Filevine Acquires Pincites to Push Deeper into Corporate Legal and Accelerate Its AI Strategy
Filevine has acquired Pincites, an AI-powered contract redlining platform that lives inside Microsoft Word. The all-cash deal, which closed on Dec. 18, 2025, strengthens Filevine's move into corporate and transactional work while complementing its strong footing in litigation.
This is Filevine's second AI acquisition of 2025 after buying Parrot in April, and its fourth acquisition overall. It follows the company raising $400 million across 2024-2025, in addition to $226.1 million previously, positioning Filevine among the most well-capitalized companies in legal tech.
Why this matters for legal teams
Pincites fills a long-standing gap in Word-native contract redlining and playbook enforcement. It builds on Filevine's 2021 acquisition of Outlaw (CLM and proprietary document tech) and gives in-house teams and firms tighter control over negotiation inside their daily tool: Word.
Notably, Pincites has traction with enterprises such as Meta, Vercel, and Rubrik, with adoption across both legal departments and law firms. For Filevine, this is a clear push beyond litigation into enterprise-grade corporate legal work.
Key details at a glance
- Deal: Predominantly cash, eight figures, closed Dec. 18, 2025
- Team: Pincites' sister co-founders Sona and Mariam Sulakian and a ~4-person team join Filevine
- Headcount: Filevine now sits at ~700 employees
- Footprint: New San Francisco office anchored by the Pincites team, with ongoing AI hiring
- Strategy: Reinforces Filevine's "AI-first operating system" approach across litigation, corporate, and government
What Pincites brings
Pincites is an AI-native review and negotiation platform that runs as a Microsoft Word add-in, so lawyers and business partners can redline without leaving Word. It applies configurable playbooks, automatically marks up clauses, inserts comments, and flags deviations from preferred positions.
- Word-native workflows: Minimal change management for counsel and business users (Microsoft Word add-ins overview)
- Playbook-driven guidance: Enforce standards at scale; reduce risk and variance across teams
- 80+ languages: Translation and summarization for cross-border deals
- Enterprise fit: Adopted by high-security, large-scale environments
Founded in 2023 and a Y Combinator company (Y Combinator companies), Pincites raised a $3 million seed round in September 2023 led by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, with participation from Y Combinator, General Catalyst, and Liquid 2 Ventures.
AI strategy: Build and buy
The Pincites deal follows Filevine's acquisition of Parrot earlier this year (depositions, AI-enabled medical chronology). Together, these moves underscore Filevine's dual-track approach: build core AI internally and acquire targeted capabilities where it accelerates time-to-value.
Filevine also launched Lois (Legal Operating Intelligence System), which lets legal teams query live case data, draft documents, and work across notes, calendars, and custom fields inside Filevine. Company sources indicated the business is on pace to close its best quarter and best year to date, signaling continued M&A momentum and balance-sheet strength.
Team and expansion
Co-founders Sona Sulakian (ex-Ropes & Gray; strategy roles at Evisort and Salesforce) and Mariam Sulakian (former GitHub product lead and Meta engineer) will remain with Filevine. Their blend of legal domain depth and AI engineering was cited as core to Pincites' product quality.
Filevine will open a San Francisco office near leading AI companies, with plans to scale hiring in gen AI and machine learning over the next year. The company had previously stated that new capital would be used primarily to compete for top AI talent.
What this means for your legal org
- Shorter cycle times: Standardize negotiations in Word with playbooks that apply themselves
- Fewer misses: Automatic deviation flagging and comments help enforce preferred positions
- Better cross-border support: Multi-language review, translation, and summaries reduce handoffs
- Cleaner stack: Expect tighter integration between Filevine, Outlaw (CLM), Pincites (redlining), and Lois (AI assistant)
- Security and scale: Suitable for enterprise-grade controls; assess deployment model and data boundaries early
What to watch next
- Roadmap: How quickly Pincites' Word-native playbooks connect to Outlaw templates and Filevine matters
- Governance: Central playbook management, audit trails, and approval routing across departments
- Metrics: Track cycle time, variance from playbooks, and fallbacks accepted by counterparties
- Change management: Minimal, since it lives in Word-but invest in playbook quality and version control
Action items for legal leaders
- Inventory your top contract types and clause libraries; identify high-friction clauses and playbook gaps
- Define approval thresholds and exceptions up front to reduce back-and-forth during rollout
- Pilot with a focused business unit; measure time-to-sign, redlines per document, and deviation rates
- Clarify data security needs early (PII handling, retention, tenancy) and validate with vendor
If your team is upskilling on gen AI for contract work, here's a curated path to get started: AI courses by job.
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