当Harvey和Legora争夺大型律师事务所客户时，老牌法律科技公司Clio则把目光投向了一个较为冷门、这些行业新玩家鲜有涉足的市场领域：法院。据《Business Insider》获悉，Clio最近一次估值为50亿美元，该公司已收购人工智能工具初创公司Learned Hand，该公司的工具旨在辅助法官工作。交易条款尚未披露。
While Harvey and Legora fight for Big Law's business, Clio, an older legal tech company, is making a quieter bet on a corner of the market those upstarts have barely touched: the courts. Clio, last valued at $5 billion, has acquired Learned Hand, a startup that builds artificial intelligence tools for judges, Business Insider has learned. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Learned Hand创始人Shlomo Klapper此前已为该公司筹集约500万美元。创办公司前，他曾在Palantir担任类似于前线部署工程师的职位，之后就读法学院，并加入诉讼领域的 powerhouse Quinn Emanuel，担任律师。此次交易加深了Clio向司法系统拓展业务的力度，也使其 ambitions 超越了过去构成其核心客户群的中小型律师事务所和企业法务部门。
Its founder, Shlomo Klapper, had raised about $5 million for Learned Hand. Before starting the company, he worked at Palantir in a role similar to a forward-deployed engineer, then went to law school and joined Quinn Emanuel, the litigation powerhouse, as an associate. The deal deepens Clio's push into the judiciary and expands its ambitions beyond the small and midsize law firms and corporate legal teams that have made up its core customer base.
此次押注的依据是，法官很快将需要更多帮助。Clio创始人兼首席执行官Jack Newton表示，州初审法院的法官已经不堪沉重的案件积压，而他预计人工智能只会进一步加剧这种压力。越来越多人开始使用聊天机器人研究法律并在没有律师的情况下自行维权。南加州大学和麻省理工学院两名博士生最近发表的一篇论文显示，2025年联邦法院中无律师代理案件的占比从长期平均的11%升至16.8%。
The bet is that judges are about to need more help. State trial court judges are already buried under heavy caseloads, said Jack Newton, Clio's founder and chief executive. He expects artificial intelligence to add to the pressure. More people are using chatbots to research the law and represent themselves without lawyers. The number of pro se cases in federal court rose from a long-term average of 11% to 16.8% in 2025, according to a recent paper from two doctoral students at the University of Southern California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
与此同时，科技行业支持者认为，人工智能将带来更多商业机会和经济增长，从而引发更多合同、更多纠纷，以及法院需要处理的大量案头工作。Learned Hand旨在帮助法官更快了解案件事实。用户可以上传法院诉状及其他文件，提取关键事实，并查看双方的法律主张与案卷记录之间的关联。该软件还可以起草备忘录、裁定和判决意见书，其中的引证均链接至原始来源。
At the same time, tech's boosters argue that artificial intelligence will create more business and economic growth, setting off more contracts, more disputes, and more legwork for the courts. Learned Hand was designed to help judges get up to speed more quickly on the facts of a case. Users could upload court filings and other documents, extract the key facts, and see how each side's legal arguments connected to the record. The software could also draft memos, orders, and opinions, with citations linked back to their sources.
Klapper一直在洽谈新一轮融资，其中包括与Clio旗下企业创投部门接触。Newton表示，他刚刚收到团队提交的一份备忘录，建议进行投资。此前，Clio近期聘用的Pablo Arredondo询问他是否见过Learned Hand团队，以及两家公司是否应把格局放得更大。本月早些时候，Clio还聘请了密歇根州最高法院前首席法官、近期担任美国仲裁协会首席执行官的Bridget Mary McCormack，协助推动公司的扩张。
Klapper had been in talks to raise another funding round, including with Clio's corporate venture arm. Newton said he had just received a memo from his team recommending an investment when Pablo Arredondo, a recent Clio hire, asked whether he had met the Learned Hand team — and whether the two companies should think bigger. Earlier this month, Clio also hired Bridget Mary McCormack, a former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and, most recently, CEO of the American Arbitration Association, to help lead the company's expansion.
此次收购是Clio打造法律服务一站式平台战略的一部分。该公司最初提供面向独立执业律师和小型律所的软件，帮助他们管理日常行政事务，但此后不断拓展业务领域，涉足法律系统的更多环节。去年，Clio斥资10亿美元收购了vLex——一家挑战LexisNexis和Westlaw市场地位的法律信息公司——将庞大的法律资料库接入其平台。
The acquisition is part of Clio's push to become a one-stop shop for legal work. The company started with software for solo practitioners and small firms to manage the back office, but it has been moving into more parts of the legal system. Last year, Clio bought vLex, a challenger to LexisNexis and Westlaw, for $1 billion, adding a large legal corpus to its platform.
Clio还拓展了文件审查和起草等工作流程。Learned Hand的加入使Clio进一步触达另一类影响法律工作开展方式的用户。司法系统也可能成为Clio进军大型律师事务所的通行证。Newton表示，如果法官使用Clio的工具和数据，公司就能融入律师每天都会接触的基础设施之中。在Harvey和Legora正投入巨额资金加速扩张的市场里，这可能让Clio占据优势。他说：“我们正在开发司法级人工智能。法官提出的要求就是最高标准。”
It has also moved into workflows like document review and drafting. Learned Hand brings Clio closer to another set of users who shape how legal work gets done. The judiciary could also become Clio's ticket to large law firms. If judges use Clio's tools and data, Newton said, the company would sit inside the infrastructure lawyers interact with every day. That could give it an edge in a market where Harvey and Legora are raising gobs of money to expand quickly. "We are building judiciary-grade AI," he said. "There's no higher bar than the bar judges demand."