of experienced lawyers for quality control to index contracts at up to Six Sigma standards – 99.9966% accuracy. The platform delivers a detailed but easy to understand report on any errors, unnecessary expenditures and potential new revenue streams hiding in your contracts.

Brightleaf allows businesses to manage their contracts without the need of hiring a costly in-house legal team or law firm.

CapacityHQ

CapacityHQ is one of Australia’s premier lawyer marketplaces. The company was founded in 2015 and later acquired by Legalvision, one of the nation’s top law firms. CHQ’s curated lawyer marketplace caters to law firms and companies with in-house legal teams, filling gaps caused by staff absence or providing specialists to aide in complex ultra-specific legal tasks.

Casetext

One of the most challenging aspects of the legal profession is researching relevant cases to further your argument. Researchers spend countless hours combing through hundreds of case files to find those that are relevant to the case at hand. Casetext(founded 2013) dramatically reduces research time thanks to its incredible deep learning AI, called CARA.

CARA works by analyzing an extensive database of US law to find relevant case law based on context instead of simple categories and keywords. It can single-handedly replace an entire research team at a fraction of the cost, allowing even the smallest firms and new lawyers to punch above their weight.

ChartaCourse

ChartaCourse is an online course creation system for legal educators with a thriving community. Educators create a complex chart based on pre-existing templates(or from scratch) then add in all case files and course materials that are specific to their class. Additionally, users may choose to share their charts with the community and receive royalties anytime they’re used.

ChartaCourse is waging war on outdated casebooks and setting a new standard for legal education.

Child Rescue Coalition

The Child Rescue Coalition was founded in 2013 and is certainly the most commendable company on this list. While you could argue that they’re not exactly disrupting the legal industry, they’re certainly worth mentioning. The CRC uses highly advanced data analytics algorithms to track predatory behavior and aid law enforcement in tracking down those criminals. To date CRC has helped rescue 2084 children and led to 9062 arrests.

They may not be disrupting the legal industry per say, but they are disrupting the lives of predators who wish to do our children harm. It’s an organization that anyone can be proud to support.

Clairvolex

Clairvolex provides complete IP asset management and individual IP services. The company was founded in 2008 and caters to small businesses and large corporations. More than simple asset management however, Clairvolex leverages years of expertise in the IP field with powerful data analytics algorithm to generate new revenue streams based on a company’s existing IP assets.

Clause

Clause is an automated contract management platform founded in 2015 that provides real-time tracking and processing of contracts for enterprise. Businesses enter their contract into the system and track the progress via a combination of the IoT and various APIs. As progress is made the contract is updated and all payments, refunds, etc. are handled automatically.

The days of paper contracts that you can never seem to find when an issue appears are behind us. Clause has set a new standard in contract management.

Clerky

Clerky is a Y-Combinator alumni founded in 2011 that provides legal paperwork solutions for small to medium sized enterprises, with a focus on startups. They handle incorporation, fundraising, hiring, NDA, and charter amendment paperwork so startups can focus on growing their business. Clerky is Y-Combinator’s go-to choice when getting started with unincorporated startups.

ClickNotices

Any landlord will tell you, one of the most frustrating and time consuming aspects of managing rental units is handling delinquency(late/non-payment). Nobody wants to do the paperwork and although you may recoup the late rent, nothing can be done to recover the lost time.

ClickNotices has solved that issue with their multi-family delinquency management platform. The software provides real-time tracking of payments, provides automated reminders and allows landlords to file late payment and eviction notices at the click of a button, hence the name. I’m sure there are many renters out there who wish CN was never created, but it’s a landlord’s dream.

Clio

Clio is a cloud-based law practice management software. The company launched in 2008 and offers an entire suite of services: calendaring, time-tracking, note-taking, document management, task management, legal accounting, bookkeeping, and billing.

Clio allows lawyers to spend less time handling the back end of the business and focus their efforts on providing quality legal aide.

Closing Folders

Closing Folders is a Toronto-based company founded in 2015 that provides centralized legal transaction management. The CF platform automatically tracks and catalogs every version of your contract, checks for all necessary signatures and provides a handy PDF printout or eSignature page to capture them, and keeps it all in a convenient schedule that includes a closing checklist.

