A recent legal tech funding announcement got my attention. EvenUp, which provides several AI tools for personal injury (PI) plaintiffs’ lawyers, announced it had raised $150 million in funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and REV, among others. REV is the venture capital arm of RELX which owns LexisNexis. With this funding, EvenUp now has a $2 billion valuation.
This isn’t just another big funding round. It signals that AI for plaintiffs’ lawyers has perhaps reached a tipping point and is now an important market.
What Is EvenUp?
EvenUp provides all sorts of AI-driven tools to help PI lawyers, who primarily get paid on a contingency fee basis, in efficiently drafting, reviewing, and strategizing across the entire case lifecycle, according to the press release announcing the funding.
It’s trained on thousands of PI cases and millions of medical records (more on this below). According to Rami Karabibar, CEO and co-founder of EvenUp, “Legal AI is no longer a side bet; it’s becoming the backbone of personal injury law.”
He’s Right About That
I think Karabibar is right about that for several reasons. First, AI tools enable PI lawyers to do things in a fraction of the time it previously took. Since they spend less time working up a case, their profit is increased. These guys don’t bill by the hour. They get paid based on the result. The less time needed to get to the result, the more money they make.
Secondly, because they can do things with EvenUp in less time, PI lawyers can take cases that would not have previously been profitable because the time needed to work up the case would exceed the foreseeable recovery. That means more access to justice for folks who may be injured. Raymond Mieszaniec, the co-founder of EvenUp and its COO, puts it this way, “Our mission remains simple: give every victim a fair shot at justice.”
Finally, one of the driving needs of PI lawyers is to move cases to resolution as quickly as they can. Why? They don’t get paid unless and until the case resolves. The EvenUp team understands this and created tools to get work done faster and indirectly lead to faster resolutions.
So???
So, what’s the big deal? Lots of big funding announcements these days. Here’s why this resonates with me as a former defense lawyer.
I first came across EvenUp at the ILTA startup alley in 2023 and wrote about the company then. I heard a young guy talking from the startup stage about a tool that would automate the drafting of demand letters for PI lawyers.
My first reaction was ho-hum, that doesn’t sound like a big deal. But then I talked to him. It turns out that the young guy was Mieszaniec. He was driven to create the company by a family member’s frustrating experience in trying to recover for a personal injury they suffered. That experience became a driving force and passion that still drives a lot of product decisions.
What Mieszaniec and EvenUp were doing even then was far more significant and a harbinger of things to come: they were using AI to determine valid and justifiable demands. It worked like this: a lawyer would provide EvenUp with all the relevant facts of a case along with medical and employment records, and any other important information. Using AI and data analytics, EvenUp would compare those facts to verdicts and other information. (More on that in a moment.) The tool then provided a realistic demand number backed by data.
The product could also review medical records and other materials to spot inconsistencies and missing information.
The Key Innovation: Crowdsourced Data
But what really got my attention was that Mieszaniec convinced a number of plaintiffs’ lawyers to provide EvenUp with access to actual settlement numbers in PI cases in an anonymized way. The program looked not only at actual verdicts in cases with comparable fact patterns, it also looked at settlements in cases with similar fact patterns. Since most cases, then and now, settle, getting that information in that way was truly innovative at the time.
I saw lots of value that could come from the tool and this kind of thinking not only for plaintiffs’ lawyers but also for the defense side. As I noted at the time, this ability could enhance settlements since it would give both sides access to good case valuations. It would enable insurance companies, who typically insure defendants in personal injury cases, to better determine reserves for the exposures presented by cases.
Insurance companies’ business model is based on the ability to determine exposures accurately and then reserve the funds needed to pay those exposures. So, the sooner they can get their hands on the information to set that reserve, the sooner they can talk settlement. Because the EvenUp analysis was based on real data, I thought it would provide the kind of accurate demand that would help adjusters set reserves and would lead to more prompt settlements, which benefits all.
Mieszaniec also recognized back then that the key to all this is building trust. All sides have to know that the EvenUp number is a good one and well supported.
I concluded from talking to him in 2023 that “EvenUp has a pretty cool idea.”
So, How’d That Work Out?
Not surprisingly, since the founders obviously well understood how PI cases work and the dynamics leading to resolution, EvenUp has grown by leaps and bounds. It now offers a whole slew of products including drafting tools, the ability to create expedited demands, medical chronology tools, workflow processes, an AI assistant to answer inquiries, a case and strategy preparation tool, a negotiation preparation tool, a settlement repository of similar matters and results, and even a tool to manage firm performance.
EvenUp also recently announced something called Mirror Mode which allows lawyers to create documents in an author’s or firm’s previous language, style, and structure by mirroring those previously created documents. As Mieszaniec puts it, “We started by transforming how demands were built — today, our AI spans the entire case lifecycle.”
The Beauty of What EvenUp Is Doing
EvenUp’s approach enhances the ability for individual users, who are often with small firms, to tap into the data of other plaintiffs’ PI lawyers. That enables them to better litigate with larger firms and better compete with the very large national plaintiffs’ firms.
It’s also a good example of what can happen when a legal tech company is founded by people with passion and experience in an area. Yes, the founders are zealous about plaintiffs’ PI work and the lawyers involved. But they also understand the need to get these cases resolved quickly and efficiently. And that means thinking about the needs not only of plaintiffs but also of those on the defense side.
Of course, the standard concerns with AI tools remain: algorithmic bias, data privacy, and for EvenUp, whether its tools will further gum up the court system.
But for now, congrats to EvenUp on its impressive journey from startup to $2 billion valuation.
Stephen Embry is a lawyer, speaker, blogger, and writer. He publishes TechLaw Crossroads, a blog devoted to the examination of the tension between technology, the law, and the practice of law.
The post From Startup To $2 Billion: EvenUp Is Transforming Personal Injury Practice appeared first on Above the Law.