Legal Tech Platform Bodhala Brings In $10M To Help Clients Streamline Spending

Law firms are not always the quickest at adopting new technology, but two Harvard Law School grads are hoping to change that.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

Raj Goyle and Ketan Jhaveri started New York City-based Bodhala, a data-intelligence and legal technology platform, to disrupt how law firms charge for outside services.

Companies spend about $500 billion annually on outside counsel, while hourly billing rates track at nearly four times the rate of inflation, Goyle said. Bodhala applies data science, machine learning and analytic insights to help companies analyze, interpret and optimize outside counsel spend.

“Right now, even the most sophisticated company doesn’t have an idea of what something should cost,” Goyle said. “We have built algorithms that when a law firm puts invoices through the software, it gives them insight and analytics on things such as why so many lawyers are working on a case, why they chose an expensive law firm or why they paid that hourly billing. Our database helps companies understand what is wrong with what they are spending and how to correct it.”

To help achieve that goal, the 5-year-old company closed on a $10 million investment round on Wednesday, led by Edison Partners, a growth equity investment firm which most recently led a $17.5 million round of funding for Austin-based Overhaul, a supply chain tech startup.

“Bodhala is a quite disruptive technology around analyzing spend and offering suggestions,” said Daniel Herscovici, partner at Edison Partners. “As more and more buyers adopt this technology, the more influential it will be. The company has the potential to become the standard for transparency, codifying and transforming the legal industry.”

Product expansion

With this round of funding, Bodhala has raised a total of $15 million, according to Goyle.

The company will use the funds for product expansion, and sales and market acceleration, as it transforms and modernizes the purchase of outside counsel services.

Bodhala has 35 employees, and Goyle said the company intends on “doubling down on the business” to grow every aspect from business development to data, and marketing over the next two years.

The company currently has several dozen clients, as well as potential new clients in financial services, health care services, insurance, energy and private equity.

Revenue jumped 300 percent over 2019, and Goyle expects that kind of growth to stick around in the near term.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias