Ross McNairn

Ross McNairn is co-founder and chief executive of Wordsmith, an AI platform for in-house legal teams that he co-founded in 2023 with Volodymyr Giginiak, now chief technology officer, and Robbie Falkenthal, now chief operating officer. The company is headquartered in Edinburgh and New York.

McNairn trained as a lawyer before moving into technology. He held senior roles at Skyscanner before its $1.7bn (£1.3bn) sale and helped scale Perk from $1m to $200m in annual recurring revenue.

A front door for legal work

Wordsmith takes in legal requests from across a business, through Slack, Teams, email and tools such as Salesforce, then routes them, lets AI agents handle the routine ones and records every step. Lawyers approve anything that needs judgment. Its customers include BT, Starling, Sage, Canva, Deliveroo, Skyscanner and Trustpilot, which the company says cut contract review time by 85%.

“Legal does not need another filing cabinet, and it does not need another copilot that simply helps one lawyer work faster,” McNairn said when the company announced its Series B in June, as reported by Scottish Legal News.

$84m in two months

On 3 June 2026 Wordsmith announced a $70m Series B co-led by Highland Europe and Index Ventures, which had led its earlier rounds. On 5 August it added a $14m extension led by Intact Private Capital, with FT Ventures joining as a shareholder. The company says revenue grew 14 times year on year and more than 500 companies now use the platform.

It had just over 100 staff in June and plans to reach about 300 across the UK and US by the end of 2026, according to TheBusinessDesk. The extension is aimed at North America and at financial services and insurance customers.

Why it matters to UK buyers

For UK general counsel and finance directors, Wordsmith is a test of whether routine legal work can be kept in-house and measured, rather than sent to law firms by default. “Every dollar that leaves a legal team and goes to outside counsel is a decision,” McNairn said in August. Its integrations with Microsoft 365, Slack and Ironclad mean it sits inside tools most UK businesses already run, which matters to the IT teams that have to support it.

McNairn has taken Wordsmith from incorporation in October 2023 to more than 500 customers and a 14-fold rise in revenue, with UK names such as BT and Starling among them. If the hiring plan holds, Edinburgh gains a legal technology employer of about 300 people.