Sandstone raises $30 million Series A to bring AI workflow automation to in-house legal teams at small and mid-sized businesses

Sandstone, a legal technology startup targeting corporate in-house legal departments rather than private practice law firms, has raised $30 million in a Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Major investors including Mantis VC and SV Angel also participated. The round follows a $10 million seed round in January 2026, meaning the company raised $40 million in total across roughly six months. The Sandstone platform is designed for the legal departments of small and medium-sized businesses and focuses on workflow automation for tasks arriving through collaboration tools including Slack, email, and Jira — the channels through which in-house legal teams typically receive requests from internal clients. The platform automates specific legal workflows including document drafting, review, and legal analysis, alongside task triage and routing between lawyers. Co-founder Jarryd Strydom has attributed investor confidence to the thesis that narrow vertical AI — AI systems designed for deep expertise in a specific workflow rather than general-purpose capabilities — allows for granular understanding of even the smallest process details. The fundraise positions Sandstone against an increasingly crowded field: competing tools include Harvey, Legora, and Anthropic's expanding Claude for Legal service, which has introduced new features for case search and deposition preparation. The speed of the follow-on raise signals strong early commercial traction.