CS Disco, Inc. (LAW) Q1 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to CS Disco's First Quarter 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Head of Investor Relations, Aleksey Lakchakov. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss the financial results for DISCO's first quarter of fiscal year 2026. With me on today's call are Eric Friedrichsen, DISCO's Chief Executive Officer; Aaron Barfoot, DISCO's Chief Financial Officer; and Richard Crum, DISCO's Chief Product Technology and Strategy Officer. Today's call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 including, but not limited to, statements regarding our financial outlook and the future performance; our future capital expenditures; market opportunity, market position, product and go-to-market strategies and growth opportunities; and the benefits of our product offerings and developments in the legal technology industry. In addition to our prepared remarks, our earnings press release, SEC filings and a replay of today's call can be found on our Investor Relations website at ir.csdisco.com. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements represent our management's beliefs and assumptions only as of the date made. Information on factors that could affect the company's financial results is included in its filings with the SEC from time to time, including the section titled Risk Factors in the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, filed with the SEC on February 25, 2026, and the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are in addition to and not a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures and a discussion of the limitations of using non-GAAP measures versus the closest GAAP equivalent is available in our earnings release. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Eric.

Thank you, Aleksey. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. In the first quarter, DISCO delivered strong results across the board. With significant product momentum, continued traction with our largest customers in both software and services and strong underlying financial performance; we continue to drive accelerating and sustainable revenue growth. As AI permeates through the legal industry, law firms are looking for ways to boost their productivity, increase efficiency and deliver better outcomes in order to win more business as our corporate clients look to control litigation spend. The key to success in this environment is trust. The trust is earned through security, enterprise scale and litigation specific capabilities necessary to help lawyers win on the largest and most complex matters. This is where DISCO shines. We are in an excellent place with unique capabilities to continue to be a disruptor and leader in AI for litigation and our progress in Q1 has helped further differentiate DISCO from both general purpose legal AI tools and those in the traditional Ediscovery space. In Q1, total revenue grew 14% year-over-year to $41.9 million and software revenue grew 12% year-over-year to $34.7 million. This was the fourth consecutive quarter of accelerating growth in total revenue if you exclude the onetime contingent deal we recognized in Q3 of last year. We are very pleased to deliver strong software growth and to beat the high end of our total revenue guidance range. Adjusted EBITDA improved 32% to negative $3.5 million in Q1, also beating the high end of our guidance range. We saw strong Q1 performance in 4 key areas: first, increased wallet share among our biggest customers; second, growth of large multi-terabyte matters; third, continued adoption of our generative AI capabilities; and fourth, overall acceleration in the growth of data on our platform. Regarding improvement with our biggest customers: in Q1 we increased the number of customers that generated more than $100,000 in total revenue during the last 12 months to 347. The revenue attributable to these customers during the last 12 months totaled $124 million representing 77% of total revenue over this period and 13% year-over-year growth. We are continuing to add multi-terabyte matters as more complex litigation comes on to our platform. In Q1 we saw an acceleration in net new large matters added, which is a very promising sign given that these matters generate more revenue, expand over time and last longer on our platform. Continued adoption of our generative AI capabilities was driven by both Cecilia AI and Auto Review. DISCO is transforming high stakes litigation through an AI-native stack built on a decade of proprietary data innovation and purpose-built legal workflows. At its core, Cecilia's agentic intelligence allows legal teams to speak directly to their data, uncovering complex evidence in seconds rather than weeks. Cecilia Advanced Research is our new platform-native agentic AI capability, which is a breakthrough for Ediscovery and investigations. It is capable of much more sophisticated autonomous reasoning that extracts deeper context, makes next level connections and delivers significantly more detailed and thorough results across even the largest data sets. We're currently in testing with select customers on live case data in preparation for a broader rollout to wait-listed customers next month. The feedback is fantastic. Customers instantly grasp how much more they can accomplish and see it as a real example of what other AI providers have only been promising. Increased adoption has also extended through to our AI-powered managed services, which deliver expert-level results at software scale economics. The result is a secure enterprise-grade ecosystem that fundamentally redefines the speed and efficiency of modern discovery. DISCO Auto Review is a more accurate and leaner alternative to traditional review and an excellent example of our AI capabilities in action. As more law firms look for new revenue streams, Auto Review allows them to bring more of that work in-house