UK legaltech start-up gets £7.5m boost

The company gives in-house legal teams complete visibility of their legal spend

UK legaltech start-up gets £7.5m boost

A legaltech start-up based in the UK has raised £7.5m to help it expand, particularly in the US market.

The fundraising round for Apperio was led by European venture capital firm Draper Esprit and supported existing investors Notion, IQ Capital, and several angels.

Nicholas d’Adhemar, who founded the company in 2013, said that companies typically spend between 1% and 2% of annual revenues on legal fees.

“The ability to monitor spend and have access to fee data and analytics is at worst non-existent, at best manual,” he said. “With only 13% of legal departments describing their spend management approach as ‘optimised’ and 25% of legal departments not using any legal technology at all, there is a huge opportunity to provide clarity to General Counsels and gather accurate, real-time insights that enable better decision making and help reduce legal expenditure.”

The cloud-based Apperio platform gives companies and their in-house legal teams complete visibility of their legal spend, allowing for effective management of budgets and demonstration of value. Through a dashboard, users can track bills and unbilled hours in real time, run analytics, and monitor law firm performance.

According to the start-up, it has active data feeds covering almost 80% of the UK legal market and eight of the top 10 US firms. It is growing its coverage for the rest of the world.

Apperio will use the funds to grow in all areas, particularly in the commercial and customer success organisations.