For lawyers engaged in high-stakes transactions, the pressure never stops. Complex contracts, strict deadlines, and the constant threat of costly errors make efficiency and accuracy essential. Yet many legal teams still rely on disjointed workflows — juggling multiple platforms, losing crucial context, and wasting hours on repetitive manual processes. As Nnamdi Emelifeonwu, Definely’s co-founder and CEO, told TFN, “Definely is built for lawyers working under pressure on complex, high-stakes deals” — a reality he and his co-founder know firsthand from their legal careers.
Definely: AI-powered solutions that meet lawyers where they work
Definely, a London-based legal tech scale-up, was created to tackle these challenges. Its product suite operates seamlessly within Microsoft Word. It offers Vault for AI-driven precedent search, Draft for smart contract review, Proof for AI-enhanced proofreading, and PDF for OCR-enabled analysis.
This integration is deliberate. Emelifeonwu explained, “Definely meets lawyers where they are by integrating within Microsoft Word, rather than operating on a separate system or platform.” This approach helps lawyers maintain contextual understanding of legal documents by instantly surfacing relevant information within and across contracts, creating a seamless and efficient workflow.
The company’s latest innovation, Enhance, is a multi-agent AI system that assigns specialised agents to specific tasks. Emelifeonwu elaborated, “With Definely’s latest AI product, Enhance, each model — or agent — specialises in specific tasks, such as summarisation or drafting support. Definely’s agentic system analyses the task, creates a plan, and assigns agents to handle different parts of the task.”
Unlike other tools that require constant platform switching, Enhance allows lawyers to interact with the agentic system directly within Word, delivering at least a 40% speed improvement over traditional manual approaches.
A company born from lived experience and real-world need
Definely’s story is deeply personal. Co-founder Feargus MacDaeid, registered blind since being diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition at age 11, has dedicated his career to overcoming barriers in accessing information efficiently.
Emelifeonwu shared, “Definely was born from lived experience, including that of co-founder MacDaeid, who is registered blind after being diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition at age 11. Throughout his life, he consistently faced challenges in accessing information efficiently, overcoming these through various technologies. His unique professional experience fundamentally shaped Definely’s first product, Draft — a powerful tool that understands document structure and logic to streamline complex contract review.”
He added, “Today, Definely has evolved into a comprehensive productivity suite designed for legal professionals, comprising:
- Vault – AI-powered precedent search for faster, smarter drafting
- Draft – Intelligent contract review with structural logic and clause management
- Proof – AI-powered proofreading for seamless quality assurance
- PDF – OCR-enabled analysis and data extraction from legal PDFs.”
Both founders brought unique expertise to the venture: Emelifeonwu and MacDaeid were practising lawyers at Freshfields before co-founding Definely, and MacDaeid began his career in technology at Compaq and Microsoft before retraining as a lawyer.
Since its 2020 launch, Definely has worked closely with customers to create solutions that address real workflow challenges. Today, it serves over 100 in-house legal teams and private practice firms, including Magic Circle and White Shoe firms like A&O Shearman, Slaughter and May, DLA Piper, and Dentons, as well as blue-chip companies such as BT Group, Deloitte, and P&O Cruises.
Growth, vision, and diversity: Definely’s path forward
As Definely continues to scale, Emelifeonwu revealed that the company focuses on evolving from assistive to autonomous legal AI, “Today, most AI tools are assistive — they help users by speeding up tasks like reviewing, drafting, or summarising, but they still rely heavily on human input and oversight. Autonomous or agentic AI goes a step further: it can understand intent, make decisions, and complete complex legal tasks with minimal intervention, while remaining within clearly defined guardrails.”
The company’s new $30M Series B funding, bringing total funding to $40M, will accelerate global growth and development of more autonomous workflows. Growth investor Revaia led the round, joined by Alumni Ventures, Beacon Capital, and legal tech giant Clio. Early investors participated, including Octopus Ventures, Zrosk Investment Management, The Raine Group, and Cornerstone VC.
Morgan Kessous, Partner, Revaia, said: “We are proud to lead Definely’s Series B and support a company that is setting the standard for AI-powered legal technology. This investment aligns perfectly with our belief in the transformative power of vertical AI. With enterprise-grade products already live and gaining strong traction, Definely is now accelerating both its AI roadmap and international expansion – a journey we are excited to support.
Definely’s growth has been both rapid and responsible. In 2024, the company nearly tripled its annual recurring revenue, with the US now accounting for 30% of revenue. The team has grown to 84 members, with plans to exceed 100 employees by the end of 2025. Diversity remains central: 34.1% of the team is ethnically diverse (compared to 10-15% at similar-sized tech companies), 33.1% are women, 14% are women in tech roles, and the leadership team is 27% female and 45% ethnically diverse.
Reflecting on the journey, Emelifeonwu says, “This latest investment round is a testament to the hard work of an incredible team and our customers’ trust in us. As a business, we are deeply committed to building human-first products and leveraging generative AI not for its own sake but to solve real and tangible problems that lawyers face today. As a former lawyer myself, I witnessed these problems firsthand.”
He continued, “This funding will allow us to invest further in developing and integrating our products. We recently launched our first agentic product, ‘Enhance,’ which has been well received by our customers, and we have several exciting features in the pipeline. As a business, we have remained highly capital efficient, prioritising sustainable growth rather than growth at all costs. I believe this approach, combined with our world-class team and products, will enable our success as we expand into new markets.”
Emelifeonwu concluded, “Definely has built a strong business by developing best-in-class products that deliver real ROI from day one. By working closely with over 100 customers, including some of the world’s leading law firms and organisations, we have created solutions that solve real workflow challenges, assembling a world-class team along the way. Now, Definely is looking for the brightest minds passionate about using AI to tackle meaningful, high-impact problems for lawyers worldwide.”