Closing Folders is quickly cementing their place as the easiest way to handle the paperwork for complex legal transactions.

CloudLex

CloudLex is an offshoot of Lexvia Inc., one of the leading firms in litigation support services. Their Legal Cloud™ is similar to the service offered by Clio, but with a focus on plaintiff litigation. As they put it, LC was designed by trial lawyers for trial lawyers.

There’s no denying that on-site databases are quickly becoming obsolete, case management solutions like CloudLex will set the standard in the years to come.

Counterfeit Technology

Counterfeit Technology is an automated anti-counterfeiting software released in 2015. Users add photos of their products to the CT database and links to their product pages then CT does the rest. The automated tool handles the whole counterfeit removal process from discovery right through to lodging the DCMA complaint. It’s by far the easiest way to ensure your products aren’t being counterfeited online.     

Courtsdesk

Courtsdesk is an Ireland-based legal news service founded in 2015 that caters to the UK. The company combines social media and data analytics to publish reports on every open hearing in the UK and Ireland. It’s goal is to increase transparency within the justice system.

Cyan Forensics

Cyan Forensics has completely revolutionized the world of data forensics since its founding in 2016. Their automated scanner searches for illegal content such as child pornography or terrorist materials in a fraction of the time traditional scanners take.

Prior to CF, forensic data analysis was either processed manually or using an MD5 scanner. It takes an MD5 scanner up to 7 hours and 30 minutes to scan a 1TB drive. CF accomplishes the same scan in less than 30 minutes.

Docasaurus

Docasaurus is an automated document creation tool specifically designed for corporate lawyers. It allows lawyers to scan their documents and create convenient fillable templates in seconds. The platform lets your computer take care of the repetitive tasks while you focus on the high value items.

Docasaurus was designed by corporate lawyers so they could do more deals in less time.

DocRun

DocRun(founded in 2012) is still in closed private beta, for those of you who don’t speak tech, they’re not quite ready to launch yet. However, the software platform is poised to cause major disruption in the legal industry.

DR’s innovative software generates complex and customizable legal forms for lawyers and small businesses simply by asking a few questions. While the software will save lawyers time, it also has the potential to take a lot of their business away.

Why hire a pricey lawyer to write your legal forms when you can do it yourself with a handy app?

Docracy

Docracy is an open-source website that offers free legal documents. The company was founded in 2011 and has quickly become the go-to destination for small businesses and individuals who can’t afford to hire a lawyer to write their legal documents(or just want to save money).

What sets Docracy apart from other free legal document websites is their eSign solution. Users can build, negotiate, sign, and manage all of their legal documents with Docracy’s Supersigning platform. The system may not be as intuitive as DocRun, but you just can’t beat that price.

Doxly

Doxly is a cloud-based corporate legal transaction management platform founded in 2016. The platform automates due-diligence workflows and electronic signature collection, offers transaction-specific analytics, and enables legal teams and clients to collaborate on documents.

Despite being less than a year old at the moment, Doxly has already made a name for itself as one of 12 winners of the ABA Techshow, Startup Alley Competition.

EasyNDA

EasyNDA founded in 2014 is a fully-featured non disclosure agreement management service. The company offers eSignature verification, a convenient document manager, and a team manager so you can ensure that your company’s sensitive information remains secure. EasyNDA may not offer as many forms as the other automated document creators on this list, but it is the best at handling NDAs.

eBrevia

Any technology that can improve your quality of work while saving you time is literally worth its weight in gold, unless it’s software, then it’s worth something else’s weight in gold. All jokes aside, eBrevia does exactly that.

eBrevia is an artificial intelligence unit that combines machine learning and natural language processing technology to analyze and summarize legal documents. From investors to real estate agents, and of course lawyers, EB has the potential to single-handedly disrupt more industries(arguably) than any company on this list.

eDepoze

eDepoze was founded in 2012 with the goal of turning witness preparation and depositions into a completely paperless process, a task they’re well on their way to achieving. However, those separate services are not what got them on this list.

Last year eDepoze launched the Lexcity litigation platform. Lexcity is a paperless solution for all post-eDiscovery litigation events from arbitration to mediation, and of course depositions.

Everlaw

When it comes to legal tech, eDiscovery is the most competitive area. Everlaw (formerly EasyESI) was founded in 2011 and has quickly become one of the most trusted names in eDiscovery, catering to lawyers, firms, corporations, and governments across the globe.

