London, England, United Kingdom
I quit my stable law firm job in 2014. It was a hard decision at the time. I wanted to see if I could build a business doing law differently… During my law firm days I always thought that it should be possible to deliver legal services in a dramatically more efficient way. But it felt like the “billable hour” always prevented that. What gets measured, gets improved - and billable hours was always the top metric. For me, it’s one of the biggest reasons why law lags behind other sectors in the impact technology has made to date. So, together with Chris O'Sullivan (he’s an amazing software developer), I started to create legal tech businesses to try to turn things upside down. Our first company was Lexoo. Which wasn't easy - turns out I had a lot to learn! But over the years we raised a number of VC rounds, pivoted the company twice, and ultimately sold to Kalexius. Now Chris and I are running and scaling a leading Legal AI company: DraftPilot (https://draftpilot.ai). DraftPilot enables in-house lawyers and procurement teams to create accurate contract mark-ups in 10 minutes, whilst staying completely in control. All right from MS Word. DraftPilot is used by leading in-house legal teams and ALSPs around the world. Get in touch if you'd like to give it a go!
DraftPilot enables in-house legal teams to deliver contract mark-ups quickly and accurately, so that you get more time back in your day. Time that you can spend on what matters most to you. Before DraftPilot, my co-founder Chris and I had founded Lexoo. At Lexoo, our team of lawyers negotiated thousands upon thousands of vendor contracts, NDAs and SaaS Sales contracts on behalf of our in-house legal team customers. We have deep empathy for the fact that in-house legal teams are almost always stretched. On top of that, the business usually wants the mark-up to be delivered yesterday! We believe that Legal AI can be a force of good. AI can free you up to spend more time on the tricky bits, the human relationships and apply the unique context that only you have. The AI can do the heavy lifting on the standard parts of every contract.
Lexoo is a legal tech and services provider for in-house legal teams. Chris O'Sullivan and I founded Lexoo in 2014. We raised over $6M+ from VCs (Earlybird and Forward Partners) and sold the business to Kalexius in 2024.
I learned a lot at De Brauw. I ended up providing legal advice on a wide range of finance and M&A related matters, including cross-border acquisitions, joint ventures and private equity transactions. Finance deals included a number of whole loan sales, bilateral and syndicated corporate loans, acquisition financings and debt restructurings, as well as a number of derivatives transactions. I learned how to draft and negotiate a lot of contracts such as loan facility agreements, shareholders agreements, cash-pool agreements, share purchase agreements and ISDA agreements. Also provided advice on intellectual property law. (Until August 2011 in the Amsterdam office) Seconded to GDF SUEZ in Brussels in 2010.