Another monstrous round of funding struck Austin tech this week, with legal tech firm DISCO raising a whopping $83 million.
Georgian Partners, a growth equity firm based in Toronto, led the round, which included participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, LiveOak Venture Partners, The Stephens Group and Comerica.
The company relocated its headquarters from Houston to Austin over the summer — a move that CEO Kiwi Camara described as “terrific.”
We combine world-class engineering with deep legal domain.”
“We love being in such a tech-focused city,” said Camara. “And we love how easy it is to recruit not only great Texas talent, but also some of the best talent from Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, and elsewhere.”
Currently operating in two local offices off Mopac and in Westlake, DISCO will consolidate into one headquarters as it plans to grow the team by 200 in 2019.
Camara said 120 of those new hires will be for its engineering team, while the other 80 will be for sales, marketing, professional services and other departments.
This week’s funding, which brings DISCO’s total to $135 million since its 2012 launch, will support the company’s aggressive hiring initiatives as well as its scaling efforts, international expansion, and platform enhancements.
“We are delighted that legal tech is finally a hot area,” said Camara. “This reflects the growing consensus that analytics and AI will transform the way great lawyers deliver legal services.”
Camara added DISCO marks the largest and most funded legal tech company in the market. Part of that growth can be attributed to its quick new client onboarding times.
“We’ve made a big investment in bringing in senior lawyers to work at DISCO so that, as a company, we combine world-class engineering with deep legal domain,” said Camara. “Instead of being a ‘far futures’ product, our e-discovery product can be a turnkey solution that delivers seven- or eight-figure ROI for corporate and law firm clients right away.”
Up next, the company plans to broaden its tech platform to extend beyond e-discovery to cover the entire litigation lifecycle from case inception to final resolution.