rather than sending it to alternative legal service providers, moving review from a cost center to a profit center. This is a win-win-win for the client, for the law firm and for DISCO because it provides a clear ROI and better outcomes for the client while providing more differentiated revenue streams for the law firm and for DISCO. Our Auto Review capabilities continue to lead the market in terms of speed and efficacy and we believe that as more and more firms consider AI for their review needs that we are very well positioned to capture that demand. Interest in Auto Review continues to grow. We are seeing more customers engage with us to evaluate how Auto Review can help with their larger matters and it has proven to be a strong driver for our Managed Review offering, which also enjoyed a strong Q1. That's a great example of how our AI capabilities combined with our customer value proposition of With You in Every Case are bringing more customers, more matters and more revenue to DISCO. As far as overall acceleration of usage, we had a significantly better-than-expected launch of the DISCO platform in Q1. For context, the DISCO platform is our powerful industry-leading set of AI capabilities including Cecilia Q&A, auto timelines, document summaries, definitions and case builder bundled together in 1 solution with our Ediscovery capabilities on every matter. The DISCO platform gives customers everything they need to manage and win their matters for 1 competitive price. In the first 3 months, we've seen strong demand from customers with early adoption that has been much better than anticipated and we're equally pleased from a financial perspective. While it's still in the early days, we're seeing some very encouraging trends from DISCO platform adoption, including larger matters, increased committed revenue, multiyear deals and growing AI adoption. These results demonstrate how much easier we've made it to do business with DISCO, something further proven by the strong customer demand. Continuing to grow the DISCO platform is a key driver behind expanding wallet share among our existing base of large customers with large matters. I always like to highlight a couple of real-world examples to illustrate the value that DISCO is delivering to customers. These are examples of customers who have moved from important transactional relationships to strategic relationships that benefit us both. The first is Mound Cotton, a leading litigation boutique focused on insurance matters with a nearly 90-year history. Following the launch of our DISCO platform in the first quarter, Mound Cotton signed a 3-year enterprise agreement making DISCO the provider of choice for Ediscovery technology across their firm. The reasoning was simple. They wanted a strategic partner that combines secure cutting-edge AI technology with professional services and support that they need for their largest and most sensitive matters. Mound Cotton conducted a broad review of potential partners in search of a comprehensive integrated solution before selecting DISCO and noted that it quickly became clear that DISCO was the better product for their clients and better experience for their attorneys. As a firm that closely works with large global financial institutions, Mound Cotton was drawn to DISCO's reputation for security, privacy and reliability. They said we have the luxury of being able to select the best-in-class solution and the unanimous verdict was that DISCO is a dramatically better product today and that the gap will only widen in the future. As a firm with sophisticated clients that demand the best tools, DISCO is the right choice. We hear similar things from many of the top firms we work with. They need advanced secure technology paired with the expertise to help them get the most out of it to deliver results for their clients. The DISCO platform is making that easier than ever. A second example that demonstrates how we're building multiyear relationships because customers see our technology's potential is Reynolds Frizzell LLP, a generalist commercial litigation firm in Houston with a prominent energy litigation practice. Reynolds Frizzell is one of our longest relationships. They've been using DISCO since 2015 and they also recently signed a multiyear enterprise agreement to expand their use of our technology across their firm. Reynolds Frizzell has taken a considered approach to new technology in the legal tech space thoughtfully vetting AI applications and focusing on technology specifically designed for legal use cases. As they looked into legal AI applications, DISCO was a natural place to start based on a decade-long relationship built on trust and collaboration. Our Reynolds Frizzell partner said that they've used and evaluated a number of different AI legal tools and were especially impressed by DISCO Cecilia capabilities. We're excited to have it available for our cases, the partner said. This illustrates the power of our With You in Every Case value proposition. Our combination of advanced technology and expert professional services has made DISCO into an essential resource for Reynolds Frizzell and we're continuing to serve and grow this long-standing relationship into the future. The stories about Mound Cotton and Reynolds Frizzell are just 2 examples of our strategy in action and there are dozens more every quarter demonstrating our ability to develop these relationships and dramatically expand them over time. All told, Q1 was a strong quarter for DISCO with continued growth in our core business, a better-than-expected launch of the DISCO platform and great progress with AI adoption. We believe this creates significant momentum for us throughout 2026 and beyond. With that, I'll next turn it over to Richard to discuss how our recent product advancements and our product road map are shaping our longer-term view of the broader opportunity to provide powerful AI solutions for litigation. Richard?

