Confido Legal, a platform dedicated to providing embedded payments specifically for law firms, has successfully raised $9 million in a financing effort spread over two separate rounds, as confirmed in an exclusive interview with LawNext. The new funding aims to expand its services related to embedded payments and digital disbursements tailored for the legal sector.
The latest round, the larger of the two, was spearheaded by Aquiline Capital Partners, a prominent global private investment firm with a notable presence in both financial services and technology sectors. The interest from Aquiline may be attributed to its existing engagements with legal and payments enterprises. Aquiline has a history of investments in legal enterprises, including a majority stake in the practice management company SurePoint, among others.
The financing rounds, including a prior seed round totaling over $2 million, were not publicly disclosed until now. The additional investment participants involved The Legal Tech Fund, Breakwater Ventures, Live Oak Bank, and Context Ventures, notable investors familiar with the legal tech and payment landscapes.
Confido Legal’s evolution stems from a close association with Gravity Payments, known for implementing a $70,000 minimum wage policy, where Confido’s co-founder Emery Wager honed his expertise in engineering, marketing, and strategic partnerships. Launched initially as Gravity Legal in 2019, it was envisioned to serve trust accounting and IOLTA compliance needs in legal markets before eventually becoming an independent entity as Confido Legal in December 2023.
Positioning itself as a financial infrastructure provider rather than a standalone product, Confido Legal offers a comprehensive platform built on a singular GraphQL API. This allows legal technology companies to embed payment processing, trust account management, and increasingly digital disbursements into their own applications, enabling compliance with legal financial regulations without needing bespoke solutions.
Significantly, with the new capital, Confido is directing efforts to enhance its disbursements product suite, confronting the predominant use of paper checks in settlements and aiming to modernize this process within legal frameworks. This includes forming partnerships, such as a key deal with litigation management platform Litify, to bring digital disbursements into mainstream legal operations.
Despite competition from established entities like Stripe and LawPay, Confido’s strategy focuses on providing a specialized toolbox that addresses unique legal market demands, from compliance to fraud prevention, through machine learning-enhanced security measures.
Beyond the payments domain, Confido’s future ambitions include exploring broader financial services such as lending and treasury management for law firms, potentially transforming its role within the legal financial ecosystem. According to Wager, the intention is to build a lasting, impactful solution for decades to come, reflecting the ongoing evolution of financial transactions in regulated legal settings.