Artificial intelligence-driven law firm Arceus Legal today disclosed that it has raised $17 million in funding to expand beyond the commercial contract work it started with.

Arceus provides legal services to fast-growing companies at a flat price that is quoted before a matter begins. Licensed attorneys approve every piece of work, with help from AI agents and software Arceus built itself.

If a standard contract review takes longer than eight hours, the client does not pay for it, and the firm said most are finished in three to five. Its website lists that service at $500.

Speed is a big part of the pitch for companies whose deals stall while a contract waits on outside counsel. Traditional firms can take days or weeks to return a review, according to Arceus, and every call and email along the way goes on the hourly bill. Even with AI redlining tools, customers still have to check every output themselves, the company said.

Arceus takes that checking off the customer’s plate. Its attorneys work from an in-house operating system called CounselOS, which keeps a record of each client’s preferences, past agreements and negotiation history. New matters start from what the firm already knows about the business. Connections to Salesforce, HubSpot and Gmail feed in context from the tools a client already uses. The system also routes each matter to an attorney, and clients get live progress updates in Slack and email.

Most of the work so far involves commercial contracts such as master service agreements, nondisclosure agreements and vendor deals. Some clients have begun sending over employment and privacy matters as well, and the longer-term plan is a firm that can handle all of a company’s legal needs. Arceus said its customer base quadrupled in September.

Founder and Chief Executive Mac Liu said he went through multiple law firms before starting Arceus and kept running into missed deadlines and bills that came in higher than expected. The billable-hour model “just didn’t make sense to me because firms are incentivized to take longer,” he said.

Greycroft LP led the round, with participation from Craft Ventures Management, South Park Commons Management and other investors.

Mark Terbeek, a partner at Greycroft, said most of the legal AI market is focused on selling better software to existing law firms. Arceus, in his view, is chasing “a much bigger opportunity by rebuilding the law firm itself.”

The money will fund hiring at the firm’s San Francisco headquarters. Arceus is recruiting attorneys, engineers and AI researchers as it takes on more areas of legal work.

Image: Arceus