Thank you, Eric. As Eric noted, we are incredibly excited about the customer response we're seeing to the DISCO platform and Cecilia Advanced Research. Both are important steps for us, but are really only the beginning of what we know is possible in litigation technology with our AI capabilities. The legal industry as a whole is in a period of significant change. Law firms face pressure to leverage new technology and consider changes to their business models. Corporate legal departments are expected to control spend while workloads are growing. And everyone is grappling with the growing volume of new complex data leading to very real data management and fact-finding challenges. The general legal AI companies and even tools from foundational model providers are offering legal workflow solutions that address a wide range of transactional legal work such as redlining contracts, drafting memos and extracting information from a set of documents. Legal tasks for efficiency and automation to speed up work is truly valuable. Litigation is an entirely different game. It is significantly more complex. Litigators are not asking for ways to work faster. They want solutions that shift the odds in their favor by delivering the crucial case intelligence that leads to victory. They need to win. And the expertise and precision required to deliver that requires scaled technology like we have developed at DISCO. Put another way, litigators need solutions that are purpose-built for the unique demands of the practice. It needs AI built for litigation. That's what we're building. At DISCO, we are continuing to extend our AI applications for our customers beyond traditional Ediscovery compliance to unlock both new strategic advantages and drive value across the litigation life cycle. Let me explain that with some more detail. There are 2 high level outputs from Ediscovery, production compliance and a detailed understanding of the facts and evidence in context. Ediscovery has traditionally focused on production compliance because it is an important court mandated step in the litigation process with real consequences if you get it wrong. But it is also a necessary tick-the-box exercise with limited strategic value on its own. Most Ediscovery tools have made production more accurate, automated and efficient; but they have not made it more strategic or independently valuable. This is where DISCO is different. Our ability to surface not just the facts, but the complete picture of context, intent and relationships between documents and data. DISCO goes beyond the required production to deliver a comprehensive set of facts and evidence organized, tagged, connected and understood in relation to the claims of the matter. The real value for litigators is in the mastery of those facts. The second piece is in the law itself and it's worth reminding everyone that DISCO holds a license for the full corporate of U.S. case law, statutes, regulations and court rules. The facts of the case and the law of the jurisdiction together in 1 platform will be a powerful combination. We will share more about our vision and how it will come together soon, but let me turn back to what we're delivering right now. Three years ago DISCO first dramatically disrupted traditional Ediscovery with Cecilia AI. Our new Cecilia Advanced Research is an agentic AI toolset that leapfrogs the capability of those many copycat Q&A tools that have followed us by helping attorneys develop winning case theories during discovery and all along the litigation life cycle as the matter advances to settlement or trial. Unlike simple Q&A tools, Cecilia Advanced Research functions as an intelligence agent performing multistep analysis across massive amounts of data to deliver defensible court-ready insights that litigators use to build winning case theory from day 1. Cecilia Advanced Research can generate work product for litigators as a case advances, build tighter and more compelling narratives with our integrated timelines functionality, streamline deposition and witness preparation and interrogate the record at trial and they do this all in 1 powerful integrated and secure platform from DISCO. We're currently in testing with select customers on live case data in preparation for this broader rollout to priority customers on our wait list later this month and the feedback is fantastic. Customers instantly grasp how much more they can accomplish and see it as a very real example of what other AI providers have only been promising. The new era of AI, both generative and agentic, opens up a treasure trove of opportunity. You don't have to know how to use complicated technology. You just have to know how to articulate the outcome you're looking for, something that lawyers are already incredibly good at. DISCO AI lets litigators focus on the output of the process, winning for their clients who hire them to deliver. We believe this means lower barriers to adoption, greater usage of our platform across the life of a matter and most importantly, better results for our customers and their clients. In the simplest of terms, at DISCO we are directly investing in our customers' competitive edge to help them win cases and grow their business. DISCO is the AI solution for litigators. With that, I'll hand it over to Aaron.

