Ex-Cohere Execs Raise $6M for AI Law Firm Blackletter

A $6 million seed round is backing a new attempt to take corporate legal work away from Big Law — and its founders think they've found a structural answer to the collapse that took down Weil Gotshal.

Blackletter, a Canadian startup law firm cofounded by ex-Cohere executives, raised the round led by Lerer Hippeau, CEO Jonathan Rosenbluth told Business Insider. The deal marks Lerer Hippeau's first-ever investment in legal, a firm spokesperson said. Other backers include Seven Stars, Maple VC, Garage Ventures, Ripple Ventures, and Cohere's three founders — Aidan Gomez, Nick Frosst, and Ivan Zhang.

The timing isn't accidental. Weil Gotshal's collapse, driven by how quickly AI forced Big Law to rethink how legal work gets done and how clients pay for it, showed that a partnership can come apart with the speed of a bank run. Rainmakers walk, clients follow, and the model breaks.

Why the founders think they can avoid Weil's fate

Rosenbluth sees Weil as a reminder of the existential risk facing legacy firms: revenue depends on individual partners' relationships. Blackletter is betting clients return not because they know one partner, but because the firm understands their business and does the work well.

The mechanism is a feedback loop. Blackletter's lawyers use software built on large language models to draft and negotiate routine corporate contracts and guide transactions from term sheet through diligence and signing. Lessons from each matter are meant to inform the next, Rosenbluth said — lawyers refine how they use the tools while engineers adapt the technology to improve results.

In practice, that means the firm's institutional knowledge compounds instead of walking out the door with a departing partner.

Who's behind it, and who's signing up

The founding team mixes legal and AI operating experience:

• Jonathan Rosenbluth — spent a law-school summer at Skadden watching associates a decade his senior grind through menial work, then rose through partnerships and product teams at Cohere, the AI model maker in which the Canadian government recently agreed to take an equity stake of up to $1.6 billion.
• David Stewart — another ex-Cohere executive, who led a team working with Cohere's customers to shape its products around their needs.
• Avi Brudner — former COO of tax-data company Blue J and a onetime attorney at Fried Frank.

The firm charges flat fees and says it has more than 75 clients, including Fanatics, TwelveLabs, and Ada — which has just agreed to merge with fellow customer-service-agent company Dialpad in a $600 million deal.

It's hiring, too. The team already includes former associates from Latham & Watkins, Goodwin, Dentons, and Canada's Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt — a signal that Big Law-trained lawyers see a viable path inside the neofirm model.

What it means for the legal labor market

Blackletter's model mirrors the one popularized by Crosby, which builds software for its own lawyers and was most recently valued at $400 million. The bet behind both: in-house legal teams don't want another tool to manage — they want the work done faster.

For lawyers weighing career moves, that distinction matters. Firms like Blackletter are hiring people who can work with AI tooling, not just around it.

Rosenbluth rejects the "AI-native law firm" label — he says it connotes something "fast and cheap." Instead, he wants Blackletter among the best and biggest firms of the 2030s. "The number one law firm in the world" by then, he said, "is going to have a technical advantage over the other law firms."