One of the most unique and sought after features of EL’s platform is their StoryBuilder®which makes it incredibly easy(and fast) to string together a narrative for trial.

FairClaims

FairClaims founded in 2014 is an online small claims dispute resolution service. FC offers professional arbitration for claims up to $15,000 at far more affordable rates than traditional small claims courts. The other major advantage of FC is that cases are generally settled in as little as 3 weeks.

Nothing says “I’m disrupting the legal industry” better than a service that not only replaces costly lawyers, but the whole sluggish court system itself.

Farewill

I’ve tried to stick to companies that service the US for this list because most of our readers are US based, however, UK based Farewill was just too unique to leave off this list. Farewill is an automated will creation service founded in 2015. Users fill out a couple forms and answer a few questions then it generates the will.

Farewill caters to single people or couples and can generate your will in as little as 15 minutes at a fraction of the cost a lawyer would charge for the same service.

FarmFLX

FarmFLX founded at the end of 2016 with the goal of simplifying farmland lease management. Their AI is similar to the other automated contract services on this list, but with a sole focus on farm leases. Alongside their contract creator and manager, they also offer an automated payment tracker with a handy dashboard to make sure you know exactly where the numbers stand.

File & ServeXpress

File & ServeXpress(formerly LexisNexis File & Serve) was founded in 2012 and has been shaking up the legal industry every since. They cater to lawyers, courthouses, and government agencies, offering both eDiscovery and eService… services. While the list of eDiscovery providers is seemingly endless, F&SX has quickly become a leader in the eService sector.

Financial Recovery Technologies

Financial Recovery Technologies is a securities class action recovery service provider founded in 2008. According to FRT, ⅓ of all class action claims are dismissed before a resolution can be reached due to improper filing. FRT’s recovery platform matches an investor’s trading history with a database of thousands of active and settled class action cases to ensure they receive full compensation.

Headnote

Headnote is a SaaS company founded in 2016 that provides a complete payment platform for lawyers. The system offers online invoicing and payment, automated reminders, and a handy dashboard that makes it simple to track outstanding engagement letters, invoices, and payments.

Headnote is like a personal assistant that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. They’re quickly becoming the go-to payment platform for lawyers.

HelloSign

HelloSign founded in 2011 is a legally binding eSignature service. The company was founded with the sole purpose of removing wasteful paper use from the legal signature process. LS allows you to scan or import documents and collect signatures directly from your mobile device.

Overtime paperless signature services will become the standard, HelloSign is helping to spearhead that change.

Innovation Asset Group

Innovation Asset Group founded in 2002 is the developer of Decipher, a cloud-based intellectual property management tool. Decipher caters to businesses large and small, allowing them to manage all IP assets in one spot and save money by avoiding costly lawyer fees.

Intelligize

Intelligize was founded in 2007, then acquired by LexisNexis in 2016. The company provides an SEC disclosure and document creation tool that helps businesses, law firms, and non-profit organizations remain SEC compliant. Their patent-pending process reformats and indexes content at the clause level which allows users to review both qualitative and quantitative analysis of information contained in the EDGAR database.

jEugene

jEugene, another Y Combinator alumni, is a legal review, drafting and proofreading tool that saves lawyers and paralegals countless hours of review and allows them to focus on the important stuff, winning cases. It’s essentially Grammarly for lawyers and is quickly becoming an integral part of every attorney and law firm’s toolbox.

Judicata

Judicata was founded in 2012 and is well on their way to becoming the Google of legal research. They combine specialized case law parsing with algorithmically assisted human review to transform unstructured case files and court opinions into useable datasets.   

Judicata allows a single lawyer to perform legal research as efficiently as an entire team team of people.  

JustLegal

JustLegal(originally Lawbooth) was founded in 2015 and rebranded in 2017. The company is essentially a lawyer search engine. Users search for an attorney based on practice area, corporate, traffic, criminal, etc., and their location. Alternatively, they offer a lawyer matching service for an additional fee.

kCura

You can’t make a list about disruptive legal companies without mentioning kCura . Another one of the older companies on the list, kCura was founded in 2001 and since then has gone on to win more awards than I care to list and become a leader in eDiscovery. Their Relativity platform is used by more than 110,000 people across the globe including the U.S. Department of Justice and an impressive 195 of the AM Law 200.