Thank you, Richard. Q1 results were strong across all our revenue lines. We exceeded the top end of total revenue guidance in the quarter and came in above the midpoint of our guidance range in software. In Q1 2026, total revenue was $41.9 million, up 14% year-over-year while software revenue was $34.7 million, up 12% year-over-year. This was the fourth straight quarter of accelerating total revenue growth excluding the impact of onetime contingent software revenue recognized in Q3 of last year. Services revenue was $7.2 million, up 25% year-over-year. To start, I want to touch on some of the dynamics we are seeing in our software business. As Eric mentioned, we saw strong traction in Q1 with DISCO platform. We are seeing more cases start on DISCO platform with more matters and gigabytes than we had expected through Q1 as customers see the obvious benefits of bundled products and all-in-one pricing. We expect these new larger matters will be a tailwind for our business in the coming quarters, but we could see variability as customers move from sets of individual products and ingest fees to the DISCO platform. I also want to touch on our performance in services, which exceeded expectations in Q1 and was driven by growth of both professional services and our review business. We've discussed in the past the tremendous impact we believe Auto Review will have on the litigation workflow as more customers embrace AI adoption. While we have customers all along the spectrum of AI readiness, both new and existing customers are curious about Auto Review's capabilities. A further dynamic we are seeing is that as customers learn about both our traditional review and Auto Review, some choose to use traditional review as they consider broader AI implementation. That dynamic helped fuel our strong services result in Q1. Turning to profitability metrics. In discussing the remainder of the income statement, please note that unless otherwise specified, all references to our gross margin, operating expenses and net loss are on a non-GAAP basis. Adjusted EBITDA is also a non-GAAP financial measure. Our gross margin in Q1 was 75%, consistent with 75% the prior year. As we mentioned before, our gross margins fluctuate from period to period based on the nature of our customers' usage, for example the amount and types of data ingested and managed on our platform. Sales and marketing expense for Q1 was $14.8 million or 35% of revenue compared to 36% of revenue the prior year. The year-over-year dollar increase was driven by personnel costs as we invest in our go-to-market capabilities. Research and development expense for Q1 was $12.9 million or 31% of revenue compared to 33% of revenue the prior year. Research and development increased year-over-year primarily driven by higher personnel costs as our team continues to focus on AI and platform development. General and administrative expense in Q1 was $8.6 million or 21% of revenue compared to 23% of revenue in Q1 of the prior year. General and administrative expense were relatively flat year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was negative $3.5 million in Q1 representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of negative 8% compared to an adjusted EBITDA margin of negative 14% in Q1 of the prior year, also a 600 basis point improvement. We are pleased with this progress and the fact that adjusted EBITDA exceeded the high end of our guidance. Net loss in Q1 was $4.2 million or negative 10% of revenue compared with a net loss of $4.9 million or 14% of revenue in Q1 of the prior year. Net loss per share for Q1 was $0.07 compared to $0.08 per share for Q1 of the prior year. Turning to the balance sheet and cash flow statement. We ended Q1 with $103 million in cash and short-term investments and no debt, maintaining our strong financial position. Operating cash flow in Q1 was negative $11.7 million compared to negative $10.5 million in Q1 of the prior year. Turning to our guidance. For Q2 2026, we're providing total revenue guidance in the range of $41.5 million to $43.5 million and software revenue guidance in the range of $36.1 million to $37.1 million. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of negative $4.5 million to negative $2.5 million. For fiscal year 2026, we are increasing our total revenue guide to the range of $169.25 million to $178.75 million and software revenue guidance to the range of $146 million to $152.5 million. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of negative $8 million to negative $4 million. Now I'd like to turn the call over to the operator for Q&A. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Scott Berg with Needham.

