After four successful years of operation, MDR Lab is live once again, with three new businesses joining the latest Improve programme. Shifting from the recent fully remote programme, the new startups will once again be based in Mischon de Reya's offices, working closely with stakeholders from across the business.
The three successful startups joining the autumn iteration are:
- Della AI - makes it easy to find answers in complex documents. Using proprietary artificial intelligence and natural language processing, Della provides Google-like functionality enabling legal professionals to ask questions about their contracts in plain English (and many other languages) and get clear answers and actionable insight into their contracts.
- FundRE – facilitates the origination of European Commercial Real Estate finance for institutional investors. The platform streamlines the execution process and provides accurate market data to improve the underwriting process for investors, lenders and debt advisors.
- Windemnity - helps digitise the way that warranty and indemnity insurance is procured in mergers and acquisitions transactions. The platform combines workflow automation with data empowerment to help lawyers, brokers and insurers improve their product and service offerings.
The startups were selected off the back of months of market engagement and scouting. During this time the MDR Lab team identified more than 350 prospective candidates, engaged 108 companies and reviewed over 80 applications from startups across four continents.
Dan Sinclair, Head of MDR Lab said: “We are excited about welcoming these three new businesses and giving them the opportunity and support to grow. Whilst we saw great outcomes from the previous programme, in particular with DraftWise, of which we are now both customers and investors, we knew that there is something special about being back in the office. It is really hard to replicate the on-demand nature of doing things in person and it is already proving to be much easier to build momentum and iterate.”
The Improve programme is a 12-week programme that gives startups in the legal space the opportunity to work within their target market, to pilot and improve products, and gain a better understanding of where lawyers and their clients would benefit from new technologies.
The new additions mean that MDR Lab has now worked with 28 early-stage legal tech businesses across the various suite of programmes and services that are offered to the market. Mishcon de Reya has taken licences in eight of the products and made equity investments in four of the businesses.
Dulcie Pearson, LegalTech Analyst, Mishcon de Reya said: “Following on from successful partnerships with ThirdFort and Orbital Witness in the Real Estate department at Mishcon de Reya, I'm excited for these companies to work with our transactional teams and other parts of the firm. I look forward to seeing how their products evolve during their time with us."
Find out more about MDR Lab here.