Relativity truly is the eDiscovery platform others are measured by.

Kuaifawu

Much like Farewill, although Kuaifawu doesn’t service the US, they’ve made too big of an impact in the legal industry to leave off this list. Kuaifawu(meaning fast legal service) was founded in 2014 and is China’s leading on-demand corporate legal service. The bulk of KU’s clients are in the IT sector, but they’re gradually expanding into other industries.

LawAdvisor

LawAdvisor was founded in 2015 with the intent of making it easier for businesses and consumers alike to connect with top-quality lawyers. The company offers legal advice and a host of cloud-based tools to help lawyers and firms run their business. They’re quickly becoming a one-stop-shop for your legal needs.

LawCanvas

LawCanvas is a Singapore-based automated contract creation platform founded in 2013. Unlike the other contract creation platforms on this list, LawCanvas also provides lawyer matching, company registration, will creation, and tax services. The company has a strong focus on assisting other startups in meeting their legal needs without breaking the bank.

LawGeex

Lawgeex founded in 2014 is an Israel-based legal tech company that offers a highly advanced contract review platform. Their AI platform combines machine-learning algorithms with text analytics to provide in-depth contract reviews much faster than traditional lawyers and at a far lower cost.

Lawline

Lawline has possibly the most interesting history of any business on this list. The company founded in 1983 as a TV show of the same name that offered insightful programming about the legal industry. During the early 2000s, Lawling transformed into a digital CLE solution, among the first of its kind. Today, Lawline is an industry leader in CLE, producing hundreds of new courses every year while helping tens of thousands of legal professionals to further their education and remain MCLE compliant.

LawPath

LawPath is an Australian company founded in 2013. They offer a unique service that allows businesses to get 30 minutes of legal advice for just $30. In the event an issue can’t be solved in 30 minutes, they offer a 10-20% discount with a variety of top corporate lawyers. According to the website, their clients have saved over $6 million at this point and the number grows daily.

Here’s hoping they make their way over to the US as time goes on.

LawTrades

Lawtrades was founded in 2014 and is kind of like Fiverr for the legal world, acting as a middleman between lawyers and clients. Users contact a project manager via online chat(now including Facebook messenger) and describe the work they need done then the project manager connects them with the right lawyer.

In the smartphone age people want to connect with the services they need immediately at any hour of the day, which is exactly what Lawtrades offers.

Lawdingo

Lawdingo is very similar to Lawtrades, but with a greater focus on paralegals. Like LT, they offer consultations through Facebook messenger or over the phone and without having to drive anywhere, talk to a secretary, or pay a retainer. The company was founded in 2012 and is battling it out to become the top place to find a lawyer online.

Legal Raasta

Legal Raasta is India’s legal technology platform. They cater to both large and small businesses and cover all your legal needs from registering your business to filing your taxes. The company started in 2015 and has been steadily growing and improving its service ever since.

LegalSifter

LegalSifter was founded in 2013 and has completely changed the way we review legal contracts. Their ContractSifter is a deep-learning AI platform that reads complex contracts in a matter of moments and identifies any loopholes and hidden items you may have missed. While the program is easy enough to use on its own, they also offer the ContractSifter Service which combines their AI unit with human review to break down your contract and present it in a fashion that’s simple to understand.

Legalist

Any lawyer will tell you, searching through records across multiple jurisdictions can be a lot like looking for a needle… in multiple piles of bigger needles. Each county, state, and country will have its own disconnected legal database. Trying to build a cohesive case out of the disjointed case files can be a real hassle and requires a lot of time and effort. Legalist(another Y Combinator alumni) solves that issue by aggregating all the data from those regional databases into one easy-to-search platform.

It’s Legalist’s goal to become the Google of the legal world, similar to Judicata. Only time will tell who comes out on top.

Legalzoom

One of the biggest consumer complaints in the legal industry has always been the uncertainty surrounding the final cost. Legalzoom removes that uncertainty by offering legal advice for a flat fee. Users start by filling out a questionnaire and are given an exact quote for their project, the price you see is the price you pay.

