LegalTech Venture Day Australia winners Deeligence come out on top at the Global LegalTech Venture Days competition in Madrid

In May this year, Deeligence co-founders Elena Tsalanidis and Justin Hansky wowed all three of our judges when they delivered the winning pitch at the LegalTech Venture Day Australia competition hosted at Allens.

On taking home the LegalTech Venture Day Australia trophy, the team also won $5,000 AUD prize money to support their travel to the Global LegalTech Venture Days competition at South Summit in Madrid, where they represented as the Australian winners.

Deeligence have gone from strength to strength, making an impact and taking their successes in Australia on to the global stage!

We are thrilled to announce that Deeligence, represented by co-founder Justin Hansky, won the Law Schools Global League Global LegalTech Venture Days competition at South Summit, Madrid in June! The team walked away victorious and were awarded the coveted industry mentorship with LexisNexis!

Firstly, the warmest congratulations to Deeligence from the whole team at the UNSW Allens Hub.

Having returned to Melbourne victorious from an incredibly successful journey in Europe, we took the time to catch up with Justin to hear more about his experiences at the competition in Spain, get some insights into how Deeligence do what they do and what's coming up in the future for the multi-award winning legaltech startup. 

What did you learn from both participating in and winning the LegalTech Venture Day Australia competition in May?

The Deeligence team were so thrilled to participate and come out as winners. We loved meeting with other Aussie legaltech founders and hearing firsthand about their exciting ideas on how to improve the way lawyers’ practice.

An aim of our team was to clearly articulate our traction and goals for the coming months - the positive feedback from the judges, especially one of the Allens partners around our product was very exciting - we were told it was something his practice would benefit from using.

We also spoke about how important it was for tools to be user friendly and easily adopted by lawyers who lead busy work lives and cannot dedicate days/weeks to ramping up on a new tool.

Justin, what lessons did you take from LTVD Australia and earlier pitch competitions to present the winning pitch in the competition at South Summit in June?

Some lessons we took from the Sydney heat to the Spanish final were:

• Thinking more about how Deeligence helps different lawyers who sit at varied levels of seniority eg. how a junior lawyer engages with it versus a senior partner and the best way to communicate this.
• Refining our set up of the problem: the first version of Deeligence is a point solution for mergers and acquisitions lawyers who run legal due diligence – so our ability to speak about the domain and help the audience understand our value proposition was key.

As winners of the Madrid competition, Deeligence have won a coveted industry mentorship. What does this mean for the Deeligence team and what do you hope to learn from this mentorship?

Mentorship from Sebastien at LexisNexis is invaluable – every day we take on different challenges as founders: managing customers, prioritising new features for the product and an ever-changing landscape of legaltech vendors. Having such an experienced and industry giant like LexisNexis to run our questions past and proposed solutions by is an amazing opportunity.

In particular, we’re focused on a go to market strategy and understanding how LexisNexis works with the biggest firms. This includes navigating a complex procurement and information security compliance process.

What do you believe makes Deeligence stand out in the legaltech sector both nationally and internationally?

We believe we’re the right people solving a complex problem at just the right time.

Both our backgrounds as ex-lawyers and M&A professionals helps, plus prior experience in the UK legaltech scene at scaleups serving megafirms and enterprises clients enabling a tech-enabled legal practice. We’re obsessed with building a killer solution to this thorny legal due diligence problem.

What was a key piece of feedback you’ve received which has significantly helped Deeligence grow as service and a business?

We’ve gotten lots of great feedback from our mentor when we were selected to be a part of the 2023 Lander & Rogers LawTech Hub – we’ve traversed many topics and appreciated the guidance around many milestones and challenges that we face.

Feedback that comes up again and again is the useability of Deeligence – without any specialised training, lawyers can manage a deal more effectively saving 20-40% of the time it usually takes, translating to real world savings for firms and their clients.

Our investment in UX and design appears to have paid dividends as we hear this is what sets us apart from the rest.

What is your advice to other LegalTech startups when it comes to delivering a winning pitch?

We like to start thinking about who the audience is and what we want to convey. We try to be clear about what we want to communicate and do it in a succinct manner – no one wants to sit through a monologue that puts them to sleep!

Plan out the deck, practice, but also have fun! Also, it’s always evolving, and we take the feedback each time and hone our pitches.

Do you have any other exciting news you’d like to share?

We’re thrilled to be welcoming customers pre-launch who will partner with us to ensure the first version of Deeligence is as useful to lawyers as possible.

Please reach out if you want to be a part of the pack that’s leading the charge on the way legal due diligence is delivered.

A huge thanks to Justin for sharing his thoughts and experiences with us in such an insightful and open way. Congratulations again to the whole Deeligence team on their recent win in Spain!

With so many incredible achievements under their belt in 2023, we can't wait to see what Deeligence have in store for the future. 

You can connect with and contact Deeligence via LinkedIn and also connect with co-founders Elena Tsalanidis and Justin Hansky directly. Don't hesitate to head to the Deeligence website for more information.  

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