Introducing Carta Law (fka Avantia Law)

I’m so excited to announce that Carta has acquired Avantia Law!!!

Avantia Law is an insanely fast-growing law firm that was the first to offer AI-native legal services specialized for private equity.  Their proposition is simple, but effective:

• Many PE and VC firms pay top-tier law firms to do high  volume but ultimately uncomplicated legal work, and they shouldn’t. 

• Moreover, AI unlocks the ability to deliver the entirety of the legal service at a much lower cost. 

• Finally, customers still want the benefits of a law firm but want a different cost structure. 

Avantia serves the largest private equity firms across the globe by providing a host of legal and compliance services (see below) at a fraction of the price, on a per-job basis, and delivered and quality-controlled by a practicing lawyer.

We built Carta by starting with an incredible human-led service and automating the software behind it. That’s even more true in an AI world. We’ve proven we can do this across cap tables, 409As, and fund administration. We’ll do the same here by providing AI to the ultimate beneficiary of the service, the customer. 

Legal services + System of record software + Compliance = Magic

One of the reasons I’m excited about Carta Law is the connection it offers with everything we’ve built for the ERP for private capital. Most of Carta’s products are systems of record products with workflows built on top (Cap tables, Fund Administration, Fund Tax, CRM). 

All of the actions or workflows that ultimately result in a “record” can be traced to a legal action that Carta Law can assist in performing, and usually result in a compliance check that Carta Law already provides.

LP transfers are a great example and something Avantia does well today. In this case, a GP would use Carta Law to negotiate the transfer, dealing with both the exiting and incoming LPs. Carta Law handles the KYC checks on the parties, and then the final executed transfer agreement flows through to the GL and the partners list. Everything happens on a single platform without the fund having to be the intermediary between your LPs, your law firm, and your fund admin.

It’s a powerful combination of transactional/legal services + system of record software + compliance and health checks. And it’s the exact playbook we ran with transfer agent services, cap table software, and 409A valuations. 

What about my law firm?

I’m sure the first question that many of you will ask when you read this is, “How is my law firm going to react to this?” If cap tables in 2014 are any corollary (which I’m betting they are), we’ll see a reaction of something like this.

1. Some in the industry may be worried about Carta trying to take work that was typically done by law firms.

2. The smartest law firms will recognize (really, have already recognized) that most of this work is below their pay grade and having Carta Law do this work allows them to do higher-value work for more clients rather than more work for fewer clients. They’ll be the first to partner with us, just like Cooley, Gunderson, and Fenwick were the first to partner with us on cap tables ten years ago.

3. The rest of the industry will follow, and the overall mandate of a private capital lawyer will continue to evolve from data entry/checking and simple drafting to strategy and negotiation. Those who don’t will be left behind in the wake of AI.

We fully plan on continuing to work closely with our existing law firm partners in the future and know the value they provide all of our clients, big and small.

What’s next

We’re going to continue to tackle the highest volume, most painful legal and compliance problems that exist in private capital and find ways to bring Carta Law and Carta ERP closer together. We’ve brought over the entirety of the Avantia team, who bring an unparalleled amount of experience not only solving these problems for customers, but doing so with AI at the heart of it. We’re lucky to have them.

For existing Avantia customers, we’re lucky to have you on board as well. You’ll continue to receive the quality service you expect from the Avantia team, now backed by the weight of Carta’s engineering and go-to-market infrastructure. For both existing Avantia and Carta customers, we’ll continue to integrate the products more over the next couple of months, which will allow you all to experience the benefits of legal and financial operations under one roof. 

If you are curious to learn more about Carta Law and what we can do for you, please reach out to your Carta rep and schedule time with us. We are looking forward to helping you with your legal and compliance needs.