Private funds lawyers still use manual email chains, spreadsheets, and Word documents to handle side letters, MFN elections, and comment memos. These important workflows involve billions in commitments worldwide but often result in missed obligations, inconsistent tracking, and wasted time, even at top AmLaw firms.
ILS (Intelligent Legal Solutions) tackles this problem with ProVision, a side letter management platform that organises negotiated terms into a clear system, automates MFN election forms, and provides lifecycle visibility.
Since launching in 2024, ILS has been adopted by more than 10 leading global law firms, including Cleary Gottlieb, Fried Frank, Goodwin, Paul Weiss, Proskauer, Ropes & Grey, and Willkie Farr. Since launch, ProVision has already processed 5,000+ side letters across 450 matters and $150 billion in capital raises.
Now, with $3 million in fresh seed funding led by Chicago Ventures, it is scaling its unified workflow platform for funds teams everywhere.
Cutting out the legal busywork for private funds teams
ILS was co-founded by Fergus Plant and Jack McCarthy, both ex-investment funds lawyers at Goodwin and Proskauer, who teamed up with software engineer Stefano Benigni after they themselves ran into the same post-close headaches.
McCarthy tells TFN, “LS was born out of a recognition that post-close fund workflows remained largely manual and underserved by modern software. While working in the investment funds teams at leading firms such as Goodwin and Proskauer, co-founders Fergus Plant and Jack McCarthy identified this gap, and together with the software expertise of co-founder Stefano Benigni, built ProVision to bring structure, automation, and reliability to post-close workflows.”
How does it work? ProVision pulls side letters into a searchable database, structures obligations and elections, auto-generates MFN forms, tracks compliance, and answers investor queries in seconds. It’s powered by targeted AI for term extraction and workflow automation, all while keeping SOC 2 Type 2 security and GDPR compliance front and centre.
“We focus on a specific niche in fund formation, providing deep vertical expertise that sets us apart from many horizontal legal tech platforms. Our objective is to understand the problem first, then deploy the most appropriate technology to address it. When a step is rules-based and predictable, we use deterministic logic to ensure consistent output, with no hallucinatory risk or sycophantic behaviour. Where these conditions are not present, we deploy AI”, explains McCarthy.
McCarthy adds, “We don’t add AI unless it is genuinely required, and AI is never forced on the user. Law firms have different governance frameworks, risk appetites, and ways of working, so ProVision is fully configurable, enabling teams to switch AI capabilities on or off at a granular level. This flexibility allows firms to retain full manual control where required, apply AI only to specific stages of a process, or use it to accelerate an initial review while professionals validate and confirm the outputs.”
What’s different here? ILS goes deep with fund-specific workflows, not just generic document management. Top-tier clients have jumped on board fast, thanks to a lawyer-designed interface that slashes training time.
While big names like DocuSign CLM or Ironclad cast a wide net, ILS is laser-focused on the real pain points of funds formation. And unlike smaller tools that just store documents, ILS delivers true end-to-end visibility, already managing over $150 billion in capital across the US, UK, EU, Asia, and the Middle East.
So, what’s next for ILS?
The new $3 million will fuel ProVision’s roadmap through 2026: think automated comment memos, co-investment tracking, better LP reporting, and a bigger global team. ILS is also eyeing tighter integrations with fund admin platforms like Allvue and Juniper Square, as well as with CRM systems, and is gearing up to enter new markets like Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands.
Long-term, ILS wants to become the go-to data layer for private funds’ legal teams, building network effects as more firms and funds plug into its structured obligations database.
McCarthy concludes, “We will always be guided by the needs of our customers; however, in the longer term, our approach is transferable to other complex, document-heavy verticals such as M&A and Finance. However, we would only expand where we have the right domain expertise in place. Our model is depth over breadth – entering new areas only when we can truly understand the underlying legal workflows and build with the same level of precision. ”
TFN contacted ILS for comment regarding diversity and inclusion; no response was received at the time of publication.
