Summary:
Superpanel raised $5.3M in seed funding co-led by Outlander VC and Field Ventures to automate legal intake for law firms.
Founded in 2024 by Julien Emery and Dingyu Zhang, it uses AI to act as a digital teammate, handling client onboarding across multiple channels.
The platform addresses pain points in legal intake, reducing costs and errors by automating half the work and escalating ambiguities to humans.
Funding will be used for hiring and expanding capabilities, competing in a growing AI legal tech market against firms like Clio Grow.
Emery's personal experiences with legal challenges inspired the startup, aiming to make legal help more accessible and efficient.
The Personal Drive Behind Superpanel
For Julien Emery, the problem has always been personal. He's the CEO and co-founder of Superpanel, a platform that helps law firms seamlessly onboard new clients.
Emery shared emotional encounters with the law: As a Canadian, he found access to legal help hard and expensive. He also recalls his mother in a car accident, where the legal payout helped keep his family afloat for years. This background fueled his frustration with the legal intake process—the tedious evaluation of new clients or requests by firms.
"For consumers, it's a maze of forms, phone calls, and dropped leads that cause most people to give up before getting help," he explained. "For firms, it's a costly, error-prone bottleneck."
Leveraging AI for Automation
Before recent advancements in artificial intelligence, the intake process was considered too complex for automation. But that's changed. Emery, who previously worked at Hootsuite and founded the health insurance underwriting platform Allay (which exited to Novo Benefits), teamed up with his friend Dingyu Zhang, an AI expert, to launch Superpanel in 2024.
Superpanel automates half the work of legal intake, managing collection and feedback. It provides plaintiff law firms with a digital teammate that assists with escalation and compliance. "It engages clients across phone, texting, email, and forums, guiding them through their story and sharing documents," Emery said. For firms, it helps sort case type, jurisdiction, and documentation.
"When there's risk of ambiguity, the system escalates to a human team member," he noted. "The result is a unified, multi-channel workflow that delivers measurable results and gives firms a system they can trust like a real employee."
Securing $5.3M in Seed Funding
The company announced a $5.3 million seed raise in a round co-led by Outlander VC and Field Ventures. Emery met some investors through his previous startup, with early introductions leading to this round. Other participants include LOI Venture (co-founded by the founder of Hootsuite), Zenda Capital, 8-Bit Capital, and Behind Genius Ventures.
"We'll use the funding to accelerate hiring and expand Superpanel's capabilities for plaintiff law firms," Emery stated.
Standing Out in a Competitive Landscape
Legal is one of the top industries undergoing transformation due to AI innovations. Superpanel faces competitors like Clio Grow, LegalClerk.ai, MyCase, and Whippy.ai.
But Emery is confident Superpanel will stand out. "Consumers now expect answers and solutions to be instant and self-serve, shaped by AI tools and the online experiences they use every day," he said. "Superpanel guides them continuously across that journey."
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