African American founders rejoice! Series As are being raised and founders are scaling their products. That’s right. After the news released surrounding Morgan DeBaun, the founder and CEO of Blavity, and her Series A, things started looking up. Now, we have Court Buddy, a San Francisco-based legal tech company that instantly matches solo lawyers on-demand for your a-la-carte legal services at flat rates based on your budget.
Their Series A round was led by NFX with other investors that included First Round Capital and Kapor Capital, as well as existing investors that followed on like LDR Ventures, Lightspeed’s LSS Fund, Gingerbread Capital, UpHonest Capital, L.A. Women Angels, Venture University. In addition to that, there were several angel investors, including Warner Bros. Vice President of Production Niija Kuykendall, and Silicon Valley veteran investor and former 500 Startups partner Monique Woodard.
According to a recent press release, this funding brings Court Buddy’s total amount raised amount to $7.1 million. In addition to investing, NFX’s James Currier will join Court Buddy’s board of directors, which also consists of Court Buddy’s co-founders, Kristina Jones and James Jones Jr., Esq., and LDR Ventures’ Drew Koven.
Court Buddy App (Image courtesy of Court Buddy)
The Backstory
Jones Jr. and Kristina Jones launched the company in 2015 in Miami with efforts to remove the lack of transparency and unpredictability from legal services by allowing consumers to choose the a-la-carte legal services that they need at flat rates and then instantly connecting them to top, pre-screened solo and small law firm attorneys nationally. Once connected, consumers can instant message, video chat, and instantly make secured payments to attorneys for the legal services that they need.
According to the release, the company plans to use the new round of funding to ramp up growth in new markets and to hire top talent to support the company’s growth and expansion plans.
“Court Buddy’s goal is to be the market leader in innovative delivery and pricing of legal services,” CEO James Jones told Black Enterprise. “The new infusion of capital and access to additional resources from our world-renowned investors will undoubtedly help the company achieve this goal.”
For more information about Court Buddy and all of the legal services it offers, click here.