Gabrielle Orum Hernández, Legaltech News
The legal research giant is looking
to support legal technology innovation with access to its data sets and mentors.
Josh Becker of LexMachina.Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM
The technology accelerator has long been a staple of
industries like financial services, business and health care, but true to form,
legal has been slow to look to these innovation support programs. But as the
demand for legal technology has expanded, large industry organizations have
started to invest in accelerator programs as a way to support and customize
technology startups in the space.
LexisNexis is the latest
organization to take on a technology accelerator, offering startups access to
its data, tools and professional networks. Heading the effort is LexisNexis'
Lex Machina division, the Silicon Valley-based legal analytics software
providers acquired by LexisNexis late last year. Lex Machina hosts the newly
launched accelerator in its Menlo Park, California, offices, and CEO Josh
Becker will head the program.
Lex Machina itself has
roots in the Silicon Valley startup scene. The company was originally founded
as a collaborative effort between Stanford Law School professor Mark Lemley and
members of the school's computer science department (a partnership that has
since been formalized into Stanford Law School's CodeX center), before seeking
funding from Bay Area venture funds like XSeed Capital and Costanoa Venture
Capital, among others.
According to Becker, the
major draw for startups, especially those with an analytics focus, is likely to
be Lexis' enormous data set.
"Our biggest
obstacle was getting access to PACER data," Becker told Legaltech News,
reflecting back on Lex Machina's early growth stages developing its legal
analytics software. "It's expensive. It's a significant, significant
amount, and we were spending that as a startup," he said.
Becker hopes that
LexisNexis' accelerator will be a way to open the door for other growing
startups to leverage the broad-scale datasets LexisNexis has to offer.
"Lexis has that data. They have a lot of other very valuable data as well
for a lot of legal startups, who might have the tech chops and the ideas, but
may not have the data to do what they're trying to do," he said.
Whatever approach
startups take, Becker notes that timing is perhaps the more important facet of
a potential partnership. A potential startup collaborator should be "far
enough along to take advantage of what we have to offer, but not far enough
along that they say, 'We don't need it,'" Becker said.
Other accelerators in
the legal tech space have largely been projects at universities supporting
technology overall, or major law firms hoping to adopt and customize new
technology for their organizations. CodeX and Suffolk University Law School's
Accelerator-to-Practice are just two of the programs housed in academic
institutions working to support innovation in legal technology.
Startup incubators borne
of Big Law have been picking up steam as of late as well. Last week, global
megafirm Dentons' technology incubator Nextlaw picked up its ninth partner
investment in contract learning tool Beagle, while Baker Donelson's
cybersecurity-facing accelerator took on encryption startup Galaxkey.
Becker said that
LexisNexis' new tech accelerator hopes to work alongside these other incubators
to push legal-facing tech forward overall.
"You need an
ecosystem," Becker said, adding that while other industries may have more
fleshed-out innovation accelerators, legal is only now starting to support
growth not just at the earliest stages, but at the more midsized growth stages,
where LexisNexis' tech accelerator hopes to focus.
While linking a younger
startup with a larger company with lots of resources may seem like a dream come
true, Becker, who has been both an angel and venture capital investor over the
course of his career, said he's seen many young startups stumble under the
weight of a large corporate partner.
"The timeframe of
startups does not always intersect with the timeframes of a large
company," Becker said.
The influx of resources
corporate partners provide startups can actually slow startup growth, Becker
noted. "As a startup, there's a risk of engagement with any big corporate
entity because you have to be very focused. More startups die of indigestion
than starvation," he explained.
"You have
milestones you have to execute on. If you're a large company, you might have
different timeframes—you can take a little longer," Becker added.
Becker hopes to use his
Silicon Valley expertise and Lexis' resources to help young startups find a way
across the perils of a big corporate partner.
"One of the things
we're hoping to do with this accelerator is really be guides with them within
Lexis, help them connect with the tremendous talent there and tremendous
resources there as far as content there and other resource," Becker said,
adding that he hopes to give participating startups opportunities "that
can really boost their business and not be a distractor, but be a huge
multiplier."
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