Belgian legal tech company Henchman announced it has closed a $7 million Series A funding round, bringing its total to $10 million to become the industry-leading contract drafting and negotiation solution. The round is led by Adjacent VC and Acton Capital, joined by several business angels, and follows Henchman’s recent GPT-3 integration. The funds will be used to further innovate and expand geographically.
Legal professionals rarely start from a blank sheet of paper when drafting contracts or negotiating details with other parties. They usually reference existing documentation, for which they need to sift through hundreds of old contracts or talk to their colleagues to find suitable precedents that may be relevant to their case. Henchman solves this problem by automatically centralizing past clauses and definitions from any legal team’s contract database (whether law firm or corporate legal department) and delivering them intelligently in lawyers’ familiar Microsoft Word or Outlook environments.
The founders, Jorn Vanysacker, Gilles Mattelin, and Wouter Van Respaille started working on the solution during the COVID-pandemic. Henchman has been on a remarkable trajectory since launching in June 2021 and has experienced rapid adoption and growth over the past year: 750% revenue growth, over 100 customers in 15 countries, and a team that grew from 12 to 35 employees.
Henchman helps the lawyer of the future provide added value and expertise. “When everyone was still talking about ChatGPT, we implemented the technology in Henchman,” says Gilles Mattelin, Founder of Henchman. With the AI-based functionality, lawyers can now use Henchman to enrich contracts with new suggestions, translations or grammatical adaptations.
The company intends to use the capital injection to stay ahead of the competition and enter new markets. To make that happen, the company brought some new investors on board: the U.S.-based Adjacent VC, which previously invested in companies such as BeReal and Revolut and the German Acton Capital, which previously funded Clio and Etsy, are taking the lead in this investment round, with participation from several business angels, including Louis Jonckheere & Pieterjan Bouten (founders Showpad), Felix Van de Maele (founder Collibra) and Bram Couvreur (Partner at U.S.-based law firm Cooley).
“After a few reference calls it became clear that Henchman’s power lies within how perfectly the product fits into the legal professionals’ existing workflow. It’s rare to see a SaaS company win international clients this early in its journey, but the teams’ customer obsession is driving great adoption in both Europe and the US. I’m excited to team up as we scale to the next level!” says Nico Wittenborn, Investor at Adjacent VC.
Louis Jonckheere, private investor and founder of Showpad, is optimistic: “The legal profession is entering a new age with AI. I’m very bullish about Henchman’s ability to take a leading role in this transformation. They have the team, technology and traction to become a dominant global player.”
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