New Era ADR Raises $4.6M Seed Funding To Accelerate Adoption Of Its Game-Changing Dispute Resolution Platform And Risk Solutions
Already adopted in over 50 million legal contracts and by multiple Fortune 1000 companies
Chicago, IL – New Era ADR, Inc., a fast-growing technology company revolutionizing the $250B+ litigation and dispute resolution industry, today announced that it closed an oversubscribed $4.6M Seed funding round. The financing is led by New York and Boston-based Nextview Ventures with participation from Jump Capital. The company’s original pre-seed investors, Motivate Ventures and Alumni Ventures, also participated in this round along with notable entrepreneurs and investors David Kalt, Sean Chou, Pete Kadens, and Lon Chow. This latest round of financing brings the company’s total funding to $6.3M – all of it raised in the past year.
Launched less than a year ago in April 2021 by technology and legal industry veterans with substantial experience operating venture-backed companies, New Era quickly saw rapid adoption – from Fortune 500 companies to fast-growing VC-backed startups – across a wide range of industries, including e-commerce, technology, retail, education, and professional services. Further fueling the company’s fast start is growing use among numerous law firms who actively recommend New Era’s platform solutions to their clients, including large AmLaw 100 firms and top boutique firms. In less than a year, the company is already the named dispute resolution platform in over 50 million contracts and adopted by leading B2C and B2B organizations. And, after just two months in 2022, the company already surpassed its 2021 revenues.
New Era CEO and Co-Founder, Rich Lee, said “We built New Era ADR to eliminate the unnecessary gamesmanship that turns legal disputes into the long, expensive, and acrimonious ordeals that, for too long, we’ve all come to accept as ‘just the way it is.’ Arduous legal processes plague every industry in our economy and hinder growth and innovation, yet organizations and individuals alike share the same goals of settling disputes without a drawn out fight. We knew there was a better way, and this new round of funding from top tier investors is another step toward making this vision a reality. It has been incredibly validating for our team to see so many organizations, major law firms, and now investors, recognize the immense value our solutions bring to each client while, more importantly, creating a truly accessible platform for all participants in our country’s justice system.”
New Era ADR solves a pervasive and systemic problem that leaves no one untouched: resolving legal disputes is a massive cost of doing business for organizations and a major disruption for people and organizations with each case often taking 18-24 and hundreds of thousands of dollars to resolve. New Era ADR is the first all-digital, all-virtual platform that reduces the outrageous time and cost of resolving legal disputes by up to 90% and offers powerful risk solutions to organizations that, for the first time ever, simultaneously reduces exposure to widespread and unnecessary litigation gamesmanship while providing individuals a fairer, more efficient, more accessible avenue to resolve their disputes with these companies.
Collin Williams, Founder and Chairman of New Era, adds, “I had a client go through a business breakup that took 6 years, 80+ hearings, and $1.2M in legal fees, only to settle without either side ever getting to tell their side of the story to a judge. All too often, people and organizations are forced to pay millions of dollars or give up their right to be heard purely to avoid the process of litigation. New Era was created on the belief that individual consumers and employees should never be forced to navigate complex, unintuitive, impossible to understand legal processes just to have their story heard.”
The new funds will be used to accelerate New Era’s technology development, ramp up sales and marketing efforts, expand into new verticals, and grow its team across operations, marketing, engineering, and sales. Though the company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, it maintains remote-first hiring practices and already has team members in multiple states.
“Investing in companies that are redesigning the Everyday Economy is our fund’s thesis,” explained David Beisel, Co-Founder and Partner at Nextview Ventures, who will join the New Era ADR board. “The antiquated dispute resolution industry is so pervasive and far-reaching that it equally affects individuals and companies while touching (and hindering) every corner of our economy. We’re thrilled to be an early partner in catalyzing long-needed change in this industry and freeing up the immense amount of resources, opportunities, and innovation currently tied up by unnecessarily long legal disputes.”
Peter Carroll, Partner at Jump Capital, added, “We’re excited to be an early partner of one of these rare companies with the unique blend of a dynamic team operating in a massive market, with a viable solution to a systemic problem that affects nearly everyone – organizations and consumers alike.”
About New Era ADR
Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, New Era ADR is the first fully virtual mediation and arbitration platform that resolves legal disputes in under 100 days, saves businesses and individuals up to 90% in time and expenses, and prevents the rampant gamesmanship in litigation while providing a fairer, more accessible platform for all participants in the justice system. With a flat fee model that provides never-before-seen cost predictability in litigation, significantly streamlined resolution procedures, and an intuitive user experience, New Era ADR empowers parties to reach a resolution quickly and amicably. For more information, visit www.neweraadr.com.
Rich is the CEO and Co-Founder of New Era ADR. Prior to starting New Era, Rich was the General Counsel at Civis Analytics, a fast-growing, venture-backed data science technology company born out of President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. He served on the executive team, led legal, cybersecurity, and compliance, and helped lead and evolve the company through rapid growth (600%+ in his tenure) and over $50M in funding.
Prior to Civis, Rich was SVP, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Livevol, a financial technology company that he helped to build, grow, and sell to CBOE Holdings (BATS: CBOE). Rich also serves as an advisor, board member, and investor in technology startups and venture funds and in a leadership role in the Economic Club of Chicago.
Passionate about solving the access to justice gap in the United States, Rich also serves on the national Leader’s Council of the Legal Services Corporation (a U.S. Senate-funded 501c3) and on the board of Illinois Legal Aid Online. He holds a J.D. from Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