Legistify

Legistify is a digital legal facilitation platform that was founded in 2014 with the sole intent of disrupting the legal industry in the US and increasing its transparency. The company offers a curated lawyer marketplace, legal agreement drafting and review, as well as free legal advice for basic questions. The platform has quickly become the ideal first stop for your legal needs.

Lex Machina

Lex Machina(founded in 2009) is the third LexisNexis company on this list. Lex Machina provides a legal analytics platform which helps businesses, lawyers, firms, and consultants to structure intellectual property litigation data in a useable manner. Their incredibly advanced natural language processing algorithms were developed at Stanford University and have cemented LM’s place as a leader in their field.

LexisNexis

LexisNexis has it’s hands in so many legal platforms you could make a list solely featuring their tech. It’s the parent company of 4 other entries on this list. The oldest company on our list founded in 1973 also provides workflow solutions to the risk management, corporate, accounting, government, and academic markets.

LexisNexis is doing everything in their power to disrupt the legal industry and just about every other industry along with it. .

Lexoo

UK-based Lexoo is a legal marketplace that was founded in 2014. Their similar to Lawtrades(or Fiverr) but the process goes in reverse. Instead of the lawyer offering their service, the consumer makes an ad describing the service they need and Lexoo offers the job to a list of suitable lawyers who provide a free quote. Lexoo can also be compared to Yelp in that all lawyers come with customer reviews, which is an increasingly important part of all consumer decisions.

Lighthouse eDiscovery

Lighthouse eDiscovery founded in 1995 is one of the original eDiscovery platforms. Now, I know you’re probably wondering, if they’re that old are they really still causing disruption? The short answer – yes. Just this May Lighthouse merged with Discoveria and are poised to become the only name in eDiscovery that matters. Their new platform, Lighthouse Spectra combines “the processing power of Nuix, the document review capabilities of Relativity, the imaging finesse of Ipro” and integrates seamlessly with Office 365.

As many people in the legal tech industry have pointed out, Spectra is the future of eDiscovery

Logikcull

Logikcull(founded in 2004) is a cloud-based legal intelligence platform that combines eDiscovery with automated database management. Their platform was designed to work with all the top legal database services including Relativity and Concordance. The automated platform acts as a data custodian, extracting metadata and scanning for viruses automatically. It handles the mundane tasks so lawyers can focus on the complicated stuff.

Luminance

Luminance was launched in 2003 and while it’s not the only AI powered legal document review platform on this list, it is arguably the most well-rounded. While other companies mentioned focus specifically on contract law, due-diligence, or compliance, Luminance handles it all. Their machine-learning AI was developed by the University of Cambridge. It reads and understands complex legal documents the same way humans do, but at speeds humans could never hope to achieve.

Luminance is tailored to law firms and allows a even a single lawyer to operate as efficiently as a large team.

Manzama

Manzama wasn’t designed specifically for the legal industry, but has been so readily adopted by the industry that it would be wrong to leave them off this list. Their social monitoring platform analyzes news, social media, blogs, and every other relevant webpage to provide unique insights into a company that are used to strengthen client relationships and generate new business.

MetaJure

MetaJure was founded in 2007 and is the creator of Illuminate, an automated document management system. When your lawyer has to spend time searching through their email and seperate document management systems, they’re spending time that would be better used for actually working on your case. MetaJure solves that problem by collecting a law firm’s case files, emails, etc., and organizing them in an easily searchable database that can even be accessed from mobile devices.

Mighty Group

Mighty Group(founded in 2012) provides a DMS similar to MetaJure, but with a focus on both legal and medical funders. Their platform offers end-to-end workflow tools and an easy to read dashboard that helps funders keep track of their investments and focus on growing new business.

Modus eDiscovery

Modus offers a combination eDiscovery and DMS service and caters to large organizations and mom-and-pop shops alike. The company founded in 2008 with the goal of shaking up the bloated eDiscovery market. Their platform helps organizations to leverage critical intelligence to optimize their business. Unlike their competitors who rely heavily on AI, Modus works with a managed approach that relies on the human touch.

NextLaw Labs

Few companies on this list have done or are doing more to further legal technology than NextLaw Labs. The company, backed by Dentons law firm, has invested in a slew of legal tech companies over the past few years(including a few on this list).

