Robert Ambrogi Blog
Legal technology company Filevine announced today it has raised $400 million across two funding rounds over the past 15 months, positioning the Salt Lake City-based company as one of the most well-capitalized players in the legal tech space.
The funding consists of a $150 million round led by Insight Partners completed about 15 months ago, followed by a more recent round of about $260 million co-led by Accel and Halo Fund alongside Insight Partners. Previous investors, including Meritech, Stepstone, Run Ventures, and Album Ventures, also participated in the latest round.
Filevine had previously raised about $226.1 million, including a $108 million Series D round in April 2022 that was, at the time, one of the largest legal tech investments ever.
“This cements Filevine as a category-defining legal technology platform built with AI and fully integrated into the operating system legal teams rely on daily,” the company said in an announcement. “While fragmented tools create silos and provide limited or incorrect insight, Filevine delivers one holistic AI platform giving legal teams the scale, data, and connectivity they need to deliver real business impact.”
The announcement comes just ahead of Filevine’s annual Lex Summit customer conference, which convenes Sept. 29.
‘We Did Not Need the Money’
In an interview with LawSites, Filevine cofounder and CEO Ryan Anderson explained that the company did not initially set out to raise additional capital. “We did not need money,” Anderson said. “But there was a good reason for it in this case.”
The catalyst came from an unexpected source: Ryan Smith, the owner of the Utah Jazz and founder of Qualtrics, who reached out to Anderson in June, following Filevine’s strongest quarter in company history.
Related: On LawNext: Live from Filevine’s LEX Summit: Interviews with Three of Its Leaders.
“Ryan called me and he just said, ‘Hey, I would really like to spend some time with you,’” Anderson recalled, saying that Smith convinced him that Filevine was not “getting its due” as a recognized brand and offered to put together an investment team to help.
Smith, who famously built the “experience management” category at Qualtrics before selling the company to SAP, connected Anderson with Accel partners. “After listening to John Locke over at Accel, who’s the partner that did the deal with us, I got convinced that this was time for an opportunistic raise,” Anderson said.
Focus on AI Talent and Brand Building
Anderson said that the primary use of the new capital will be talent acquisition, particularly in artificial intelligence and machine learning. “The primary thing I think you’ll see us do is try and go out and compete to get the very best talent.”
The company, which currently employs just under 700 people, is specifically targeting AI engineers who traditionally have not been attracted to jobs in legal technology.
“If you are an AI engineer today, what really matters to you is being with a company that believes in an AI-first … approach to how to build products,” Anderson told me. “And those engineers really do key off a little bit on who your investors are and are they investors that have credibility in that.”
The funding also reflects Filevine’s broader ambition to raise its profile beyond the legal technology community. The company recently announced a sponsorship deal with a hockey team, joining Clio as the second legal tech company with such a sponsorship.
“I don’t know that any legal tech tool is going to become a household name, but it’s definitely an initiative of the company to get ready to maybe someday IPO,” Anderson said.
‘Legal Intelligence Operating System’
Filevine positions itself as creating what it calls a “Legal Operating Intelligence System” – a comprehensive platform that integrates case management with AI capabilities. The company serves nearly 6,000 customers and 100,000 legal professionals, primarily in the area of litigation, across law firms, government agencies, and Fortune 500 enterprises.
Anderson argues that Filevine’s advantage lies in having both the operational system containing all case data and the AI capabilities to surface insights from that information.
“It requires an operational system that has all the documents, the data, the deadlines, the notes, the phases of the case, the witnesses, you know, all the information that you would need to run a case. You have to have all that to surface that kind of detail via AI,” he said.
The company is particularly focused on litigation workflows, including what Anderson describes as an end-to-end deposition experience.
“You can schedule a deposition out of Filevine. We can actually host the deposition and then, of course, live in the deposition, as you know, with Depo Copilot, we can surface insights and direction and suggestions to the lawyers as they’re doing the deposition.”
Agentic AI on the Horizon
While Anderson declined to reveal specific details of his product roadmap, he hinted at significant developments in agentic AI workflows that will be announced at the upcoming Lex Summit conference.
“We will announce some agentic workflows at Lex and you’ll be able to see the beginnings of Filevine using an agentic flow to do certain things that we haven’t been able to do in the system yet,” he said.
Anderson envisions a future where lawyers can interact conversationally with their legal operating system: “Draft me the initial set of discovery for this matter and then set a task for Bob to review those and once Bob has reviewed it, send an email to the managing partner for final sign off.”
Increasingly Competitive Landscape
The legal tech market has seen an influx of AI-focused companies over the past two years, particularly targeting litigation workflows where Filevine originally established its niche. In our interview, Anderson acknowledged the increased competition but said he welcomes it.
“I don’t want to cede any of that territory to competing products,” he said. “We think we have built a platform that is uniquely positioned to serve litigators, and that means we can’t sit on our hands and say, ‘You should be here because we have a great SaaS platform.’ It means we need to build the very best AI workflows for litigators as well.”
The company reports over 96% gross retention for Filevine Core, its flagship platform, and net dollar retention over 120%. Users upload more than 20 million pages of documents daily to the platform, according to the company.
Defending the Role of Lawyers
Anderson pushed back against Silicon Valley narratives suggesting AI will replace lawyers entirely. ”
I’ve heard a number of leading lights in the AI space say things like, ‘Well, you know, we’re more interested in workflows that actually take the lawyer completely out of the loop.’ I think that is misguided,” he said.
“When I sit down and I talk with our litigators about how they’re using AI, the amount of craft and skill and intention they have to bring to the AI tool to make it do what they want it to do is enormous,” he continued. “It would take years of skill and dedication to have the judgment to know how to use the AI in the right way.”
Funding Structure and Future Plans
This latest funding was structured as all-equity financing, with a significant portion of it representing new capital.
Beyond talent acquisition, Anderson said the company may pursue additional acquisitions, building on its recent purchase of Parrot, a court reporting and deposition management company.
The funding announcement comes as Filevine prepares for the Lex Summit conference, where the company plans to unveil new AI capabilities and continue building its brand in the broader technology ecosystem.
The funding positions Filevine among the most well-capitalized companies in legal technology, as the sector continues to attract significant investment amid growing adoption of AI tools in legal practice.