Probably a question for Eric or Richard, I wanted to start off with I think the A topic in the space in the quarter. There's been a lot of questions we feel it from investors on the ability for customers within the litigation space to use some of the tools that have been released on the frontier large language models out there and you all addressed that a little bit in your prescripted remarks. But I think the question in all of that is does it actually disrupt sales cycles or maybe how your customers are using the product during the quarter as they maybe "tried" or wanted to evaluate those technologies or do you really see it maybe more as a nonevent in your operational activities?

Scott, this is Richard. Thanks for that question and I think it's an important dynamic to unpack a little bit. It's certainly written about a lot that generative AI has the ability to commoditize some of the simple steps that lawyers do, right, whether it's summarizing documents or running a search or drafting. But I think it also in some ways elevates the intelligence layer where DISCO, right, that's where we've invested, that's where we shine because the context that comes from the power of how DISCO's platform powers litigation brings evidence and facts to life for our customers, right? It's so much more powerful than what any large language model or a tool that's simply built on top of that large language model could ever do even with the same data. And so I think what we're seeing is our customers realizing that Ediscovery actually presents a real shift from just a simple tool to perform a job into something that with DISCO can give them a strategic advantage.

Yes. Scott, I'll add on to that. This is Eric. No, we haven't seen any slowdown at all in sales cycles related to these new tools that have come out. In fact if anything, it's helped us drive AI adoption because lawyers, overall law firms are much more interested to see how AI can impact them. And we've got AI that can drive incredible ROI and help provide better outcomes ultimately for customers' clients. So the short answer is no, we haven't seen any negatives at all. It's been very positive for us.

Excellent. And then from a follow-up perspective, you all commented that the DISCO platform I think saw better interest and adoption in Q1 than maybe what you had initially anticipated there. But in your conversations with customers so far, I guess what have you found in terms of pricing and use relative to, I don't know, a customer that was just using Ediscovery before. If you can help us understand maybe what that opportunity or journey is like to take a customer from what's historically been a single solution on the DISCO platform to the all-in opportunity there. I think that would be really helpful.

Really demand for AI is what drove far better-than-expected results with the DISCO platform adoption. Certainly, there was some pent-up demand from both our customers and our sales teams. They were excited for the opportunity to have Cecilia AI, Case Builder and all of our core Ediscovery capabilities integrated across all of their matters. So that's the main driver. But also as you remember, our old pricing model was hard to understand and it made some customers feel that we were much more expensive than the competition especially for larger matters when we were actually pretty similar. And so a shift to more of an apples-to-apples pricing model has really increased our consideration for new matters and for new customers and it's made a big impact already. I mean we've seen some very big and complex matters starting the DISCO platform right here out of the bat in Q1. We've seen increased revenue commitments. We've seen longer-term agreements from some of these customers. So DISCO platform is off to a great start and I'm really optimistic about the future.

Our next question comes from David Hynes with Canaccord.

Eric, I wanted to ask a big picture kind of industry implications question related to the AI-driven advancements we've seen in legal tech. Do you think it makes it so that the largest firms are able to take on more so that they own kind of more of the space or does it level the playing field so that smaller firms are able to be more competitive? And I guess what are the implications of all this perspective change for DISCO?

Yes, I'll get started and others can feel free to chime in. But look, I think this is an opportunity for law firms to generate more revenue. The whole legal industry right now is rethinking their business models. And what AI can do is give the opportunity for these law firms to be able to take more business in-house that they were previously sending out to alternative legal service providers. If you think about particularly when it comes to the review process, this low level, low dollar work that was fairly mundane tasks that law firms didn't really feel like fit their model for the most part in how they wanted to provide value to their customers. They were sending it out to these alternative legal service providers doing that human work and part of that was they were missing out on the revenue. The other part of it was they were losing the context of all that great work. And so now the fact that they have the opportunity to leverage much, much better technology with generative AI and products like Auto Review to be able to bring that business back in-house, add extreme value on top of it in terms of legal judgment and generative AI consulting services and keep the context in-house to really help their lawyers go drive case strategy. It's a real game changer. Ultimately, the law firm can generate more revenue. That's good for DISCO. But also the end client can save money and get better outcomes. So ultimately, I think this is a big shift and a big opportunity for each of us.

