Legal staffing startup Hire an Esquire has secured $350,000 in its seed financing. Its investors include 37 Angels and 645 Ventures from New York City, and Ulu Ventures from Silicon Valley, according to Technically.
Founder Julia Claire Shapiro said of the funding round: "Most of our round was raised as a result of two weeks in the Valley. Investors that I would never expect to give us so much as a passing thought were generous with their time and enthusiasm. For instance, Google's Lawyer #2 [Miriam Rivera] met with me from a cold e-mail and her fund [Ulu Ventures] ultimately invested. We had been fundraising in New York and Philadelphia for months before this. NYC investors came on board after we secured our West Coast investors, Philly never did."
The New York-based startup offers an online platform for hiring contract lawyers. The firm plans to use the fresh capital to beef up its customer base and tap big law firms and Fortune 500 companies' legal divisions, the report detailed.
Accordign to Shapiro, getting Philadelphia law firms as clients was very difficult for her. But now, its client base has grown from 32 in 2013 to 68 in 2014. The company currently has 2,000 contract attorneys in their system, Technically reported.
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