Lawcadia raises $1.3m in pre-Series A funding round

Legal technology company Lawcadia has received a $1.3 million capital injection to carry out global expansion and product development plans, building on a platform that is already used by all  of Australia's top-tier law firms.

The pre-Series A round involved several private investors and early-stage venture capital firm Artesian, bringing the total capital raised in the past three years to $3.8 million.

Previous investments have come from the Queensland's Business Development Fund and Brisbane-based seed investor ACAC Innovation.

The milestone has been announced shortly after Lawcadia co-founders Warwick Walsh and Sacha Kirk won the legal category at the Brisbane Young Entrepreneur Awards on Friday.

Founded in 2015, Lawcadia was launched to transform the way in-house legal teams manage their law firm engagements including budget, scope and invoicing, with the intention of providing greater transparency, accountability and cost savings.

"We've received great feedback on our platform from users in the market so far, and then it's about creating more of a presence on the ground in those markets," Walsh tells Business News Australia, noting revenue has been doubling on a monthly basis since May. 

One of the big four banks went live with a revamped platform on 1 August, and more recently Lawcadia secured its first New South Wales government department as a client as well as Queensland Rail.

Walsh says having Artesian involved will be a real asset for the business, and the team is already benefiting from the investor's breadth of knowledge and experience in scaling successful tech companies.

"When I look to bring on additional investment and shareholders, one of the main things I am looking for is shareholder alignment," he says.

"Sometimes that means a potential investment can't progress, but I feel that especially for emerging businesses like ours, having everyone aligned and focused on the same goal and outcomes is vital.

Kirk notes there are now 140 law firms on the platform, which has three components: Lawcadia Connect for streamlining the flow of legal requests, Lawcadia Align for storing matters and tasks in one central repository, and Lawcadia Engage for establishing consistent engagement, spend and reporting processes.

After achieving success in such a short space of time at home, the goal now is to take Lawcadia to the world.

"We plan to expand our operations into the Asian market and the UK by the end of 2019. We plan to establish operations in the US and Europe in the next five years," says Kirk.

After winning the Brisbane Young Entrepreneur Award (Legal) on Friday, she says the team are incredibly proud of their progress and growth to date, and achieving this recent funding round means the achievement is even more enjoyable.

"We have an incredibly talented and diverse team and Brisbane is the ideal place for us to be located there is no doubt in my mind that we would never have been able to achieve what we have in any other major city in Australia," says Kirk.

"The support and recognition from our community is the icing on the cake."

Business News Australia