USA/Canada News
Bench IQ, the AI-powered judicial intelligence platform used by the world’s top law firms, today announced it has raised a $5.3 million seed round led by Battery Ventures and Inovia Capital, with participation from CIBC Innovation Banking, MVP Ventures, Maple VC and Haystack VC.
The new funding will fuel Bench IQ’s growth, with a focus on expanding its proprietary dataset, advancing its AI agents, and expanding the team in the U.S. and Canada.
Leading AmLaw 200 law firms—including four of the top five—use Bench IQ to tailor their arguments and strategies to how individual judges think. In court, where the difference between winning and losing can hinge on anticipating a judge’s perspective, Bench IQ’s judicial intelligence arms litigators with insights to tip the scales in their clients’ favor.
“As AI reshapes law, much of the conversation has focused on first-order gains from automating existing work. The deeper unlock is AI's ability to enable work that was previously impossible,” said Jimoh Ovbiagele, co-founder and CEO of Bench IQ and a repeat legal tech entrepreneur. “With Bench IQ, litigators gain judicial intelligence—the ability to understand how presiding judges think, enabling them to craft smarter strategies and deliver better results clients will pay for.”
In the U.S., written opinions accompany only about 3% of rulings, leaving traditional case law platforms blind to the vast majority of judicial decision-making. Bench IQ has built a proprietary dataset capturing the reasoning behind the other 97% and AI agents that turn that data into actionable insights.
“Bench IQ is transformative because we give litigators judicial intelligence that was once impossible to gather,” said Jeffrey Gettleman, co-founder and CCO of Bench IQ. “In my 17 years representing clients in complex Chapter 11 cases—including United Airlines' $23 billion restructuring—I learned one fundamental truth: The judge is the single most important stakeholder in any legal proceeding. When billions are on the line, every nuance in judicial philosophy matters. Understanding how that judge thinks can determine success or failure."
How it Works
Bench IQ aggregates and analyzes proprietary judicial data, using AI agents to identify patterns in judges’ reasoning and provide actionable insights for litigation strategy.
In a complex bankruptcy auction, Bench IQ can pinpoint when and why a presiding judge has approved above-market deal protections, guiding attorneys toward a winning request. In a high-stakes patent trial, where damages may hinge on whether past licensing deals are admitted as evidence, the platform can uncover the presiding judge’s prior rulings on similar disputes, giving the legal team insights to shape arguments that minimize or maximize the final award.
Bench IQ was founded in 2023 by a team with deep roots in both legal AI and big law. The company is led by CEO Ovbiagele, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, American Bar Association Legal Rebel and Y Combinator alumnus. He previously co-founded and led the legal AI pioneer ROSS Intelligence, where he worked with Maxim Isakov, ROSS’s founding engineer, who now serves as Bench IQ's CTO. The founding team is rounded out by CCO Gettleman, a 17-year veteran and former partner from Kirkland & Ellis, where he led complex Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases.
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