Irish-founded legal technology start-up Estatemin has raised €1 million in a pre-seed round to help support its growth in the US.
The company, which was founded by Isabella Hughes, Oisín Dolphin and John Noonan, is building a platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and focused on trust and estate law firms in the US, helping them to reduce their administrative workload.
The platform can digitise client intake, organise estate information, extract data from documents and support form preparation, helping law firms to save between five and seven hours on an estate-planning matter, with up to 10 hours on estate administrations.
The pre-seed funding round saw participation from NDRC, First Port Syndicate and angel investors Mike Hanrahan, Moira McKenna and Conor Stanley, among other Irish angels.
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Enterprise Ireland has also backed the company through its High Potential Startup programme. Now headquartered in New York, Estatemin will use the money to accelerate customer acquisition in the US, expand its engineering and product teams, and support its go-to-market function.
Its engineering operation will remain in Ireland and the UK. The company employs eight people, with one based in the US. However, the priorities for hiring have shifted, Hughes said.
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“AI has got so good that you can do so much with so little these days,” she said. “We need more people on the go-to-market front, that’s an area we could hire tomorrow. By the end of next year we are probably looking at a team of around 15 people.”
The company was born from a meeting between Hughes, who is a law graduate, and Dolphin through an NDRC founder weekend at Dogpatch Labs in 2024. Dolphin had been through the probate process, which is paper-heavy, following the death of his father.
Hughes said her experience of working in the industry matched Dolphin’s. That posed a simple question: why are highly trained legal professionals spending so much time retyping information?
The duo founded the company as Simple Probate, with Noonan subsequently coming on board as the third cofounder, bringing his experience of working with legal technology company Clio to the start-up.
Initially focused on Irish law firms, the company changed tack and focused on the US market, which was faster to adopt the platform.
Estatemin partnered with Clio and now supports law firms across all 50 US states. It has grown revenue 20 per cent month on month, with companies using the platform managing more than $770 million (€685 million) in estate value.
“We are growing quickly right now,” Hughes said. “We are always looking ahead and getting ready for that next round.”
