Blackletter, a Toronto- and New York City-based law firm built on its own AI legaltech platform, has raised $6 million USD ($8.5 million CAD) in seed funding. The company announced the round on Tuesday and plans to use the money to hire more lawyers and engineers.
The firm was founded by Jonathan Rosenbluth and David Stewart, both former product and engineering leaders at Cohere, together with Avi Brudner, a former chief operating officer at Blue J. It charges outcome-based, fixed fees rather than hourly rates, and says it can deliver quality legal work faster and at lower cost than traditional firms.
Lerer Hippeau, a New York City venture firm, led the round. Seven Stars, Maple VC, Garage Capital and Ripple Ventures also took part. Angel investors include Cohere co-founders Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang and Nick Frosst, TwelveLabs CEO Jae Lee and Adaption CEO Sara Hooker.
Rosenbluth said Blackletter has signed 75 clients since leaving stealth in June. It handles corporate, commercial, financing, merger and acquisition, and employment law work. Clients include TwelveLabs, Fanatics and Toronto-based Ada, which recently agreed to a $600 million CAD merger with US-based Dialpad. Rosenbluth did not say whether Blackletter worked on that deal.
Rosenbluth said the firm builds tools for its own lawyers instead of selling software to other firms, whose lawyers he described as "disincentivized" to use such tools fully. He also rejected the label "AI-native law firm." In his view, it implies cheap and fast work. "Nobody would describe a law firm that uses Microsoft Word as a Microsoft-native law firm," he said.
Rosenbluth said the idea came from his time at Cohere, when it was clear to him that AI should be improving legal services but he did not see that benefit as a client. He said the team expects Blackletter to make top-tier legal services more abundant and push the wider sector to innovate.
