This ex-Y Combinator lawyer thinks startups are overpaying for legal work — and he's got a plan

• At Y Combinator, Mitch Duncombe saw founders spend an astonishing amount of money on lawyers.
• Now he's building an "AI-native" law firm to help companies get off the ground more cheaply.
• That company, Vector Legal, has raised $5.19 million in a seed round led by Base 10 Partners.

Attorney Mitch Duncombe spent years inside Y Combinator, the tech world's startup factory, helping founders raise money. He also watched them hand a lot of it straight to their lawyers.

Now he is trying to build a cheaper way for startups to get off the ground.

Vector Legal, the company Duncombe started with former Ironclad engineer Keenan Venuti, combines a law firm staffed by attorneys with software that lets founders handle more legal work themselves.

The company raised $5.19 million in seed funding shortly after graduating from Y Combinator's winter batch, Business Insider has learned. Base 10 Partners led the round, with participation from the accelerator itself. Angel investors include Chris Smoak, who founded Atrium with Justin Kan. Atrium pioneered the tech-driven law firm model before shutting down in 2020.

Duncombe doesn't blame the lawyers. "One of the things that makes the American ecosystem so great is our legal system," he said. "I'll never hate on lawyers. But they are expensive."

Rather than use chatbots and agents only behind the scenes to lower its own costs, Vector also sells clients access to the software it has built. Founders can use the platform to form a company, file a trademark, and draft, review, and sign certain documents on their own. For bet-the-company legal work, they can loop in senior lawyers.

Lawyers are starting to buy into that vision, too. This summer, the company landed attorney Walt Nichols, who represented large funds and their portfolio companies at Avantia Law, now Carta Law. Natasha Pfeiffer came on board after a decade in-house at companies including Goldman Sachs, Taco Bell, and SageView Advisory Group.

Kyle Canchola, a longtime startup attorney, joined from Wilson Sonsini in June. He told Business Insider that Vector's mission resonated because it targeted frustrations he had watched clients wrestle with for years.

"When I met with Mitch and Keenan, I saw the future of legal work," he said, "faster, leaner, and built for how founders and clients actually operate."

For the past few years, legal tech companies have built software designed to help lawyers work faster. The next wave of startups looks more like a law firm. Rather than hand customers another tool to master, these startups deliver the work from start to finish.

That opportunity has already attracted a crowded field. Vector competes with law firm-startup hybrids, including Crosby, Moritz, and Soxton, which build software to speed document drafting and review for startups.

The model also puts more risk on Vector's shoulders. Software companies typically warn that their tools can make mistakes, leaving lawyers responsible for checking the work. Vector is the law firm of record, meaning it is accountable for the advice it gives. The company carries malpractice insurance like a traditional firm.

Duncombe argues that Vector is built for more than the low-hanging legal work that comes with starting a company. It wants to follow clients from formation through nine-figure financings, acquisitions, and beyond.

Insurance giant Corgi took a gamble on that strategy this past spring.

Duncombe met the company's executives at a founder event in San Francisco. After he explained what his firm does, the executives pulled him into a conference room and told him Corgi had just received a term sheet valuing the company at $1.3 billion. They asked for his thoughts.

He plied them with unofficial advice for over an hour and bid for the contract to handle the legal work that weekend. Corgi hired Vector, which helped close the $160 million financing in three and a half weeks.

Duncombe's pitch is that Vector will wrangle a startup's first contracts — and still be there when it sells for a billion dollars.

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