Why lawtech female founders struggle to secure funding

Research continues to show that the biggest barrier to the success of any startup is access to funding and finance. This is particularly true for women in the tech sector – a fact recognised by the UK government which recently launched the Women in Tech Taskforce.

While the legal profession in England and Wales is broadly gender-balanced, the tech sector remains disproportionately male. Women make up one-fifth of tech teams.

As a member of LawtechUK’s panel, we strive to support initiatives which promote a diverse lawtech sector by offering free mentoring and networking events to encourage innovation, responsible AI adoption, and strengthen access to justice. But research shows that, when it comes to securing financial backing from venture capital in the early stage of their business, women are hardest hit. The pipeline of women founders in lawtech is far thinner than it should be.

Seven years ago, I founded Oxford’s first lawtech innovation lab which led me to co-found my lawtech startup. What I discovered were real barriers which limit women’s access to capital and leadership opportunities.

Bias in the room

Research by Harvard University shows that investors tend to ask male founders promotion-focused questions such as ambition, growth and scale. Women founders however were asked more prevention-focused questions about risks and losses. The study found that the framing of the questions correlated to funding outcomes.

Networks matter

As a startup, you need the right connections to grow. These give you access to funding, early clients and strategic partners. Women often operate outside of the informal networks where first introductions, warm referrals and recommendations happen.

Existing disparities

Much of the lawtech investment goes into products designed for large law firms and corporate legal departments, such as tools for contract automation, workflow platforms and legal AI infrastructure. In contrast, there is a notable concentration of women founders building lawtech solutions for individuals and small businesses. These ventures often meet real market needs and deliver meaningful social impact, including expanding access to justice. Yet they are consistently undervalued by investors. The result is a paradox: women are disproportionately innovating in segments where capital is scarcest.

Compounding this challenge is the fact that very few senior VC partners are women. While female investors should not be assumed to automatically back female founders, decision‑making networks that remain overwhelmingly male have historically underfunded women-led startups.

This underinvestment is not just inequitable. It is strategically shortsighted. Across industries, companies with gender-diverse leadership teams have produced stronger financial returns and innovation.

See Also

Closing the leadership gender gap could take 18 years

AI is transforming every sector, not just law. But when women are missing from its development and oversight, we risk building systems that carry forward existing biases into the future.

I mentor through LawtechUK’s programmes, working with both male and female lawtech founders, and the number of women mentors has grown steadily. The UK is seeing an increasingly active community of female investors – small in number but growing in influence. We cannot change the funding gap overnight but the presence of female investors demonstrates things are starting to change.

A constructive path forward starts with openness: we need more transparent funding data in lawtech so we can track real progress. Investors also need to pay attention to how their questions and choices may unintentionally favour some founders over others. Targeted mentoring and accelerator programmes can give underrepresented founders access to skills, advice, and investment networks they often miss out on. And government innovation schemes should make diversity an explicit requirement, not just a nice extra. Taken together, these steps would help create a fairer, stronger, and more inclusive lawtech sector.