We heard about the vision for Fuse from Shruti Ajitsaria, back in June and now they have launched. We thought we should check in with Shruti and see the eight companies that will form Fuse – A&O’s tech innovation space based in their London offices

Head of Fuse at Allen & Overy, Shruti Ajitsaria, said:

“This is an impressive roster of companies, which span a variety of technologies and departments. We chose the successful applicants based on whom we feel we have natural synergies with. We’re now preparing for Fuse to open so that we can begin to explore, test and develop the solutions that these companies offer.”

The stated aim of Fuse is to bring together tech companies, lawyers, technologists and A&O’s clients to explore, develop and test LegalTech, RegTech and DealTech.

In a press release announcing Fuse’s launch, A&O described the initiative as an “integral part” of its “advanced delivery capability”.

The eight companies joining Fuse were selected from amongst 80 applicants after participating in a pitch day in July. The Fuse selection committee included representatives from J.P. Morgan, Funding Circle, Amazon, Balderton, as well as A&O participants.

The eight selected companies are:

• Nivaura – described by A&O as the “entrepreneurs-in-residence” at Fuse. Their team will help guide the other seven companies by sharing advice and business experiences whilst continuing to develop their own platform: an automated and vertically integrated cloud based service for the issue and administration of financial instruments by small and medium-sized issuers.
• Avvoka – a digital platform incorporating a contract creation, workflow and analytics tool.
• Corlytics – a business providing regulatory risk intelligence, using forensic analysis and forecasting of fines and sentencing globally.
• iManage (previously known as RAVN) – a business developing natural language processing and machine learning technology to organise, discover and summarise documents.
• Ithaca – a charitable not-for-profit enterprise aiming to create a mobile-responsive online technology platform to assist asylum seekers in gaining access to pro bono legal representation and advice.
• Legatics – a company that turns ‘paper and email’ based legal processes into simple and innovative software.
• Opus 2 International – originally a developer of litigation and transcript management software, now developing a tool to support lawyers with the prospectus verification process.
• Vable – a provider of content aggregation, automation and intelligence software.

Legal Geek Founder, Jimmy Vestbirk, added:

“The key with incubators and accelerators is striking the right balance between tech, innvoation, clients and culture, but most of all – people. I am very pleased to see someone who attends a lot of our events and a true champion for Legal Geek launching Fuse. Good luck Shruti!”