Advocat Technologies CEO Pradnya Desh with the company’s winnings from the San Diego Angel Conference. (Photo courtesy of Advocat)

Advocat Technologies, a Bellevue, Wash.-based startup which uses artificial intelligence to guide research and drafting for enterprise legal departments, took top honors and $200,000 in funding at the San Diego Angel Conference.

The University of San Diego School of Business program activates accredited angel investors and engages promising early-stage companies.

Advocat is a legal tech provider that reduces the workload for in-house attorneys. Its system enables a non-attorney business user to talk with Advocat’s system, which uses AI to understand what the user needs. The AI selects the correct internal legal template and asks the user a series of questions, drafts a document and sends the draft to in-house counsel for approval. The benefit is that it saves a significant amount of time in intake and drafting.

Advocat CEO Pradnya Desh is an attorney, former law firm partner and former U.S. diplomat who says her company is transforming enterprise legal by enabling each in-house attorney on Fortune 1,000 legal teams to do the work of more than seven attorneys.

“This funding enables us to further develop our technology and ramp up marketing as we advance our mission to leverage AI to enable attorneys to do more in less time,” Desh said in a news release. “We are especially appreciative of the knowledge, tools, and connections we’ve built through SDAC — truly invaluable.”

Before winning in San Diego, Advocat was bootstrapped by the founders, including Desh, Haresh Ved, and Chetan Desh, and has raised an additional $800,000.

Advocat previously took part in the Microsoft-supported SaaS Launch Lab for female-led enterprise software companies. And it was among 26 startups in last summer’s Washington Technology Industry Association Founder Cohort Program.

Clearbrief, another Seattle legal writing startup that is using AI to change the industry, recently raised $1.2 million.

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