Apperio, a UK-based LegalTech startup helping companies change the way they analyse their legal spend, has received a $10m (£7.5m) cash injection in a round led by Draper Esprit.
The Series A also received support from existing investors Notion, IQ Capital and various Angels.
Apperio gives companies visibility of legal spend. It allows them to track both billed and unbilled hours, in ‘real-time’, run analytics and monitor law firm performance.
The team has grown to 20 people in the past 12 months and the company says annual revenues have grown by more than 300% in the same period.
Commenting on the fundraise, Apperio’s founder Nicholas d’Adhemar, said: “Companies typically spend between 1-2% of their annual turnover on legal fees but the ability to monitor spend and have access to fee data and analytics is at worst non-existent, at best manual”.
“With only 13% of legal departments describing their spend management approach as ‘optimised’ and 25% of legal departments not using any legal technology at all, there is a huge opportunity to provide clarity to General Counsels and gather accurate, real-time insights that enable better decision making and help reduce legal expenditure.”
Apperio was set up in 2013, when d’Adhemar identified the negative impact of the opaque and outdated approach billing and finances on the legal industry after working as a lawyer both private practice and in-house.
As part of the investment, Richard Marsh from Draper Esprit will be joining the board to support the next phase of growth.
He commented: “We are delighted to be leading the investment in Apperio at a time when the company is accelerating its growth and is showing strong market momentum. We look forward to working alongside Nino and the rest of the team as they look to expand the business into new markets. Apperio’s software is transformative in the way in which law firms and their corporate clients can interact.”
Kerry Baldwin, Partner at IQ Capital, who followed on in this round, added: “While the legal sector has historically been slow to adopt new technologies, Apperio is the only company offering customers a simple integration process and real-time visibility of both work-in-progress and budgets.
“It is rare for tech-enabled companies to have 100% positive customer feedback, and this demonstrates that Apperio is consistently delivering value for the companies and their in-house legal teams using its technology. Even from the first session, customers will have access to accurate and actionable insight into their legal spend.”
Ian Milbourn, partner at Notion, concluded: “Having been a consumer of legal services for over 15 years, I’ve felt first hand the pain and frustration of opaque billing. The sector is ripe for disruption and the Apperio team has been solving this problem by enabling transparency, accessibility and accountability for all. The global market opportunity for Apperio is huge and we’re delighted to be supporting the team through this funding round and beyond.”