AI contract analysis system Kira has been on a trying journey. Having landed $50m in funding, Hamish McNicol and Thomas Alan assess how much longer that journey could last
Noah Waisberg recently threw a diamond into an audience of more than 1,000 people. It was the annual Legal Geek legal tech conference in London. Public Enemy’s Don’t Believe the Hype blared as he took the stage. Continue reading “Legal tech focus: Is Kira the real deal?”
My dad was born in Kashmir and was in the Pakistani Air Force, posted to Turkey. India and Pakistan were separating and he decided he wouldn’t go back. He moved to the UK and met my mum at night school. She worked in a biscuit factory when I was a kid and was all about, ‘You’re going to do better than this.’
I didn’t start working life as a lawyer. I’m Asian and started in retail – freshly-squeezed orange juice and health food products. My dad wasn’t impressed. He was first generation here and said: ‘This is a fantastic country with great opportunities, I did not come here for you to be another Asian shopkeeper.’ Continue reading “Life during law: Leona Ahmed”
As LB looks at the future of finance, we look at the clientele of the top City finance practice at Clifford Chance in 2017. For more on banking and finance, see ‘Back to the future’
Continue reading “Who Represents Who: The data behind the story”
Simmons & Simmons have been going through a period of growth. For coverage of the firm’s ‘threatened revival’, see LB’s interview with the Simmons’ leadership.
The future is hard to predict in the combustible world of law tech start-ups. But recent big funding rounds for some of the industry’s darlings signal an increasing maturity in the space with Kira, Apperio, Eigen Technologies and Legatics all receiving hefty funding rounds in recent months.
Kira further secured its spot as the leading AI platform for law firms after landing a record $50m of private equity backing from New York-based Insight Venture Partners in September. The investment was the first external backing for the company since its inception, with the machine-learning contract analysis platform now primed for continued growth. Continue reading “Mixing it with the big boys: Law tech upstarts approach adolescence following cash influx”
Lawyers have been speaking for months of a tough environment for international firms in sanction-battered Russia, but no event has been as emblematic as the news in September that two of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld’s top Moscow partners have quit to launch an independent firm.
Heavyweight litigator Ilya Rybalkin and corporate veteran Suren Gortsunyan launched Rybalkin, Gortsunyan & Partners (RGP), bringing across 11 other fee-earners from their former shop – now left with just 18 lawyers in Moscow.
While the US sanction regime bars US firms from supporting Kremlin-linked oligarchs, speaking to Legal Business Gortsunyan said Russian companies were becoming increasingly less comfortable with instructing Western advisers. Continue reading “Akin rainmakers quit to launch Russia independent in further apocalyptic sign for Western firms”
Ignored by much of the global elite until a few years ago, Spain is quickly becoming one of the hottest legal markets in continental Europe, with Latham & Watkins more than doubling its headcount in less than a year while UK challenger firm Fieldfisher delivers on its much anticipated launch.
Fieldfisher managing partner Michael Chissick announced on 25 September that the firm had completed a three-year-long search to combine with 60-lawyer firm JAUSAS. Continue reading “The new El Dorado: Fieldfisher launches in Spain as Latham doubles Madrid team in 12 months”
I was probably the world’s worst children’s entertainer. I needed a Saturday job to earn money but played football on Sunday mornings and rugby on Saturday mornings. A friend had a business that did magic tricks for children’s parties and I could fit the job around the sport. No, I didn’t dress up as a clown. I might have been a bit of a clown, but I didn’t dress up as one! I was the person at whom the children shouted: ‘I know how you’re doing that trick!’
They gave you a Fisher Price magic set. My stage name was Roger because they already had a Michael. I’m amazed you managed to find out about this – I thought it was quite a well-kept secret! Continue reading “Life during law: Mike Francies”
As Barclays conducts its latest panel review we look at which firms advised on the most practice areas (five or more) in 2017 in the UK and Channel Islands. For more on Barclays and its radical overhaul of its adviser relationships, see ‘Point break’ Continue reading “Who Represents Who: The data behind the story”
