Innovation Kyoto 2016 Investment Limited Partnership ("KYOTO-icap No.1 Fund"), with Kyoto University Innovation Capital Corporation ("Kyoto iCAP") (Head office: Sakyo-ku, Kyoto; Representative Director: Koji Murota) as unlimited liability partner, has made an investment in LegalForce Inc. ("LegalForce") (Head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; Representative Directors: Nozomu Tsunoda and Masataka Ogasawara), a venture company that utilizes research results from Kyoto University.

0Execution of investment in LegalForce

LegalForce is a legal-tech venture founded by a team of lawyers from a major law firm and a young engineer majoring in information processing engineering, together with Professor Shinsuke Mori (Department of Intelligent Informatics, Graduate School of Informatics, Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University), who is highly knowledgeable and experienced in natural language processing technology. The "law" is an important social infrastructure. LegalForce is a technology startup that combines the wisdom of technology and lawyers to support the work of legal professionals. LegalForce is developing "LegalForce," a cloud-based contract review support software, with the aim of building "a world where more people can enjoy more advanced legal services" by combining the wisdom of engineers and lawyers to support the work of legal professionals.

The company has received investment from Professor Mori, and has entered into a joint research agreement with the Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University, to promote research and development for the application of natural language processing and machine learning technologies to legal work, and has entered into an academic guidance agreement with Associate Professor Kohei Suenaga of the Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University (Department of Communications and Information Systems (Department of Computer Engineering, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University) to conduct joint research on the application of formal verification technology (*) to legal documents and legal services as a different approach from the machine learning-based approach.(*)Techniques for specification, development, and verification of software and hardware systems based on mathematics in software engineering

Kyoto iCAP appreciates the social significance of LegalForce's challenge to revolutionize legal services by supporting legal professionals through technology, and to improve legal access for ventures and small and medium-sized companies that have not been able to fully benefit from the technology. We also believe that it is possible to create and nurture new ventures originating from Kyoto University that integrate the humanities and sciences by matching legal professionals with the research results of the Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University.

With these considerations in mind, Kyoto iCAP recently participated in a pre-seed round of 70 million yen in total funding by LegalForce, together with SMBC Venture Capital Corporation (Head Office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Tatsufumi Ishibashi) and several individual investors, of which Kyoto iCAP subscribed 30 million yen. Kyoto iCAP underwrote 30 million yen of the total amount.

LegalForce Overview

Establishment	April 21, 2017
Business	Development and management of software platform related to legal services using natural language processing technology
Head Office Location	Chuo-ku, Tokyo
President & CEO	Nozomu Tsunoda / Masataka Ogasawara