Filevine, a company offering a software-as-a-service product for legal case management, announced that it raised $108 million in a Series D funding round led by StepStone Group, with additional funding from Golub Capital. Signal Peak Ventures and Meritech Capital, repeat investors in Filevine, also participated in this round.
As law firms contend with rising demand and a talent shortage, many have turned to Filevine’s all-in-one legal suite to improve efficiency, mitigate stress, and grow revenue. The Series D funding will help power Filevine’s expansion more deeply into big law, insurance defense, corporate, governmental, and nonprofit legal counsel teams, building on the company’s expertise in litigation and personal injury law.
Founded in 2014, Filevine is building a new interface for legal work. CEO and co-founder Ryan Anderson, a former litigator, felt that legacy legal software was ill-equipped to manage the urgent tasks that bombarded him and his colleagues. Standard document management solutions, project management apps, and collaboration software didn’t meet the unique needs of legal professionals. Anderson and his co-founders built Filevine to fill this void in the enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) market.
Soon after Filevine launched, the inadequacies of legacy legal software became glaring. Workloads increased without proportionate growth in staff, and then COVID-19 forced remote work upon the industry. By 2021, record demand for legal services, a shortage of qualified talent, and high burnout among legal professionals were driving firms to adopt new technology at record rates. Indeed, the legal tech market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over six percent between 2019 and 2025 according to Statista.
Filevine’s business performance shows how well the company has resonated with legal professionals, bridging the gap between demand and talent. Over the last two years, Filevine achieved 198% growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR) while maintaining a customer net retention rate of over 130%. In 2021 alone, Filevine signed 708 new customers across the legal market. Since acquiring Outlaw, a contract management solution, in May 2021, Filevine has grown Outlaw’s ARR by 400%.
According to Filevine, it has managed to sustain impressive growth as the company matures. Last year, Filevine also won several honors including “Overall Case Management Company of the Year” from the Legal Tech Breakthrough Awards and “Best SaaS for Productivity” in the 2021 SaaS Awards.
“Filevine has allowed us to flip the script on how legal work is done. You used to say, ‘Okay, we’re getting behind — just add a couple more typists or a couple more secretaries.’ Now I say, ‘how can we change the workflow to be more efficient? What can we standardize? What can we automate in Filevine?’” said Bob DeRose, Managing Partner at Barkan Meizlish DeRose Cox, LLP. “It allows me to hire smarter and only increase headcount when it is actually necessary.“
“Having transformed legal work and business for private practices, we’re excited to further expand within corporate, governmental, and nonprofit counsel teams that face the same work challenges but support their organizations differently,” said Ryan Anderson, CEO of Filevine. “We’re taking on this growth opportunity with new executives and a seasoned group of leaders who continue to awe our investors with their dedication and results.“
