Nigerian-led legal tech startup Definely raises £2.2m seed fund led by Microsoft

Nigerian-led legal technology startup, Definely has announced a £2.2 million funding round. The funding round was led by Microsoft’s venture fund, M12, and supported by CRE Venture Capital. This funding brings the startup’s total funding to £3.4m following a seed round in September 2020.

Founded in 2017 by the Nigerian-born Nnamdi Emelifeonwu who currently serves as its CEO and Feargus Macdaeid, Definely is a London-based legaltech that employs Artificial Intelligence (AI) to simplify the drafting, reading and understanding of contracts.

The startup takes away all the stress lawyers had to go through when sifting through endless pages of both soft and hard copies of legal documents to find and make sense of the major information they need.

It is no longer news that leveraging technology is a sure means of improving productivity. The legal field is no different as law firms that fully leveraged technology today continued to outperform their peers in terms of increased profitability and winning new business according to a report by Wolter Kluwers.

Definely’s business is simply to help law firms leverage tech. The startup said it has an intuitive software that optimises the contract drafting and reviewing process for lawyers, thus enabling them to easily access and edit key information with a single click from wherever they are in their document.

The startup boasts a 500% year-over-year growth rate in user base. Some of its users include some of the world’s largest law firms, financial institutions and multinational corporations including Deloitte, Allen & Overy and Dentons.

It also expects its growth rate to increase even more as it envisages an exponential growth in the demand and adoption of legal technology globally. According to the startup, technology use will be a major criterion for organisations looking to hire law firms.

Thus, the legaltech company says it will use this latest funding to “accelerate its product development, expand its world-class team, and drive further expansion into markets beyond the UK.”

Definely Co-founder and CEO, Nnamdi Emelifeonwu said legaltech is no longer a fledgling sector as it is quickly becoming an integral part of how today’s legal practitioners work.

“Legal technology is stepping out of nascency and becoming embedded in how the modern-day lawyer works. Definely not only speeds up the review and drafting process but importantly it allows a lawyer to be more accurate with their output because they never have to leave where they are and lose context when working on a document,” he said.

Definely has amassed considerable traction along the way. The startup was recognised as one of the 10 most exciting early stage scaleups in the UK during the 2021 Tech Nation Rising Stars competition

The startup was also one of 6 Nigerian-led startups selected for the inaugural Google for Startups £2m fund for Black Founders in Europe. And recently, the startup won the ‘Most Promising Mature Business’ award during KPMG’s Black Entrepreneurs’ Awards.