New Model Law Firm Arceus Raises $17m

It’s raining new model law firms! And here is Arceus, which launched this year and has just announced a $17 million fundraise led by Greycroft.

And yep, it’s an MSO. And yep, it ‘combines licensed attorneys with AI agents and proprietary software to deliver fast legal services’.

And also yep, it focuses on ‘commercial legal work, reviewing, drafting and negotiating contracts at a flat price’, often for startups and scale-ups.

Plus, it says that ‘standard reviews are guaranteed within eight hours or the review is free’ – which is nice.

And also, as with many others now, they’ve built some of their own software. In this case it’s a proprietary operating system, CounselOS.

They said that this gives ‘Arceus attorneys context on a company’s business, preferences, agreements, prior decisions and negotiation history. It connects to the platforms where companies already work, including HubSpot, Salesforce, Gmail and Slack, to gather context, identify issues and route each matter to the right attorney’.

Arceus’s San Francisco-based Founder and CEO, Mac Liu, commented:  ‘I went through multiple law firms and kept running into the same problems with missed deadlines, constant back-and-forth and bills that came in higher than expected. Legal became one of the most frustrating parts of the business.‘

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‘The billable-hour model just didn’t make sense to me because firms are incentivized to take longer,’ he added.

‘We started Arceus because we believe every business deserves a better law firm that always puts the client first and sets a new standard for speed, responsiveness, transparency and service.’

And Mark Terbeek, Partner at Greycroft, concluded: ‘Most of the legal AI market is focused on selling better software to existing law firms. We believe Arceus is taking on a much bigger opportunity by rebuilding the law firm itself. Its flat-fee model and focus on significantly faster turnaround times are designed to meet the needs of fast-moving companies.’

Is this is a big deal?

Well, new model law firms are appearing so frequently now they’re almost out-doing the legal AI companies in terms of their cadence – and that’s quite something.

In this case, what would have seemed like a very unusual format is today almost the ‘state of the art’ for NewMods, e.g. MSO, speed of work, flat fees, they carry the risk, AI and good lawyers and more.

It’s hard to believe that in the space of about nine months, this format has become ‘normal’ for an ever-growing number of law firms in the US, UK and now Europe. And it should be underlined: they are law firms – just with a novel structure and a focus on making AI do as much as it can.

What makes Arceus stand out from some peers is that they’ve raised $17m so early. Other NewMods have also raised, but not that many have raised this much at the start.

Congratulations and AL looks forward to seeing this new model’s growth amid its many peers.

More about Arceus here.

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Legal Innovators UK – Nov 4 and 5 / Legal Innovators New York – Nov 17 and 18

Cosmonauts have now opened Express Registration for Legal Innovators UK and New York. This means that if you are at a law firm or at an inhouse legal team you can now zoom directly to your tickets – which are complimentary as long as you qualify.

For London – Nov 4 and 5, at the Minster Building, see here:

And, for New York – Nov 17 and 18 – Midtown, please see here: