DraftWise Raises $20M to Bring AI-Powered Drafting & Negotiating Software to Legal Teams

THE DETAILS

Each day, lawyers spend hours drafting and negotiating contracts. This is not only a huge use of time and resources, but any small human errors can have outsized operational and financial costs. Despite this, traditionally, lawyers have been slow to adopt technology that could make the process more efficient.

DraftWise is changing all of this. Already recognized as an essential tool by top law firms across North America, Europe, and Australia, its contract intelligence platform allows lawyers to draft and review contracts faster, more efficiently, and with greater accuracy.

DraftWise’s customers, which include thousands of lawyers at Vault 10, AM Law 100, Magic Circle, and Seven Sisters firms, use the platform every day to access historical and institutional knowledge when drafting contracts and iterating during negotiations. With instant access to decades of deal history, market trends, and client and counterparty-favored terms, lawyers are able to make better-informed, faster decisions.

“Contracts are the lifeblood of the legal profession, yet their potential has been constrained by the risk of human error and limited access to data at the time of drafting," explains James Ding, DraftWise’s co-founder. "Our technology not only streamlines these processes, but it arms the lawyer with their firm's best language and institutional data, elevating the quality of work product and allowing lawyers to focus on what they do best - advocating for their clients."

DraftWise enables associates to easily and securely access their firm’s cumulative knowledge and data directly in the documents they’re working on. By plugging into Microsoft Word and Outlook – the primary working interfaces of lawyers – DraftWise has created a solution that speaks directly to the industry.

"We've piloted several generative AI solutions and Draftwise really stands out,” says Wendy Curtis, Chief Innovation Officer at Orrick. "The tools saves our deal teams hundreds of hours by enabling them to tap data and spot trends with incredible speed and accuracy. Our lawyers give it high marks for value and ease of use, and it’s quickly become a great use case for genAI technology in our practice."

The platform is a result of a pairing between world-class engineering talent from co-founders James Ding and Emre Ozen (both ex-Palantir engineering leaders), and industry expertise from co-founder Ozan Yalti, a Stanford Law graduate who has practiced at top global firms like Clifford Chance.

With its $20 million in Series A financing led by Index Ventures, DraftWise will continue to build on its existing engineering, product, and customer expertise, along with investing in expanding the company’s reach.

"The DraftWise team has the perfect complement of AI expertise, legal experience, and customer obsession that are necessary to build a tool that will be widely adopted and used by lawyers in their day-to-day tasks,” adds Martin Mignot, Partner at Index Ventures. “The feedback we heard from their early customers has been outstanding and we are excited to partner with them to help them reach out to more customers and continue to expand their product into a full-fledged intelligence platform used across the legal industry."