As I mentioned at the beginning, the legal industry has been incredibly slow to adopt new tech. NextLaw Labs has made it their personal mission to accelerate that progress.

New Media Legal Publishing

New Media Legal Publishing founded in 2008 provides continued legal education materials to law firms. NMLP offers custom CLE materials including brochures, case studies, and professional videos, but their flagship is the 5 Simple Rules: On-line Depo Prep Training System. 5 Simple Rules is a 42 minute video course that prepares witnesses to take the stand. It’s been used by such giants as Fox and CBS.

NMLP is an industry leader in CLE with clients across the globe.

Notarize

Notarize is a remote electronic notary service founded in 2015 that services all 50 states. What really sets Notarize apart from traditional notaries isn’t just the convenience of notarizing from home though, it’s the 24/7 availability that can’t be found anywhere else. In time Notarize and similar services should come to replace traditional notaries altogether.

NotaryCam

NotaryCam is the original remote notary service. The company was founded in 2012 and unlike Notarize, it connects you with a traditional notary via video chat. So you’re probably wondering, if NotaryCam is so similar to Notarize but with limited availability, why even mention it?

The key difference between the two notary services is that while Notarize is automated and available 24/7, NotaryCam services virtually every country across the globe.

Nventi

Nventi founded in 2014 is a technology commercialization platform. The company helps startups, corporations, universities, and governments to acquire, sell, or license technology with ease. The Nventi platform uses powerful data analytics algorithms to analyze both structured and unstructured data to identify trends and optimize your decision making process.

Their goal is to simplify your transfer workflow and help you increase your company’s revenue.

Page Vault

While the internet and social media has presented the legal industry with a whole new avenue to acquire evidence from, getting that evidence through a secure chain of custody hasn’t always been easy. That’s where Page Vault comes in. Page Vault was founded in 2013 and allows lawyers to capture any web page and immediately enter it into a proper chain of custody. As an added bonus it converts those pages into a handy PDF file for easy review and sharing.

Peppermint Technology

Another UK entry on this list, Peppermint Technology(founded in 2010) is the creator of Peppermint CX, a full-featured cloud-based legal suite. The PCX platform combines practice management, case and matter management, CRM, knowledge management, and collaboration tools in one place. It truly is a one-stop-shop for the UK attorney’s legal tech needs.

PracticePanther

PracticePanther is an easy-to-use, cost-effective practice management software for lawyers running solo practices or small to mid-sized firms. The platform launched in 2012 with a real focus on smaller practices, unlike the majority of its competitors. The platform is mobile-ready, combines both case and practice management, features military-grade encryption, and yet is still inexpensive enough to be used by entry-level lawyers and paralegals.

Pramata

Pramata founded in 2005 and offers a cloud-based customer digitization platform. They aide B2B enterprises in analyzing their customer databases to identify vital information that can lead to additional revenue streams while simultaneously reducing leakage and compliance risk. Pramata’s impressive client list includes such industry giants as Comcast and HP Enterprise.

Premonition

Premonition launched in 2014 and is one of my absolute favorite companies on this list, also possibly the most unique entry. Their Premonition Analytics AI unit mines big data to determine which lawyers win the most with which judges. While judges are supposed to be completely unbiased and judge a case based on its merit, not its attorney, they’re still human- to put it simply, some lawyers just win more with certain judges. PA analyzes decades of cases to reach its conclusions and is updated in realtime.

This incredibly unique tool has been rapidly adopted by law firms, law enforcement, risk managers, and lobbyists across the globe.

Quimbee

I try to refrain from directly copying a company’s tagline when writing these articles, but sometimes they just hit the nail on the head. “Quimbee is a company hell-bent on one thing: helping you get an “A” in every course you take in law school.” Quimbee founded in 2007 and since then has gone on to help more than 90,000 law students ace their courses. Their courses run the gamut of legal fields and are some of the most well-respected in the industry.

Quimbee celebrates its 10th birthday this year and is causing just as much disruption now as the day it began.

ROSS Intelligence

If I had to pick the one tool on this list that will have the greatest impact on the legal industry in the years to come, it would be ROSS Intelligence. ROSS(which surprisingly doesn’t stand for anything) is based on IBM’s industry leading artificial intelligence API, Watson. The unit isn’t just a search engine or text scanner however, it is the world’s first virtual lawyer. The small Canadian company(which will cater to the US) was founded in 2014 and launched ROSS two years later in 2016.

