Superpanel Secures $5.3M to Automate Legal Intake with AI
▼ Summary
– Julien Emery founded Superpanel to address the inefficient legal intake process he experienced personally, which involves tedious forms and communication that often cause clients to give up.
– Superpanel is an AI-powered platform that automates about half of the legal intake work for plaintiff law firms, acting as a “digital teammate” to manage client communication and documentation.
– The system engages clients through multiple channels like phone and email, guides them through their case details, and automatically escalates complex or ambiguous situations to a human team member.
– The company recently secured a $5.3 million seed funding round led by Outlander VC and Field Ventures, which it will use to accelerate hiring and expand its platform’s capabilities.
– Superpanel operates in a competitive space with tools like Clio Grow, but aims to stand out by meeting modern consumer expectations for instant, AI-guided, and self-serve legal assistance.
Superpanel, an AI-powered platform designed to streamline legal intake for plaintiff law firms, has successfully closed a $5.3 million seed funding round. This significant financial backing, co-led by Outlander VC and Field Ventures, will fuel the company’s expansion and enhance its capabilities. The investment signals strong confidence in using artificial intelligence to solve persistent bottlenecks within the legal industry.
For CEO and co-founder Julien Emery, the mission behind Superpanel is deeply personal. His own difficult experiences with the legal system, including the challenge of finding affordable help in Canada and his family’s reliance on a legal payout after his mother’s car accident, highlighted the inefficiencies of traditional client onboarding. He describes the standard intake process as a confusing maze for consumers and a costly, error-prone bottleneck for law firms. Before recent AI advancements, this complexity made automation seem impossible.
Emery’s professional path, which included a role at Hootsuite and founding the health insurance platform Allay, eventually led him to partner with friend Dingyu Zhang, whose expertise lies in artificial intelligence. Together, they launched Superpanel in 2024 to tackle this very problem. The platform functions as a digital teammate for law firms, automating roughly half of the legal intake workload. It manages client communication across multiple channels like phone, text, email, and web forms, guiding individuals through sharing their stories and submitting necessary documents. For the firm, the system helps sort case types, determine jurisdiction, and organize documentation.
A key feature is the system’s ability to recognize ambiguity. When a situation is unclear, it automatically escalates the matter to a human team member. This creates a unified, multi-channel workflow that delivers measurable results and builds a level of trust comparable to a real employee, according to Emery.
The recent funding round also attracted participation from LOI Venture, Zenda Capital, 8-Bit Capital, and Behind Genius Ventures. Emery noted that connections from his previous startup played a role in building this investor group. The capital will be directed toward accelerating hiring and broadening the platform’s feature set.
Superpanel operates in a competitive landscape that includes other legal tech solutions like Clio Grow, LegalClerk.ai, MyCase, and Whippy.ai. Emery believes his company will stand out by meeting modern consumer expectations. People now demand instant, self-serve solutions shaped by the AI tools they use daily. Superpanel aims to guide clients continuously throughout their entire legal journey, providing the responsive, streamlined experience they have come to expect from other digital services.
(Source: TechCrunch)
