Avvoka, a legal drafting software platform, has secured £14 million in funding from Valhalla Ventures, the private investment firm of Mark and Lindy O’Hare. The investment marks the firm’s first investment since the sale of Preqin to BlackRock in 2025.
Launched ten years ago by Eliot Benzecrit and David Howorth, who previously worked in magic circle law firms, Avvoka develops legal drafting technology designed to embed structure, governance and human oversight alongside artificial intelligence tools. The platform focuses on turning precedent and institutional knowledge into drafting systems that can be reused, supervised and improved over time.
Avvoka’s software is designed for high-volume, high-variation legal work and supports firms applying artificial intelligence within structured drafting processes. Law firms including A&O Shearman, Fried Frank and Ropes & Gray use the platform, alongside in-house legal teams at Warner Bros Discovery and other multinational businesses.
The new capital will be used to expand Avvoka’s presence in the United States and extend the platform’s capabilities as legal organisations modernise drafting operations while maintaining governance and oversight.
AI was changing how legal work is done, but it won’t replace the need for robust systems. Avvoka’s attraction is their recognition that drafting is not a tool problem - it’s an infrastructure problem. Firms that want to scale, without diluting their expertise, will need platforms built with that reality in mind.
This capital enables us to accelerate our US expansion and deepen the platform for high-volume, high-variation work, while staying true to the principles that got us here: governance, control and respect for institutional knowledge. This new capital will help us build on that foundation. We will use it to expand our US footprint and to extend the platform’s capabilities so we can support even more legal organisations as they modernise their drafting operations without compromising quality or control.