According to the SPU, 80% of Americans are unable to afford their legal fees which causes many to go without adequate legal representation, ROSS has the power to change that

Ravel Law

Ravel Law was founded in 2012 and is the fourth LexisNexis company on this list. Their software suite provides an extremely in-depth set of legal research tools. I was going to explain just how in-depth the info Ravel Law provides is, but, a quote in the Wall Street Journal by Bartlit Beck’s Eric Olson says it all. “While using Ravel, I learned a judge made it clear she does not like sports analogies. I definitely would never use ‘moving the goalpost’ in front of her.”

It may sound a bit silly on the surface, but having that detailed picture of a judge before you appear before them can be the difference in winning or losing a case.

Road to Status

Road to Status is a convenient, secure and extremely affordable US immigration platform. The company was founded in 2015 with a mission to reshape the broken US immigration system – and they’re doing a pretty good job. RTS is a “do-it-yourself” solution to immigration paperwork that helps reduce the heavy financial burden on those who wish to get their piece of the American dream. However, lawyer review is available at an additional fee for people who want to be positive they get it all right the first time.

Rocket Lawyer

Rocket Lawyer launched in 2008 with the single goal of making legal services more affordable and is a direct competitor of LegalZoom. They offer automated contract creation, flat-rate answers to legal questions, and one of the easiest incorporation services in the US. The company is backed by Google which speaks to its merit and has grown in customer base and revenue every year since its creation.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the legal industry has been in dire need of a shakeup for decades, Rocket Lawyer is one of the key players in causing that necessary disruption.

Seal Software

Seal Software(founded in 2010) provides a contract discovery and analysis platform that provides dynamic insights into an organization’s contractual obligations. The software automatically scours a company’s database to find all contracts and break them down into an easy-to-understand format then organizes them in one place. That’s not what makes Seal special though.

What sets Seal apart is the level of insight it can provide into your contracts. Seal goes beyond the standard clause definitions using natural language processing to identify potential new revenue streams, cost-saving measures, and hidden costs within contracts. It’s one of the most robust contract review platforms available.

Shake

Shake was founded in 2012 and acquired by LegalShield in 2015, but they still deserve their own spot on this list. The Shake platform is a mobile agreement application and lends its name to the original agreement platform, the handshake. The application allows you to create, sign, and send legally binding agreements in seconds from your computer or mobile device. Users simply answer a few questions, provide proof of identity, and click send, it’s that simple.

Signaturit

Signaturit is a streamlined eSignature and document management solution founded in 2013, that hails from Barcelona, Spain, but caters to a global customer base. The Signaturit platform allows users to sign, send, and store any legal document to and from just about anywhere in the world. They meet both the EU’s 910/2014 regulation and the US E-SIGN act.

Signaturit isn’t the most complex or fully featured tool on this list, but by focusing all their efforts on that one area, they’ve come to do it better than virtually anyone else.

Swiftcourt

Swiftcourt is an automated sales contract platform founded in 2013 and based out of Sweden. Unlike the other automated contract providers on this list, Swiftcourt focuses solely on sales contracts. They offer consumer and business contract creation services with an integrated eSignature tool, but that’s not what sets them apart. What really makes Swiftcourt stand out from the competition is their dispute resolution service, which few other company’s offer.

Text IQ

TextIQ is an eDiscovery platform like the others mentioned on this list, but, that would be where the similarities end. The company founded in 2014 with the intention of solving a very specific legal discovery problem. During the discovery process, there are certain privileged documents that just don’t need to be shared. Their AI platform pairs natural language processing with machine learning algorithm to identify those sensitive, reputationally damaging documents that often times are overlooked by analysts.

As TechIQ’s CEO, Apoorv Agarwal put it, one mistake in the discovery litigation can irreparably damage a company’s reputation and lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in sanctions. He compares their platform’s mission to finding a needle in a haystack, an extremely “high-stakes needle”.

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters, the company behind Reuters news is one of the largest investors in legal innovation. They offer a host of legal tech solutions for lawyers and law firms, from practice management to research and even CLE. The Thomson Corporation came together in Toronto in 1989 and would go on to become Thomson Reuters in 2008 following the purchase of British-based Reuters Group.

