We built the
intelligence platform
for outside
legal spend.
PERSUIT was founded on an unwavering belief: clients value outcomes, not hours. For ten years, we've built the platform, the data, and the community that proves it — in collaboration with the world's most forward-thinking legal leaders. What started as one founder's conviction has become an industry movement.
A lawyer who got
tired of the problem
Jim Delkousis spent years as a partner at DLA Piper watching the same dysfunction play out again and again. Legal departments at major corporations had no real visibility into what they were spending on outside counsel, why they were picking the firms they picked, or whether the rates they were paying were anywhere close to market.
The firms had all the information. The clients had almost none. And the entire industry had collectively decided that this was just how things worked.
Jim decided it wasn't. He founded PERSUIT in Melbourne in 2016 — a platform that puts the data back in the hands of the people buying legal services. The team grew, moved to New York, and expanded globally. The core belief hasn't changed. What started as one founder's conviction has become an industry movement. The Wall Street Journal calls PERSUIT customers “pioneers of a new operating model.” Today, the transition from hourly rates to value-based pricing is accelerating — and PERSUIT is at the center of it.
We are not a tool that helps lawyers do legal work. We are the intelligence layer that governs how enterprises engage, manage, and control external legal spend. That distinction matters more in an AI world, not less.
Ten pioneering years.
One industry movement.
He resigns as a BigLaw partner, moves to Melbourne, and founds PERSUIT. The pitch is simple: the $300B+ global legal services market has a transparency problem, and technology can fix it.
The toughest $15k we've ever earned. Not enough to keep the lights on — but proof that someone believed.
Cash nearly gone. Jim relocates to the US. Do or Die.
The network effect is real. The world's biggest firms are submitting proposals on PERSUIT. The data starts compounding.
A fiercely competitive global process. PERSUIT wins. The enterprise playbook is proven.
The world's top law firms are now embedded in the platform. 15+ Fortune 100 companies partner with PERSUIT. The operating model is changing.
Wins accelerating. The Fortune 500 is paying attention.
Named the most widely used legal RFP software in the HBR survey of 225 law departments. Then ranked #6 in Fast Company's World's Most Innovative Companies. In the same quarter.
While the world locked down, we leaned in. New features, new customers, new markets. The platform grows through the disruption.
1,000+ law firms have responded to Requests on PERSUIT — including 98% of the Global 200. HSBC rolls out PERSUIT across its global legal function.
OpenView Partners leads a $20M Series A. Deloitte announces a global strategic partnership. UBS joins the growing network of global banks. Billions in proposals are now flowing through the platform, and the data moat gets significantly deeper.
The PERSUIT 50 debuts — ranking the world's top firms by client excellence and value, not reputation. Award-winning collaboration with Sanofi. The Wall Street Journal highlights PERSUIT customers as pioneers of a new operating model. The intelligence platform positioning takes hold for real.
PERSUIT acquires Apperio, creating the world's first connected legal spend intelligence platform — from matter inception to final invoice. In the same year, Persi launches: PERSUIT's intelligence layer trained on the proprietary data layer. The platform crosses $20B in legal spend data. PwC announces a global strategic alliance.
The $22B+ data layer. 4,800+ legal service providers. 100% of the AmLaw 100. The platform expands into agentic workflows — more of the work of managing external legal spend happening inside PERSUIT, not outside it. The governance and data layer that only gets more valuable as AI accelerates. Ten years in. The biggest chapter is ahead.
Leadership Team
Re-inventing the business of legal spend management requires world-class talent working in unison across the globe. Together, we're solving the biggest problems in the legal industry.
Board of Directors
Experienced operators and investors who believe in what we're building — and hold us to a high standard.
Four moats.
None of them easy to copy.
We're not a workflow tool that happens to have data. We're a data and governance platform that also happens to be the best workflow tool in the market.
$22B+ in structured legal spend data from real transactions. Not surveys, not estimates — negotiated rates, agreed outcomes, actual bills. No AI trained on the internet can replicate this.
Years working with the world's largest legal departments have encoded how billion-dollar legal functions actually operate. That institutional logic lives in the platform.
Fortune 500 legal teams have been trusting PERSUIT with their most sensitive operational data for years. In a world where AI apps appear overnight, that trust is a genuine moat.
4,800+ legal service providers. 100% of the AmLaw 100. Every firm that joins makes the platform more valuable. Every matter adds a data point.
The conversation in the market right now is about whether SaaS is dying. The reality is that software is simply evolving. The winners in the next era will be platforms that combine deep domain workflows, proprietary data, enterprise trust, and AI-powered automation. That combination is exactly what we are building.
As AI enables legal teams to bring more work in-house, the decisions about what goes external become the highest-stakes decisions in the function. Governance and control layers don't become less important as automation increases — they become the entire game. PERSUIT is the orchestration and governance layer for every dollar that leaves the building.
Jim Delkousis, CEO — All-Staff Communication, March 2026
The numbers
that matter.
Ten pioneering years, one data layer, one unwavering belief — and a network that only gets more valuable over time.
See what 10 Years
of Work Looks Like.
200+ enterprise legal teams. $22B+ in data. One platform.