Gresham House Ventures has invested £3.5m into leading legal technology firm Clarilis to aid its ongoing growth and international expansion.
The £3.5m investment, made on behalf of the Baronsmead VCTs, constitutes just over half of the £6m investment round completed on 31 July 2020, and is designed to assist in the company’s continued growth internationally and fund its sales, marketing and product development functions.
Clarilis is a leading provider of automated drafting technology. The CLARILIS™ platform was designed from the ground up to automate complex suites of precedents, such as Share Purchase and Facility Agreement suites with many ancillaries, many parties and complex underlying deal structures.
The CLARILIS™ platform saves significant amounts of lawyer time whilst ensuring that law firms and in-house legal departments draft consistently high-quality documentation. This creates time for solicitors to focus on what they do best – providing bespoke advice to clients and handling non-standard aspects of transactions.
Clarilis was co-founded by brothers James Quinn, a former solicitor, and Kevin Quinn, the technical architect of the CLARILIS™ platform and former lead developer. Since launching to the market in 2015, Clarilis has experienced consistently strong growth. The business now boasts an impressive blue-chip client base with an exceptionally high level of customer satisfaction.
Henry Alty, Investment Director said:
“We have spent a long time looking at automation within professional and financial services. While the legal world has arguably been a late adopter of technology, firms are realising that automation is essential to driving both cost efficiency and resilience across distributed workforces.
In Clarilis we have found an ambitious business with a market-leading solution and exceptional customer satisfaction as a result of its fully managed service. It exemplifies the type of technology-driven and scalable business model that our investment team look for. We’ve been impressed by the impact that Clarilis has already had in the market and as the business expands, particularly into the South East Asian market, we are excited to be bringing our experience to bear and to help facilitate its growth.”
James Quinn, co-founder and CEO of Clarilis added:
“We are delighted that Gresham House has chosen to invest in Clarilis alongside our current investors Mercia Asset Management. Gresham House were the clear choice here given Henry Alty and James Hendry’s in-depth knowledge of the LegalTech space and excellent insight. The Gresham House team also share our vision for the development of the Clarilis platform going forward.
This investment will provide the resources required to bring significant enhancements to our platform and to further scale the Clarilis team both in the UK and abroad.
The uniqueness of Clarilis’ intelligent drafting platform and managed service is resonating with organisations globally – particularly as current market conditions highlight the importance of technology that can provide a strategic advantage.”
Notes
Due Diligence Providers on the deal included:
- Commercial: Earlsferry Advisory & Meridian West
- Sales: Sales Forensics
- Organisation: Confidas-People
- Financial: Andrew Tonks
- Technology: X88
- Legal: Shoosmiths
About Clarilis
Clarilis is a market leading drafting automation platform and the largest team of automation specialists in the UK. Designed for law firms and in-house legal teams, the CLARILIS™ platform saves a significant amount of time in producing first drafts of all forms of legal documentation.
Clarilis is particularly known for drafting complex suites of legal documents. Time to real value is accelerated by Clarilis’ results-focussed methodology, through the combination of the intelligent drafting platform and lawyer-led customer team – drafting automation is delivered on time, for a fixed fee with a solid ROI.
Clarilis works with leading law firms and organisations such as Addleshaw Goddard, GoCompare, Gowling WLG, Herbert Smith Freehills, National Grid, Slaughter and May, TLT and Travers Smith.
For further information please contact:
Alex Hogan
KL Communications
alex@kl-communications.com
+44 (0) 20 3995 6699
