LegalOn Technologies, a rapidly growing legal tech startup with dual headquarters in Tokyo and San Francisco, has secured $50 million in Series E funding. The round was led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, the private investing division of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and included participation from several prominent financial and legal institutions. This latest investment brings LegalOn’s total funding to $200 million, positioning the company as a global leader in AI-powered legal solutions.
The announcement marks a significant milestone not only for LegalOn but also for the broader legal technology sector, which is undergoing a transformation fueled by artificial intelligence. LegalOn’s strategic partnership with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, signals a new era of intelligent legal workflows designed to enhance accuracy, efficiency, and trust in legal decision-making.
A Strategic Alliance: LegalOn and OpenAI
One of the most notable aspects of this funding round is LegalOn’s newly formalized partnership with OpenAI. The collaboration aims to develop advanced legal AI agents that integrate OpenAI’s enterprise-grade models with LegalOn’s proprietary legal data and workflow expertise. This alliance is expected to accelerate the development of tools that can assist legal professionals in contract review, risk assessment, and compliance management with unprecedented precision.
LegalOn’s CEO, Nozomu Tsunoda, emphasized the significance of the partnership, stating, “Collaborating with OpenAI puts us at the forefront of innovation and accelerates our mission to transform legal work with trustworthy AI.” The company plans to leverage OpenAI’s cutting-edge language models to build AI agents that can handle complex legal tasks while maintaining the high standards of reliability and interpretability required in legal practice.
This partnership is particularly timely as law firms and corporate legal departments increasingly seek AI solutions that go beyond basic automation. The goal is to create systems that can understand legal nuance, interpret contractual language, and provide actionable insights—all while ensuring compliance with regulatory standards and ethical guidelines.
Funding Round Details and Investor Confidence
The $50 million Series E round was led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, reflecting strong investor confidence in LegalOn’s business model and growth trajectory. Other participants in the round included World Innovation Lab, a venture capital firm known for supporting global tech startups; Mori Hamada & Matsumoto, one of Japan’s largest law firms; Mizuho Bank; and Shoko Chukin Bank.
Goldman Sachs’s involvement is particularly noteworthy, as it underscores the increasing interest of major financial institutions in legal technology. By backing LegalOn, Goldman Sachs is betting on the convergence of AI and legal services as a high-growth sector with long-term potential.
The funding will be used to expand LegalOn’s product offerings, enhance its AI capabilities, and accelerate its global expansion, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. LegalOn has already established a strong presence in Japan, where it serves more than 7,000 companies, including 25% of publicly listed firms. The company’s U.S. and U.K. operations have seen rapid growth, with business quadrupling in recent quarters.
LegalOn’s Flagship Product: AI-Powered Contract Review
At the core of LegalOn’s success is its flagship AI-powered contract review platform. Designed to assist legal professionals in identifying and mitigating contractual risks, the platform uses machine learning and natural language processing to analyze legal documents with remarkable speed and accuracy.
The system is built on a foundation of over 50 attorney-drafted guidelines, which serve as benchmarks for evaluating contract clauses. When a user uploads a contract, the platform scans the document, flags potential risks, ranks them by severity, and provides actionable suggestions for revision. This process can reduce contract review time by up to 85%, allowing legal teams to focus on strategic tasks rather than routine analysis.
LegalOn’s platform is particularly valuable for in-house legal departments, which often face pressure to manage large volumes of contracts with limited resources. By automating the review process, LegalOn enables these teams to maintain compliance, reduce liability, and improve operational efficiency.
Global Expansion and Market Strategy
LegalOn’s expansion into the U.S. and U.K. markets is a strategic move aimed at capturing a larger share of the global legal tech industry. The company has already made significant inroads, with its international business growing fourfold in recent quarters. This growth is driven by increasing demand for AI-powered legal tools that can adapt to different jurisdictions and regulatory environments.
In the U.S., LegalOn is targeting corporate legal departments, law firms, and compliance teams that are looking for scalable solutions to manage contract workflows. The company’s platform is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing systems, making it an attractive option for organizations seeking to modernize their legal operations without overhauling their infrastructure.
In the U.K., LegalOn is focusing on partnerships with law firms and financial institutions, many of which are exploring AI solutions to improve client service and reduce operational costs. The company’s emphasis on trust, transparency, and legal accuracy makes it a compelling choice for firms that require high levels of reliability in their AI tools.
Founding Vision and Leadership
LegalOn was founded in 2017 by Nozomu Tsunoda and Masataka Ogasawara, both former lawyers who recognized the inefficiencies in traditional legal workflows. Their vision was to create a platform that could combine legal expertise with the power of artificial intelligence to streamline contract review and risk management.
Under their leadership, LegalOn has grown from a niche startup into a global enterprise with thousands of clients and a robust product portfolio. The company’s commitment to legal accuracy, user trust, and technological innovation has earned it a reputation as one of the most reliable AI providers in the legal space.
Tsunoda, who now serves as Group CEO, continues to drive the company’s strategic direction, focusing on product development, international expansion, and industry partnerships. His background in law and technology gives him a unique perspective on the challenges facing legal professionals and the potential of AI to address them.
The Future of Legal AI
LegalOn’s latest funding round and partnership with OpenAI reflect broader trends in the legal industry, where artificial intelligence is increasingly seen as a transformative force. As legal documents become more complex and regulatory requirements more stringent, the need for intelligent systems that can assist with interpretation, compliance, and decision-making is growing.
LegalOn is positioning itself at the forefront of this transformation, offering tools that not only automate routine tasks but also enhance the strategic capabilities of legal teams. By combining proprietary legal data with advanced AI models, the company aims to create solutions that are both powerful and trustworthy.
The partnership with OpenAI is a key part of this strategy, enabling LegalOn to access state-of-the-art language models and integrate them into its legal workflows. This collaboration has the potential to redefine how legal professionals interact with technology, making AI an indispensable part of the legal toolkit.