Yes. Makes sense. Aaron, a follow-up for you. So the $100,000-plus net add number was particularly strong this quarter, but software revenue has held more or less flat the last few quarters. Can you just help me understand that dynamic? Are the customer adds a leading indicator and software revenue should follow or is the uptick in folks moving over that spend threshold just services driven? Like how should we think about this?

I think when you look at the quarter and you look at the movement of the $100,000 customers, we're certainly happy that sequentially it grew 5% quarter-over-quarter and I would definitely characterize that as a leading indicator. And the reason for that is obviously the matter comes in, it ingests and then it expands and moves on to the platform. So that's the dynamic that happens and that's why it's a leading indicator. I'd also add though with that when you think about it as a leading indicator, there's going to be -- there's movements both ways, right? You have matters coming in, you have matters going off. And so you're always in a usage model looking at the triangulation of both. And so it is obviously having a strong quarter usually is a good leading indicator of those matters coming in, but it also depends on what's coming out and that's what goes into our models. I think when you look at the quarter, relatively speaking, one of the other elements you asked about kind of with the growth is, and I touched on this in my prepared remarks, with Auto Review. We're super happy with the traction we've seen. It's actually brought us new customers' matters. It's brought us matters from existing customers. And in bringing those in, what happens is those customers come in at varying states of AI readiness. And so as it comes in through the pipeline, we've seen a handful of those go and convert and become Managed Reviews. And so that helps drive -- so Auto Review actually helps drive part of the fee on the services line for the quarter, which is why we're very proud to come at the upper end of the range there. At the same time, we're happy that some of those came in, became Managed Reviews; but subsequently, those customers have come back to us with other matters and chosen Auto Review. So I think what you're watching, and Eric kind of alluded to this too, is law firms are becoming more and more comfortable with AI and how it plays and so we're watching that closely.

Yes. I think it also just speaks to in every case, customer value proposition, right? So we're with our customers in every case. And if they choose at a certain point because we're not quite ready to use Auto Review, we can leverage our AI managed services and our Managed Review to really help them in the short term. So overall, I'm incredibly pleased about the revenue, 14% revenue growth for the business this quarter.

Yes, yes. And just so we're all perfectly clear. Auto Review falls into the software line and Managed services obviously falls in the services line. Is that correct?

Correct. And Auto Review actually has 2 components today. It actually has -- part of it sits in software and part of it sits in services. And the reason for that is that actually goes to some of the familiarization part of it as well. What happens is today, a customer, we might actually help engineer the prompts for them. So that's still manual work that we do as we set them up. But I think as customers become more familiar over time, that prompting will not be required and so it will become fully -- it will be truly software revenue. But today, it sits partially in software and partially in services.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Eric Friedrichsen, CEO, for closing remarks.

Yes. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for the questions. Q1 was a strong quarter for DISCO. The demand for our AI capabilities drove better-than-expected results for the launch of the DISCO platform. We're already seeing benefits from our new pricing model, which was designed to increase consideration, to improve win rates, to reduce discounts, to improve stickiness and ultimately to provide more value to our customers. I've said before and I'll say it again that I believe that DISCO can be a 20%-plus grower over time. In the first quarter, we made continued progress on the key drivers that are going to make that happen; things like increasing our share of wallet with our large customers, acquiring larger matters and accelerating AI adoption. So all 3 of those demonstrate that our strategy is working. And along with our product road map and where we're going next, DISCO is really poised to be the leader in AI for litigators. We've increasingly transformed high stake litigation through our purpose-built legal workflows. We are very much focused on litigation not general legal. And when you combine our strategy with our path to reach adjusted EBITDA profitability in Q4 of this year, we believe DISCO is on an excellent trajectory today and we're positioned for the future as our solutions become increasingly the standard to help litigators win. So thanks for your time today. We'll see you next quarter.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.