LegalTechInvestment

Hambro Perks has invested £2m in growth funding into London-based B2B LegalTech platform Apperio.

It represents the second investment from the newly launched Hambro Perks Growth Fund.

This funding forms part of a wider $7m (£5.75m) growth round, with participation from existing investors Molten, IQ Capital, Notion, NextLaw, and new investors Volution.

The announcement brings the total funding Apperio has raised to date to $19.9m (£16.39m).

The deal was led by Usman Ali and Ylan Lamour of Hambro Perks’ newly launched fund, which supports UK and European high-growth scale-up companies.

The £100m pan-European fund recently had its first close and comprises a team of five highly experienced venture debt practitioners.

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Founded in 2013, known then as Legal Tender, Apperio has developed a proprietary software platform that enables its clients, such as large law firms, private equity houses and corporates, to view and control external legal spend in real-time.

Currently, Apperio is used daily by more than 60 in-house legal teams including Epiris, EQT, Network Rail, Royal London and Cornerstone.

Usman Ali, partner in the Growth Debt Fund at Hambro Perks, said: “Apperio has continued to grow its top-line revenue in the last couple of years by successfully seeking partnerships with companies with large legal budgets.

“Apperio’s proprietary technology connects directly to law firms’ practice management systems to provide a live view of all matters, including unbilled work-in-progress and invoiced jobs.

“Unlike eBilling solutions, which allows limited visibility and often lags real time data, Apperio provides instant visibility of both historic and unbilled legal spend data.

“We strongly believe that the business has tremendous growth potential, and our latest funding package, alongside the new equity, will help catalyse this. It’s an exciting time for Apperio, and we look forward to seeing how the business evolves and expands into new markets.”

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Nicholas d’Adhemar, founder and CEO of Apperio, said: “Legal costs have grown this year. Certainly, inflation is a factor, but business today is simply more complicated because there are more compliance, regulatory and legal risks than ever.

“This is driving up demand for legal services and by extension legal costs. The visibility and transparency the Apperio legal spend management platform provides is a proven way for in-house legal teams to control costs – and does so in a way that strengthens their relationships with their external legal advisors and law firms.”