By Sodeinde Temidayo David
Nigerian-led legal technology startup, Definely, has secured $3 million in a funding round led by Microsoft’s venture fund, M12, and supported by CRE Venture Capital.
This recent funding brings the startup’s total funding to $4.7 million following a seed round in September 2020.
The legal tech company said it will use the fresh capital to accelerate its product development, expand its world-class team, and drive further expansion into markets beyond the United Kingdom (UK).
Founded by Mr Nnamdi Emelifeonwu and Mr Feargus Macdaeid in 2017, Definely is a London-based legal tech that employs Artificial Intelligence (AI) to simplify the drafting, reading and understanding of contracts.
The startup takes away all the stress lawyers had to go through when sifting through endless pages of both soft and hard copies of legal documents to find and make sense of the major information they need.
It is no longer news that leveraging technology is a sure means of improving productivity, so as Definely whose business is simply to help law firms leverage tech.
The firm has an intuitive software that optimises the contract drafting and reviewing process for lawyers, enabling them to easily access and edit key information with a single click from wherever they are in their document.
The startup boasts of a 500 per cent year-over-year growth rate in user base. Some of its users include world’s largest law firms, financial institutions and multinational corporations including Deloitte, Allen & Overy and Dentons.
According to the organisation, technology use will be a major standard for organisations looking to hire law firms.
The company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr Nnamdi Emelifeonwuw, stressed that legal tech is no longer a fledgling sector as it is quickly becoming an integral part of how today’s legal practitioners work.
“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,” he said.
Definely has accumulated considerable traction along the way, as the startup was recognised as one of the 10 most exciting early stage scaleups in the UK during the 2021 Tech Nation Rising Stars competition
The firm was also one of six Nigerian-led startups selected for the inaugural Google for Startups £2 million funds for Black Founders in Europe. Recently, the startup won the Most Promising Mature Business award during KPMG’s Black Entrepreneurs’ Awards.
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