Total Attorneys

Total Attorneys(founded in 2002) is a member of the Martindale-Nolo legal marketing network. The company provides a host of marketing tools specifically tailored to the legal industry. As I’ve mentioned before, for many years legal marketing was generally reserved to a specific locale. Total Attorneys solves that issue with its network of top-ranking legal websites and helps lawyers and firms reach a much broader audience

TrademarkNow

Trademark research has always been a frustratingly slow process that left people waiting for days to get results, then had them waste countless hours sifting through completely irrelevant results. TrademarkNow combines AI with a constantly updated global trademark database to offer relevant search results in seconds. It allows users to rapidly identify potential conflicts and saves them countless hours and dollars.

TurboPatent

TurboPatent is a tool for law firms and patent professionals that automates the mundane tasks of document formatting, preparation, and review. The company founded in 2008 and their TurboPatent Machine has continuously improved since. Once looked at as a convenience, TP is quickly becoming a necessity in the patent industry as it allows professionals to double their output.

UpCounsel

UpCounsel founded in 2012 and is the American equivalent of(and older than) the UKs Lexoo. Businesses and consumers alike post their job request and UpCounsel’s “army of lawyers” place their bid. The company has enjoyed exponential growth since its founding and as they put it, “If we were a law firm, we would be the fastest growing law firm in history. Our network of attorneys already makes up the largest virtual law firm in the world.”

Veritext

Veritext is one of the oldest companies on this list, founded in 1997, but as I’m sure you’ve already realized, they’re here for a reason. Veritext caused huge disruption in the legal industry when it founded and has become the industry leader in deposition and litigation services. The company provides a host of services too long to list, but it’s their newest service we’ll be focusing on.

Veritext unveiled there SaaS platform, Lawstudio in 2015 and it immediately set a new standard for legal exhibit preparation. Think of it as the Adobe Creative Suite of the legal world.

vLex

vLex is another “oldy but goody” founded in 1998 and the second entry from Barcelona. The company provides a legal research platform that initially catered specifically to Spain and Latin America. Today, the vLex database contains over 50 million documents and covers over 130 countries. Their clients include law firms, government agencies, and schools in over 40 countries.

VakilSearch

VakilSearch is India’s premier online corporate legal solutions provider. Founded in 2010, VS offers business and tax registration, trademark and patent management, legal documentation, and mandatory compliance services. It’s hands down the easiest way for foreign startups to get setup in India.

vTestify

vTestify founded in 2015 is the premier source of virtual testimony services. Their platform can record testimony from anywhere in the world and saves lawyers costly travel fees. In addition to the recording, vTestify offers one-click transcription and the ability to stream the testimony in real time so other people can watch or listen in.

VT was accepted into the Duke Law Tech Lab this year and we’re all expecting big things from the company in the years to come.

Wevorce

Wevorce was founded in 2012 with the goal of turning the drawn-out combative divorce process into a quick and collaborative one. Their self-guided divorce solution pairs the divorcees with a single lawyer and a counselor instead of two opposing lawyers who are more interested in making the most off the divorce than reaching an amicable resolution. The process costs a fraction of traditional lawyer fees and is usually settled in as little as 30 days.

Wevorce is completely changing the way we view and handle divorce proceedings for the better.

Willing

Willing is an automated will creation service similar to Farewill, but with a couple added features. Like Farewill it allows users to create a will quickly and at a fraction of the cost of lawyer’s fees. Their most basic package, the will and nothing more, is actually available for free. What really sets Willing apart from FW(besides servicing the US) is the ability to create a home transfer deed, power of attorney, and probate documents.

While at the moment Willing is generally used by those of us who can’t afford a lawyer, over time it will likely come to replace lawyer’s in this field altogether.

Wusong Technology

Although Wusong Technology strictly serves in China, it wouldn’t be right to mention Kuaifawu without adding Wusong to the  list. WS is KU’s direct competition, offering a full suite of legal technology tools. Although Wusong markets itself as the No Dispute Network, there will be a major dispute over which one of these legal tech companies comes to dominate the massive Chinese market.

Is there a disruptive legal company that should be on this list? Do you have experience with one of the companies above? If so, let us know in the comments below. I can’t wait to hear from you.