Legal tech company, Henchman, last week revealed that it has closed a £6 million Series A funding round to support continued company growth, and innovation in its platform that automates the search for relevant clauses and definitions when drafting legal contracts. The round is led by Adjacent VC and Acton Capital and joined by the London-based Conviction VC and several business angels (including the Founders of a Belgian success story, Showpad). The funding follows hot on the heels of Henchman’s recent GPT-3 integration and will be used to strengthen its focus on innovation and expand geographically.
Legal professionals rarely start from a blank sheet of paper when drafting contracts or negotiating details with other parties. They usually reference existing documentation, for which they need to sift through countless old contracts or talk to colleagues to find suitable precedents that could be relevant to their case. Henchman solves this problem by automatically centralizing past clauses and definitions from any legal team’s contract database (whether law firm or corporate legal department) and delivering them intelligently within familiar Microsoft Word or Outlook environments.
Henchman helps lawyers and legal professionals to eliminate time consuming tasks and focus on adding value and expertise. “When everyone was still talking about ChatGPT, we already started implementing the technology in Henchman,” says Gilles Mattelin, Founder of Henchman. With the AI feature, lawyers can now use Henchman to enrich contracts with new suggestions, translations or grammatical adaptations.
The founders, Jorn Vanysacker, Gilles Mattelin and Wouter Van Respaille started working on their legal tech solution during the COVID-pandemic. Henchman has been on a remarkable trajectory since its launch in June 2021, experiencing rapid adoption and growth over the past year, achieving 750% revenue growth. Its team has grown from 12 to 35 employees. It has attracted 100 new customers across 15 different countries, including the UK with clients such as Avery Law and Marlborough House Partners.
“Today we have the all-star team, the drive and the entourage to maintain our technological lead in solving a universal problem for the legal profession,” states Jorn Vanysacker, Founder at Henchman. The company intends to use the injection of capital to stay ahead of the competition and enter new markets.
To make that happen, the company brought some new investors on board: Adjacent VC, which previously invested in companies such as BeReal, Revolut and Cowboy, and German Acton Capital, which previously funded Clio and Etsy, are taking the lead in this investment round, with participation from the British Conviction VC and several business angels, including Louis Jonckheere & Pieterjan Bouten (founders Showpad), Felix Van de Maele (founder Collibra) and Bram Couvreur (Partner at U.S.-based law firm Cooley).
“After a few reference calls it became clear that the power of Henchman is how perfectly the product fits into the legal professionals’ existing workflow. It is rare to see a SaaS company win international clients this early in its journey, but the teams’ customer obsession already drove adoption across Europe and in the US. I am excited to team up as we scale to the next level!” says Nico Wittenborn, Founder of Adjacent VC.
Louis Jonckheere, one of the private investors and founder of Showpad, is optimistic: “The legal profession is entering a new age with AI. I’m very bullish about Henchman’s ability to take a leading role in this transformation. They have the team, technology and traction to become a dominant global player.”
For more information about Henchman’s contract drafting and negotiation solution, visit henchman.io
