Ukrainian legal tech startup wins Australian Legal Tech Pitch Night

• Kharkiv-founded automated copyright protection platform takes top prize worth up to $550,000 at legal tech-focused pitch night
• Leaders from across Australia’s legal, startup, venture capital and technology ecosystems judged the event, choosing the winner and runners-up

Hosted virtually on the evening of Tuesday 25 October, the Legal Tech Pitch Night was an initiative of the LawTech Hub by Lander & Rogers—the first program of its kind in Australia that brings together lawyers and entrepreneurs to design and build transformative legal technology—in partnership with Australia’s largest network of startup communities, Silicon Beach; and AirTree, a venture capital firm backing founders who are building iconic technology companies.

Applications to pitch at the event came from all corners of the globe. Potential presenters from Nairobi, Perth, London, Melbourne, Miami, Istanbul and Sydney were narrowed down to 10 legal tech pitchers who each had 90 seconds in the first instance to persuade the judges to advance them to round two.

The 10 selected startups were: Argos Regtech, BotL, Halisok, Jigsaw, LAWCATE, Lawyerd!, My Life Capsule, NetNada, Patent Path and SettleIndex.

Three finalists progressed to round two and had three minutes to dive deeper into their legal tech solutions. This was followed by challenging questions from the judging panel, made up of Michelle Grossmann, Chief Innovation Officer at Lander & Rogers; David Hauser, CEO of Silicon Beach Australia; Raaj Rayat, an Investment Manager at AirTree; and Abe Sahely, cofounder and CEO of beNEXT and an alumnus of the LawTech Hub.

And the winner is…

…Lawyerd!

Founded in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Lawyerd! is an automated copyright protection platform that stops online scammers from profiting from businesses’ intellectual property (IP). The startup has already detected and deleted 30,000 infringements and saved clients including Philips, Husqvarna and Plarium over US$2 million.

According to Lawyerd! CEO, Igor Makushinsky, the global cost of IP infringement in 2021 was US$3.1 trillion. Nine out of 10 violations take place online, and 70% of these violations go undetected.

Lawyerd! enables companies in 27 countries to defend their copyright via the Lawyerd! platform without the need for third parties. The subscription-based platform works by searching for infringements online and automatically sends a complaint, which usually triggers a takedown of the infringement within hours and up to three days.

The first-place prize grants Lawyerd! access to all benefits that the current LawTech Hub residents and alumni have access to, which is over AU$550,000 of business and technical support from the world-class partners of the LawTech Hub.

Runners-up

Sydney-based NetNada, represented by co-founder and director, Lochie Burke, was named first runner-up and crowned the winner of the evening’s People’s Choice Award, which was voted on by the Legal Tech Pitch Night attendees. NetNada is an AI-based software that integrates into businesses like law firms by utilising available data to analyse their carbon emissions. NetNada then provides a solution to reduce those emissions whilst driving ROI and stakeholder engagement.

Melbourne’s My Life Capsule, represented by founder, Pam Moorhouse was named the evening’s second runner-up. My Life Capsule provides 24/7 mobile access and secure data sharing for important life administration.

Hosted by Courtney Blackman, Head of Partnerships at Lander & Rogers, the Legal Tech Pitch Night was attended by a broad audience including lawyers, VCs, angel investors, media, government and peak legal bodies. The pitch night precedes the opening of applications for the 2023 LawTech Hub, which is earmarked for late November.