PocketLawyers secures undisclosed funding to solve legal pain points

PocketLawyers.io, a Nigerian legal technology startup, has secured an undisclosed funding from Nubia Capital, a venture capital firm, to accelerate its growth and expand its market share across Africa. The investment will fuel the company’s mission to reduce the turnaround time for legal services, a significant bottleneck for businesses on the continent.

The deal also serves as a strong endorsement of the venture studio model, with PocketLawyers being a portfolio company of FirstFounders, an African venture studio and ecosystem collective. This model, which has contributed to the creation of global tech giants like Twitter, now X, is being championed as a more capital-efficient method for building startups in emerging markets.

Founded in 2023 by lawyer-turned-entrepreneur Ngozi Nwabueze, PocketLawyers provides a suite of AI-powered productivity and connectivity tools for lawyers and organisations. Its key product, PocketAI, automates legal research and document generation, enabling legal professionals to finalise agreements and other legal documents in minutes, a process that traditionally could take up to two weeks. The platform also integrates features for invoicing, payments, no-code website creation and case management.

“For us at Nubia Capital, this isn’t just a smart investment—it’s a strategic one,” said Davidson Oturu, General Partner at Nubia Capital. “In a market where over 80% of SMEs operate without formal legal structures, Pocketlawyers is creating the rails that startups can build and scale on—with confidence.”

× Sponsored

The company initially focused on providing affordable legal services but pivoted after discovering that speed was a more critical pain point for the market. “Some lawyers generally take a lot of time in researching case studies and several materials to come up with legal documents. It was the period taken to do that we tried to disrupt and shorten,” David Lanre Messan, CEO of FirstFounders, said in an interview with Condia.

Messan, a vocal advocate for the venture studio model, views this funding as further validation of the venture studio model and a win for FirstFounders, having backed PocketLawyers when it was still just an idea. He has successfully validated this model with ten of his startups, including PocketLawyers and the fintech platform PayAfta.

His thesis is that, within the next five years, venture studios will be regarded as a distinct asset class and the go-to model for building startups in Africa, thereby fostering a new generation of resilient and market-ready companies.