For Julien Emery, the problem has always been personal. He is the CEO and co-founder of Superpanel, a platform designed to help law firms seamlessly onboard new clients. His motivation stems from his own difficult encounters with the legal system. As a Canadian, he found accessing legal help to be both challenging and expensive. He also recalls his mother’s car accident, where the resulting legal payout was crucial for keeping his family financially secure for years. He observed that the legal intake process, where a firm evaluates a new client, was particularly tedious. Julien Emery explained that for consumers, it is a maze of forms, phone calls, and dropped leads that causes most people to give up before getting help. For law firms, it is a costly and error-prone bottleneck.
Before recent advancements in artificial intelligence, the intake process was considered too complex for automation. But that has changed. Emery previously worked at Hootsuite and then founded the health insurance underwriting platform Allay, which exited to Novo Benefits. He later teamed up with his friend Dingyu Zhang, who has a background in AI, to launch Superpanel in 2024. According to Emery, Superpanel now automates half the work of legal intake by managing collection and feedback. It provides plaintiff law firms with a digital teammate that assists with escalation and compliance. The system engages clients through phone, texting, email, and online forms, guiding them through their story and facilitating document sharing. For the firms, it helps sort case types, jurisdictions, and required documentation.
When there is a risk of ambiguity, the system escalates the matter to a human team member. The result is a unified, multi-channel workflow that delivers measurable results and gives firms a system they can trust like a real employee. The company announced a five point three million dollar seed round on Tuesday. The round was co-led by Outlander VC and Field Ventures. Emery mentioned that he met some investors in this round through his previous startup, and those early introductions led to the lead investors for this new venture. Other participants in this round include LOI Venture, which was co-founded by the founder of Hootsuite, along with Zenda Capital, 8-Bit Capital, and Behind Genius Ventures. The funding will be used to accelerate hiring and expand Superpanel’s capabilities for plaintiff law firms.
The legal industry is one of the top sectors undergoing transformation as artificial intelligence continues to innovate. Superpanel is not alone in this space, and its competitors include Clio Grow, LegalClerk.ai, MyCase, and Whippy.ai. However, Emery believes Superpanel will stand out. He stated that consumers now expect answers and solutions to be instant and self-serve, shaped by the AI tools and online experiences they use every day. Superpanel aims to guide them continuously across that entire journey.