Legislate raises $3.6 million as it prepares for international expansion

Legal technology company Legislate announced it has raised $3.6 million in funding as it prepares for international expansion this year.

The round was round led by Parkwalk Advisors, with participation from Oxford Capital and several high-profile angel investors.

The Oxford University-linked startup is building a SaaS platform to enable small businesses and landlords to easily create, sign, and manage contracts.

Legislate’s platform is built on a patented knowledge graph technology which streamlines the contracting process and aggregates contract statistics to quickly unlock valuable insights.

“For scaling companies, keeping track of terms across hundreds or thousands of contracts is a challenge that creeps up on you," said Charles Brecque, Legislate’s founder.

"Searching for basic information like contract start and end dates, or nuances in confidentiality terms across entire databases of contracts is painfully manual, or impossible. Before working with us, we know that some of our customers would spend weeks doing this."

“By allowing companies to create their own ontologies of terms and making them semantically searchable, we enable anyone in that business to search for information in contracts, even if they don’t have a legal background.

"That’s incredibly powerful for scaling companies where business teams need to review terms across hundreds of contracts quickly to understand exposure to risks," he continued.

In 2022 the company announced it had been granted its second US patent for semantic document generation, further enhancing its patented knowledge graph technology – ultimately benefiting Legislate’s customers.

Customers primarily use Legislate for employment, consultancy, internal contracts, and terms of business agreements.

"Legislate has developed a unique solution to simplify contracting for SMEs and mid-market businesses in a way that scales," said Claire Pardo from Parkwalk Advisors.

"We’re confident that they are well-positioned to take a significant portion of the market. Their focus on making contracts machine-readable is particularly impressive and we believe it has the potential to be a game-changer in the industry."

Stephen Hampson, Investment Director at Oxford Capital, added: “We are proud to back Charles and the team in their mission to use tech to revolutionise contract creation and management.

"Investing in Legislate is investing in the future of machine-readable contracts. Their patented Knowledge Graph system sets them apart from other technologies and makes it simple for people without legal training to access contracts created by lawyers and manage them effectively.”