13 legal startups to watch in 2026, according to investors

Artificial intelligence has turned one of Silicon Valley’s least fashionable sectors into one of its hottest.

Investors are pouring money into legal startups, hoping to find the next breakout winner before everyone else does.

For a long time, building software for lawyers felt like a contrarian bet.

Investors saw legal tech as too small a category, with slow-moving customers and long sales cycles.

Sales cycles that once stretched for years began collapsing into weeks, as founders raced to apply frontier models to take on work done by attorneys.

Investors from San Francisco to London are now looking to fill a Harvey-sized hole in their portfolios.

Funding to legal startups worldwide reached $2.1 billion in the first half of the year, per Crunchbase data.

Business Insider asked a group of venture capitalists to nominate the year’s most promising legal startups valued at less than $1 billion.