Antidote raises £3.7m seed to cut law-firm write-offs with AI billing checks
This article covers Antidote, a legaltech startup, and its £3.7m seed funding to commercialise an AI platform that automates billing compliance for enterprise law firms. The funding is intended to accelerate product development and US expansion and targets law firms seeking to reduce revenue lost to rejected invoices and write-offs by moving compliance earlier in the billing process.
Antidote has raised £3.7m in a seed funding round to commercialise an AI platform that automates billing compliance for enterprise law firms and reduce revenue lost to rejected invoices and write-offs. The funding will accelerate product development and support expansion into the US market.
Why it matters
Law firms still rely on manual, end-of-month billing reviews to check compliance with client Outside Counsel Guidelines (OCGs). That process is slow, error prone and costly: industry estimates suggest 8–12% of billable hours can be lost each year to non-compliance write-offs and rejected invoices. Antidote’s seed raise, which brings total funding to £5.2m following a £1.5m 2025 pre-seed, arrives as firms look to automate operational workflows and protect margin.
For law firms with large client rosters and complex billing rules, earlier detection and correction of non-compliant time entries could reduce lost revenue and improve client relationships without changing core practice management systems.
Inside the product
Antidote sits on top of existing time-recording and practice management systems. The platform uses AI to extract rules from clients’ OCGs, evaluate every time entry in real time against those rules and internal firm standards, flag potential violations and present autocorrected, compliant rewrites before a bill is issued.
The company says it integrates with major practice management and timekeeping systems, enabling firms to shift compliance upstream — from bill preparation to the moment entries are recorded. That upstream approach aims to cut write-offs, reduce late-stage editing and improve transparency between firms and clients.
Who are the investors?
The seed round was led by Lakestar, with participation from Concept Ventures, The LegalTech Fund and a group of industry angels. The investment follows Antidote’s 2025 pre-seed round and is earmarked for product development and US expansion.
In the announcement, Navid Meyer, Venture Partner at Lakestar, said:
Antidote is solving a deeply embedded and very expensive problem in the legal industry, and Nicholas brings rare credibility here. He’s lived the problem as both a lawyer and a private equity client and has already built and scaled legaltech startups into category-defining platforms for legal spend management. We’re backing Antidote because it combines a clear product advantage with a founder who has proven he can execute in this market.
Concept Ventures is positioned as an early-stage investor in enterprise software, while The LegalTech Fund focuses specifically on startups addressing legal operations and technology. The presence of specialised and generalist investors signals continued interest from investors in tools that improve law firm economics and client compliance workflows.
If you're researching potential backers in this space:
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Nicholas d’Adhemar, Founder and CEO of Antidote, said:
Law firm billing compliance is one of the biggest sources of revenue leakage inside firms, not to mention being a generally despised manual task that adds to client friction. We built Antidote to remove billing friction by automating compliance for law firms - removing the manual work and shifting compliance upstream, when the work is done, not when you’re trying to send out the bill.
D’Adhemar framed the product as an operational efficiency play that also reduces client friction, rather than a billing audit tool that kicks in at invoice time.
The bigger picture
Antidote’s raise highlights a trend among legaltech investors towards solutions that remove friction from firm operations rather than replacing core legal work. Automation of compliance and financial workflows is becoming a practical route to immediate ROI for law firms, making legal operations a more attractive category for investors focused on enterprise SaaS.
The company’s stated focus on US expansion mirrors broader cross-border demand for legaltech that can handle complex, jurisdiction-spanning client rules. For the UK ecosystem, the round is another example of capital flowing into startups that aim to industrialise professional services through AI-driven tooling, rather than replace professional judgement.
As operational efficiency and compliance become board-level priorities for large firms, expect further investor interest in legaltech startups that can demonstrate measurable reductions in lost revenue and faster invoice cycles.
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