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Lawhive, a London, UK-based legaltech company developing an AI-native law platform, raised $60M in Series B funding

Lawhive raises $60m to scale AI-native consumer law firm across the US. UK-founded legaltech business Lawhive has raised $60 million (£47m) in Series B funding as it accelerates its expansion across the US consumer legal market and doubles down on its ai-driven operating model. The round was led by Mitch Rales, co-founder of Danaher Corporation, one of the world's most successful public companies. Existing and new backers participating in the round include TQ Ventures, GV, Balderton Capital, Jigsaw, Anton Levy and LTS. The raise comes less than a year after Lawhive secured $40 million in Series A funding and caps a period of rapid growth for the company. Lawhive has now surpassed $35 million in annualised revenue, having grown sevenfold over the past 12 months, and is operating in 35 US states, with plans to expand nationwide. Founded to tackle inefficiencies in consumer legal services, Lawhive is targeting one of the largest and most fragmented markets in the US. Consumer legal services generate an estimated $200 billion in annual revenue, yet industry research suggests up to $1 trillion in legal needs go unmet each year due to high costs, slow processes and heavy reliance on manual workflows. Everyday legal matters such as family law, landlord and tenant disputes and employment claims remain expensive and unpredictable for consumers, while lawyers are constrained by legacy systems and administrative overheads. Lawhive's response has been to build what it describes as the world's first AI-native consumer law firm, powered by its proprietary AI operating system. The platform automates large parts of the legal workflow, including document drafting, legal research, case management, client onboarding and payments. Its AI paralegal, Lawrence, works alongside lawyers and support teams, enabling cases to be handled more quickly, consistently and at lower cost. The model now supports more than 450 lawyers across the US and UK. Lawhive entered the US market in mid-2025 and has seen rapid adoption, making it the company's fastest-growing region. Alongside its existing Austin base, the business is opening a New York office to support the next phase of growth. Pierre Proner, co-founder and CEO of Lawhive, said the pace of growth reflects the scale of the problem the company is addressing. "Everyday legal matters remain costly and unpredictable for millions of people, while lawyers are held back by manual processes that limit their ability to scale. AI is finally making it possible to deliver consumer legal services with the speed and consistency people expect. Demand in the US has been exceptionally strong, and this funding allows us to build on that momentum." In the UK, Lawhive expanded its footprint last year through the acquisition of Woodstock Legal Services, and the company now plans to replicate its vertically integrated model across the US, where the market is dominated by thousands of small firms lacking modern infrastructure. Investors say Lawhive stands out for combining strong technology with an operating model designed to scale. Mitch Rales said the business was "democratising legal services" by widening access to transparent, high-quality legal support. "We share a long-term mindset and are building Lawhive for the decades ahead," he added. Amy ingham. Amy is a newly qualified journalist specialising in business journalism at Business Matters with responsibility for news content for what is now the UK's largest print and online source of current business news.

Exclusive: Lawhive, a startup using AI to reimagine the general practice law firm, raises $60 million in new venture capital funding. Lawhive, a British startup that wants to use AI to transform the business model of law firms that perform routine legal work for individuals and small businesses, has raised $60 million in new venture capital funding to accelerate its expansion in the U.S. The Series B funding round was led by Mitch Rales, cofounder of Danaher Corporation, the $170 billion science and technology conglomerate. Other investors included TQ Ventures, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Balderton Capital, and Jigsaw. The funding comes less than a year after Lawhive raised a $40 million Series A round. Lawhive is not a pure software company. Instead, it is a legal services firm that employs a network of human lawyers who are assisted by a technology platform Lawhive has built. The company says this enables it to provide legal services more efficiently and at lower cost than a traditional general practice law firm. The company is among a wave of startups employing this new business model. Others include Robin AI, General Legal, Third Chair, and LegalOS. The model is distinct from other AI law startups such as Harvey, which just sell AI systems for lawyers to use. Founded in 2020, Lawhive has built what it calls an AI operating system for consumer law. The company handles routine legal matters including family law, landlord and tenant disputes, property transactions, and consumer rights cases. Its technology automates tasks such as document drafting, legal research, case management, and client intake. It says that about 500 lawyers now work through its platform across three regulated law firms - two in the U.K. and one in Arizona. Democratizing access to legal help. "We're the overnight success that took five years to build," said Pierre Proner, Lawhive's chief executive. The company's annual revenue now exceeds $35 million and has grown seven-fold in the past year, according to Proner. Lawhive is targeting what it says is a large and underserved segment of the legal market - the kind of general legal services that individuals and small businesses need. The company estimates that the consumer legal market in the U.S. generates about $200 billion in revenue annually, but that there is an even larger potential market. "There's a $200 billion existing market, but there's a trillion dollars of unmet need, of people who have serious legal problems every year who can't afford an attorney," Proner said. Rales, who built Danaher into one of the world's most successful industrial companies over four decades, said in a statement that he was drawn to Lawhive's mission of making legal services more accessible. "Lawhive is democratizing legal services," he said. A can't beat 'em, join 'em pivot. Lawhive started out trying to sell automation software to traditional retail law firms, but Proner said many small firms were reluctant to buy. He said lawyers at these firms were skeptical about adopting the technology, partly out of concern that spending less time on cases would make it harder to justify their fees to clients, even though many of these firms already charged fixed fees rather than using a model based on billable hours. So Lawhive pivoted and decided to become a law firm itself, Proner said. He said this allowed Lawhive to "reimagine" the design of the law firm from the ground up, with AI at the heart of how the firm operates both in terms of producing legal work but also doing back office tasks such as invoicing and client onboarding. He says that in many small law firms these tasks account for up to 70% of the firm's costs. He contrasted Lawhive's approach with other legal AI companies that "are effectively designing software around how lawyers in law firms work. We're doing the opposite." Proner said lawyers working through Lawhive earn as much as 2.8 times what they would make at a traditional practice, because they can handle a far greater volume of cases. Consumer lawyers often juggle 80 to 200 clients at a time, and the AI tools allow them to move through that caseload more efficiently. For routine legal work, such as filing an uncontested divorce application, Proner said Lawhive's technology allows for "almost full autonomy," with human lawyers simply reviewing the filings for quality control. While there have been several high profile cases of lawyers been castigated by judges and issued hefty fines for submitting filings containing erroneous case citations due to errors made by AI software, he said that Lawhive has tried to design its AI software to minimize the chances of such mistakes. When the system is uncertain about something, it flags the issue for human review, Proner said. And for more complex disputes that require more judgment calls, the AI plays a more supportive role, he said. After starting in the U.K., Lawhive launched in the U.S. last year and now operates in 35 states, with plans to expand nationwide. The company has offices in Austin, Texas, and is opening a new headquarters in New York. The company plans to use the new funding primarily for U.S. expansion, Proner said. He said the company's ambition is to grow another five- to sevenfold this year. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com