LegalTech Scale up Clarilis raises £6m to fuel expansion

Global News

03
Aug
2020

Editor

Clarilis is delighted to announced that it has raised £6m in a Series B round of funding. The co-investment has come from Mercia Asset Management, Northern VCTs(£2.5m), an existing investor and Gresham House Ventures (£3.5m) investing on behalf of the Baronsmead VCTs.

The funding raised in this round will be used to support Clarilis’ ongoing growth and international expansion.  Gresham House Ventures, a growth equity investor specialised in scaling companies with business models driven by technology, customer insight or service excellence, has invested £3.5m and existing investors Mercia Asset Management, Northern VCTs has invested £2.5m.  The investment round which completed on 31st July, is designed to assist in the company’s continued growth internationally, and fund its sales, marketing and product development functions. 

Clarilis is a leading provider of automated drafting technology. The CLARILIS™ platform was designed from the ground up to automate complex suites of precedents, such as Share Purchase and Facility Agreement suites with many ancillaries, many parties and complex underlying deal structures. The CLARILIS™ platform saves significant amounts of lawyer time whilst ensuring that law firms and in-house legal departments draft consistently high-quality documentation.  This creates time for solicitors to focus on what they do best – providing bespoke advice to clients and handling non-standard aspects of transactions.

Clarilis was co-founded by brothers James Quinn, a former solicitor, and Kevin Quinn, the technical architect of the CLARILIS™ platform and former lead developer. Since launching to the market in 2015 Clarilis has experienced consistently strong growth.  The business now boasts an impressive blue-chip client base with an exceptionally high level of customer satisfaction. 

Henry Alty, Investment Director at Gresham House Ventures, said: “We have spent a long time looking at automation within professional and financial services. While the legal world has arguably been a late adopter of technology, firms are realising that automation is essential to driving both cost efficiency and resilience across distributed workforces.

In Clarilis we have found an ambitious business with a market-leading solution and exceptional customer satisfaction as a result of its fully managed service. It exemplifies the type of technology-driven and scalable business model that our investment team look for. We’ve been impressed by the impact that Clarilis has already had in the market and as the business expands, particularly into the South East Asian market, we are excited to be bringing our experience to bear and to help facilitate its growth.”  

Tim Levett, Investment Chairman, Mercia Northern Venture Funds, commented: “We are pleased to be investing once again in this leading LegalTech business, particularly in this current environment where the rapid adoption of user-friendly consumer software has fundamentally changed user expectations within enterprise. Regardless of the complexities of any business process, elegant automation and consumer-grade UX are the critical success factors that have set Clarilis and its platform apart, especially filling the void left by legacy software in this sector.  

Mercia’s strong tech and SaaS investment credentials and experience combined with our ability to invest through the lifecycle of a business will be important to support the team at Clarilis as they continue to scale the business.”

James Quinn, CEO and co-founder of Clarilis, added: “It’s fantastic to have the continued support from the investment team at Mercia Asset Management and I’m really pleased they’re backing us again.  We are also delighted that Gresham House has chosen to invest.  Gresham House were the clear choice here given Henry Alty and James Hendry’s in-depth knowledge of the LegalTech space and excellent insight.  The Gresham House team also share our vision for the development of the Clarilis platform going forward.  

This investment will provide the resources required to bring significant enhancements to our platform and to further scale the Clarilis team both in the UK and abroad.  

The uniqueness of Clarilis’ intelligent drafting platform and managed service is resonating with organisations globally - particularly as current market conditions highlight the importance of technology that can provide a strategic advantage.”