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Here’s the 16-page pitch deck that landed legal research company Jus Mundi a $10 million Series A
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- Jus Mundi, a legal research platform, raised $10 million in Series A funding in September.
- The company plans to hire more tech talent and expand into other legal verticals.
- The legal-tech startup’s CEO and co-founder walked Insider through its pitch deck.
Jus Mundi’s Series A pitch deck
Introduce the company
Jus Mundi, an AI-powered legal search engine for international law and arbitration, snapped up $10 million for its Series A in September.
In 2019, Jean-Rémi de Maistre, a former lawyer at the International Court of Justice, co-launched the company after realizing how hard it was to conduct research for cross-border legal cases.
“We’re living in a global world and need global information, but don’t have the tools to effectively search outside our own countries,” he said.
Paris-based Jus Mundi raised a €1 million ($1.17 USD) seed round in March 2020, spurring a fivefold growth in annual recurring revenue over the span of 2020, according to the company. Its most recent $10 million Series A was led by C4 Ventures, a European VC firm founded by Pascal Cagni, a former head of Apple Europe. The VC firm has also invested in hot-ticket companies like Foursquare, Nest, and Via.
Address the pain points
Jus Mundi aims to reduce the amount of time lawyers spend on legal research, especially on complicated international matters that involve multiple jurisdictions, treaties, and court rulings.
Nearly two-thirds of large companies dealt with an international arbitration in 2019 — up from 45% the previous year, according to a survey conducted by AlixPartners. De Maistre said he likes to use this stat to demonstrate how international disputes settlements are becoming bigger pain points for companies.
Differentiate Jus Mundi from its competitors
Lawyers have long relied on legacy tools like LexisNexis and Westlaw for legal research.
“But outside the US and some other countries, lawyers are still searching through secondary commentaries or, even though they won’t admit it, through search engines like Google, which isn’t made for legal research,” de Maistre said.
Demonstrate where Jus Mundi comes in
Jus Mundi offers three main tools: a multilingual search engine, a conflict check for arbitrators and lawyers, and personalized alerts. These tools can save clients up to 30% in search time, according to the company.
For instance, conflict checks for arbitrations, where parties appoint their own arbitrators, can typically take days of research. Jus Mundi’s global database identifies any existing relationships between lawyers and arbitrators. The conflict checker can save 30 hours of work per arbitrator, translating to millions of dollars in savings for companies, according to de Maistre.
Lay out what makes the company cutting-edge
Jus Mundi wants to keep its secret sauce, well, secret, but de Maistre told Insider that it hinges on data collection from public sources like PACER, the US online court documents database, as well as from partner institutions like the International Chamber of Commerce, the largest center of arbitration in the world.
The startup then uses natural language processing to locate and extract relevant information from the case law.
Describe the broader market landscape
“This is how we see the legal research market globally,” de Maistre said. The US market is already dominated by sophisticated legal research companies, while other countries largely have their individual legal research tools, according to de Maistre.
Jus Mundi’s bread and butter is in international research, which is growing at a rate of 10% per year.
Pinpoint the target market
“These are the areas that we see that need international legal research,” de Maistre said.
Jus Mundi’s strategy is to target specific legal verticals within the international research space. It started with arbitration, expanded into trade, and plans to further go into the sports vertical, according to de Maistre.
Prove how much clients like the product
De Maistre uses statistics to demonstrate product stickiness to Jus Mundi’s investors. (Since the original pitch, the numbers have shifted to 3% churn and 150% net revenue retention. The figure for weekly active users, WAU, has remained the same.)
“Customers renew at higher prices because the product is evolving very fast,” de Maistre said.
Map out short-term and long-term profitability
Jus Mundi has been able to recoup and surpass initial customer acquisition costs through its annual subscriptions, which clients pay upfront. (Specific numbers were omitted for the public-facing version of the deck.)
Show how the company can grow with funding
Since its seed round in March last year, Jus Mundi has shown quick and steady growth, most recently hitting €1 million in annual recurring revenue.
The startup used the seed funding to grow its business development team from just 11 people to 45, de Maistre said.
Demonstrate client growth
Jus Mundi’s clients include major global law firms like Dentons and DLA Piper; government entities like the Department of Trade; Fortune 500 corporate companies in Europe and the US; and universities. Its client base has grown over the past two years: It had 20 clients during its seed round, around 50 at the time they pitched for the Series A, and now has more than 100.
Jus Mundi is also eyeing Asia as an increasingly important geographical market, specifically China, which has a booming business market, and Singapore, a key arbitration jurisdiction, according to de Maistre.
Explain the company’s customer acquisition strategy
“Customer acquisition is complicated in legal tech because law firms typically don’t want to buy things,” de Maistre said.
While Jus Mundi isn’t disclosing exactly how it wins over law firms, the company uses online marketing and open access to documents hosted on the company’s website, de Maistre told Insider.
Introduce the team
A quarter of the Jus Mundi team are former lawyers, and there are 20 nationalities represented among its employees, according to de Maistre.
Lay out visions for future growth
Jus Mundi will use its Series A funding to further grow its team, especially with data scientists and business developers. The company aims to have 80 employees by the end of the year, de Maistre said.
In addition to hiring tech talent, the startup also plans to accelerate its growth by expanding to other verticals within international law, like sports.
“There is a need for lawyers and for society to have legal resources easily accessible to build a global rule of law,” de Maistre said.