SpotDraft, a legal tech startup founded in 2018, is disrupting the traditional legal field with its innovative AI-powered contract management platform. The startup has recently announced its Series A funding round of $26 million, led by a group of venture capitalists and angel investors, including Premji Invest, Prosus Ventures, 021 Capital, Arkam Ventures, Riverwalk Fund, and 100x Entrepreneur Fund.
Founded by Shashank Bijapur, Madhav Bhagat, and Rohith Salim, the 170-person SpotDraft team has decades of combined experience in the legal field as well as in building world class products at companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Linkedin.
The startup’s intuitive platform uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to automate contract drafting, review, and management. The software can analyze legal documents, identify key clauses, and suggest changes and improvements, significantly reducing the time and costs associated with traditional contract review and drafting. Designed for more than legal teams, SpotDraft’s technology is perfect for sales, marketing, human resources, business operations, and procurement as well.
SpotDraft’s CEO, Shashank Bijapur, a former lawyer, and legal tech enthusiast, recognized the need for such a platform while working at a law firm in New York. “I was tired of spending hours reviewing contracts manually. I knew there had to be a better way, and that’s when the idea for SpotDraft was born,” Bijapur explained in a recent interview.
The startup’s platform has already gained significant traction, with clients ranging from small businesses to large corporations. SpotDraft’s client list includes well-known names such as Samsung, Coca-Cola, and Dell. The platform has been lauded for its user-friendly interface and ability to streamline legal processes. To date, SpotDraft’s Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) system has processed more than 1 million contracts, saving over 1.5 million hours on legal work.
In fact, recent studies suggest legal teams spend upward of five hours per week on repetitive tasks – searching for documents, recreating existing documents, and fielding redundant inquiries from sales, marketing, and business operations teams. That time spent equates to as much as $25,000 per year per lawyer, according to analyses by Gartner and IDC. On average, only 2.3 hours of each workday are spent on legal work, per a survey of almost 3,000 legal professionals across the U.S.
“The volume of work flowing through legal teams can often cause bottlenecks,” said Bijapur. “Apart from dealing with legal work, today’s legal teams are expected to be leaders in everything from business strategy and governance to compliance and risk management. However, they’re often being asked to do all of this with one hand tied behind their backs. We like to think of what we are building as a co-pilot for legal teams – a system that acts as a strategic partner for in-house counsels by taking care of the repetitive tasks and thereby enabling them to focus on higher leverage activities.”
The legal tech industry has been growing rapidly in recent years, with startups such as LawGeex and Kira Systems leading the way. SpotDraft, however, differentiates itself from competitors with its focus on contract management and its ability to integrate with existing legal workflows.
The startup’s latest funding round will be used to further develop its platform and expand both its team and its services. As contracting needs continue to explode, and available legal time shrinks, SpotDraft’s AI-based technology has become the attorney’s best friend. The company specifically designed their platform to do the heavy lifting, while while keeping the legal expertise in place.
