Definely

What Is Definely?

In 2013, two lawyers were assigned to the same transaction at Freshfields. One of them, Feargus MacDaeid, is registered blind, diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition at age 11. His colleague Nnamdi Emelifeonwu watched him navigate a dense finance agreement and asked how he managed it. MacDaeid's answer became the seed of a company. Jumping to a defined term or a cross-reference, without leaving the clause he was working on, would save enormous time. That held true for him, and, it turned out, for every lawyer doing the same manual scrolling by hand.

The two co-founded Definely in London in 2017. What started as an accessibility fix became a general contract-review problem the whole legal industry shares: contracts are dense, self-referential documents, and finding "what does 'Affiliate' mean in clause 14.2" by hand is slow whether or not you can see the page clearly. Definely built its answer directly inside Microsoft Word rather than as a standalone platform, on the theory that lawyers will not change their primary tool just to get better contract review.

Nearly a decade later, that bet has scaled. Definely now serves 150+ law firms and in-house teams. Media coverage of the Series B round has reported customers including law firms A&O Shearman, Slaughter and May, DLA Piper, and Dentons, alongside corporate legal departments at BT Group, Deloitte, and P&O Cruises. Those figures come from press reporting around the funding round rather than a published Definely client list, so treat the exact roster as directional rather than confirmed. It closed a $30 million Series B in June 2025, led by Revaia with participation from Alumni Ventures, Beacon Capital, and Clio Ventures. Headcount has grown to roughly 84 employees as the company expands into the US market. The product itself has grown from a single accessibility tool into a five-module suite covering nearly every stage of contract review.

Key Features

Read: navigation without the scroll

Read is the direct descendant of the original problem MacDaeid described. It surfaces defined terms and cross-references inline, so a lawyer working through clause 14.2 can see what "Affiliate" means without leaving the page or losing their place. It sounds small until you have done it manually across a 60-page facility agreement.

Proof: automated error auditing

Proof scans documents for the kinds of inconsistencies that survive human proofreading — mismatched defined terms, broken cross-references, numbering errors. Automated proofreading does not replace legal judgment, but it catches the mechanical errors that erode client confidence when they slip through.

Cascade: tracing ripple effects

Launched in August 2025, Cascade is Definely's newest and most distinctive module. When a lawyer amends one clause, Cascade traces the first-, second-, and third-order effects across related documents — a genuinely hard problem that most contract-review tools do not attempt. For firms working on complex, multi-document transactions where one change can quietly break three other agreements, this is a real differentiator.

Enhance: agentic AI review

Enhance runs multiple AI agents in coordination to detect undefined terms and suggest redlines, with Definely reporting 40-70% speed improvements on contract review tasks. As with any vendor-reported efficiency figure, treat it as directional rather than guaranteed — actual gains depend heavily on document complexity and reviewer familiarity with the tool.

Vault: precedent at your fingertips

Vault indexes a firm's own precedent clauses and past documents, connected through iManage or NetDocuments, so lawyers can search and insert language they have already used and trust rather than drafting from scratch every time. For firms with large precedent libraries built up over decades, that clause-level indexing turns an underused archive into a working reference tool rather than a repository nobody has time to search manually.

Pricing

Definely does not publish prices for any of its five modules. Every engagement starts with a demo and moves to a custom quote based on firm size, module selection, and integration requirements. That opacity is standard in enterprise legal tech, but it means smaller firms and solo practitioners cannot easily gauge whether Definely fits their budget before committing time to a sales process.

Given the customer base of established firms and $40 million in total funding, expect pricing calibrated for firms with dedicated technology budgets rather than solo practices. Buyers should ask specifically whether modules are priced individually or bundled, since a firm that only needs Proof and Read has a very different cost profile from one deploying the full five-module suite. Definely's US expansion, funded in part by the Series B, also raises a practical question for European buyers. As the company's commercial focus broadens across the Atlantic, ask whether contract terms and support hours will stay aligned to European working patterns.

