

When Jason Boehmig was in law school at Notre Dame in 2012, he decided he really wanted to be in technology. So he sent a cold email to Ted Wang, who was one of Silicon Valley's most prominent lawyers, having represented Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Square and Spotify.

Boehmig asked Wang for a 15-minute meeting to pitch him on his idea to bring intelligent software to the legal world. Wang agreed to hear him out, so Boehmig hopped on a plane from Indiana to meet with the lawyer in the Bay Area.

"Wouldn't it be great if you could have associates who could code and automate their own jobs and would make the firm more efficient?" Boehmig recalled asking Wang, who was a partner at Fenwick & West. Wang liked the idea enough that he ended up hiring Boehmig for a two-year gig helping out on start-up work.

"He came and helped us deliver a higher-quality service to our clients," said Wang. "So we could make their experience better, the work product was more accurate, and it was cheaper to the client."

Seven years later, Boehmig and Wang are still working together on that idea.

Boehmig is co-founder and CEO of Ironclad, a start-up focused on automating the flow of contracts and other paperwork. Wang, who joined investment firm Cowboy Ventures in 2017, put some money into the company.

Ironclad has since caught the attention of the best-known start-up investors. The company said Wednesday that it's just closed a $23 million financing round, led by Sequoia Capital.

The fresh money is "really around intelligence as the future of our software," Boehmig said in an interview.