EU Compliance & Privacy

Definely is a UK company — Defeyene Legal Solutions Limited, incorporated in London in April 2017 — which places it outside EU jurisdiction since Brexit. The company holds SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, and, notably, ISO/IEC 42001 certification for AI management systems, independently audited by Prescient Security. That AI-specific certification is meaningful: it signals formal governance over how Definely's agentic features are built, monitored, and risk-assessed, not just general information-security hygiene.

What Definely does not publish is a specific data-hosting region. EU-based firms and in-house teams handling regulated matters should ask directly where customer data resides. They should also confirm Standard Contractual Clauses are in place for any UK-to-EU data flow — the same diligence step Juro customers face as another UK-headquartered legal-tech vendor.

The ISO/IEC 42001 certification does most of the practical heavy lifting here. It requires a documented AI risk register, impact assessments, and defined ownership for each in-scope AI system, rather than a general security policy. Procurement checklists increasingly ask how a vendor governs AI-generated output, a question sharpened by the EU AI Act's provisions phasing in through 2026. That certification carries more evidential weight for such questions than SOC 2 alone.

Who It's Best For

Firms doing complex, multi-document contract review get the most value from Cascade, since tracing knock-on effects across linked agreements is exactly the problem generic contract-review tools miss.

Lawyers who live in Microsoft Word get Definely's biggest practical advantage: it never asks them to leave it. That is a real adoption edge over standalone review platforms that require a new login and a new habit.

Teams already on iManage or NetDocuments get the cleanest integration path, since Vault and Read both depend on that connection for precedent search and cross-referencing.

Firms needing legal research or generative drafting, rather than review and error-checking, will find Definely's scope too narrow on its own — it is a contract-review specialist, not a full legal-AI platform like Harvey.

Organisations weighing accessibility as a genuine procurement criterion, not just a compliance checkbox, get something rare. Definely's product design traces directly back to a co-founder's own daily experience navigating dense contracts, rather than a retrofitted accessibility feature.

The Verdict

Its origin story is unusually authentic for legal tech: a real accessibility need, solved for one person, that turned out to generalise to an entire profession's daily friction with dense contracts. Cascade in particular stands out as a capability few competitors have replicated. The trade-offs are the ones common to enterprise legal software — no public pricing, UK jurisdiction rather than EU, and a product scope focused tightly on contract review rather than broader legal-AI use cases. For firms whose real pain point is finding, checking, and tracing changes through contracts, Definely is a specific, well-built answer rather than a general-purpose one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Definely GDPR compliant?

Definely states it is GDPR compliant and holds ISO 27001, ISO/IEC 42001, and SOC 2 Type 2 certifications. As a UK company operating post-Brexit, EU-based customers should confirm Standard Contractual Clauses and their specific data-hosting location as part of due diligence.

Does Definely replace Harvey?

Not directly. Definely focuses on contract review and drafting support inside Microsoft Word — defined-term checking, proofreading, ripple-effect analysis, and precedent search — rather than the broader legal research and generative drafting scope Harvey covers. Many firms use a Word-native review tool like Definely alongside a research-focused platform.

What are Definely's Read, Proof, Cascade, Enhance, and Vault modules?

Read checks defined terms and cross-references, and Proof audits documents for drafting errors. Cascade traces how an amendment affects related contracts, Enhance runs agentic AI review and redlining, and Vault searches precedent clauses across connected document management systems.

Is there a free trial for Definely?

No public free tier is advertised. Definely sells to law firms and in-house teams on a custom-quoted basis after a product demo.

What document management systems does Definely integrate with?

The platform connects to iManage, NetDocuments, SharePoint, and Microsoft Word. It does not currently offer native integrations with CRM systems or standalone e-signature platforms — an area where a full legal tech contract-lifecycle tool such as Juro covers more ground.