Deloitte Legal Research Platform ‘Moonlit’ Spins Out

Amsterdam-based Moonlit, a genAI legal research platform, has spun out of Big Four firm Deloitte to go its own way and compete in the legal data market with a focus on the EU.

It’s not the first legal tech company to spin out from Deloitte either. In 2020, Arteria – a contract management business focused on the financial sector – spun out of its Canadian arm.

Dirk-Jan van den Broek, Co-Founder of the now independent Moonlit, who is a class action lawyer and also the founder of another legal tech company, ClaimShare, told Artificial Lawyer the business had spun out because ‘case law and legislation research and analysis are not a core business for Deloitte and Moonlit will thrive better as an independent tool’.

They have also received fresh investment, including from Curiosity VC. Van den Broek told this site he could not reveal the amount, but added that ‘we can disclose that Deloitte is a launch partner and supporter of the platform’.

So, what does it do?

Moonlit enables legal professionals to ‘track the implementation and interpretation of EU directives across all member states, identifying trends, divergences, and commonalities in legal decisions’.

And this is quite a big deal, as the EU is constantly producing new directives, but the EU’s many independent member states don’t always feel the need to implement them at once or in exactly the same way. In fact, some drag their feet for years before responding to a directive in terms of integrating it with local law.

This then means that although ‘EU law’ sounds helpful as an umbrella term, in reality France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy and everyone else in the Union of 20-plus nations implements directives in their own particular way and in their own time – and thus court decisions in each nation that refer to, or stem from, those directives won’t necessarily be uniform either.

By tracking all of this, Moonlit can ‘enhance the quality of legal advice and allow lawyers to craft stronger, more informed arguments supported by a broader spectrum of case law’. And clearly this will matter if your law firm or business operates across the EU.

It can also provide a personalized dashboard with custom alerts so you can track the latest updates in your areas of interest across multiple EU jurisdictions. This tailored feed then delivers case law updates from the evolving legal landscape.

The platform also features a specialized GenAI chatbot, delivering instant answers from an ‘exclusive database’ of over 9 million documents. All results are verified and referenced by source articles, ensuring reliable and authoritative information, they added. There is also the ability to do translations, summaries and show legal timelines, as you’d expect with a genAI tool.

As to the tech, Van den Broek told AL that: ‘We use different models, open source, OpenAI and other models, depending on which model is most suitable for the task involved.’ And that multi-model approach has now become standard procedure for most legal tech companies, with very few sticking with just one LLM provider.

Roderick Lucas, Co-Founder & CEO of Moonlit, an AI expert and academic who was one of the key people at Deloitte who helped to build the software internally before the spinout, added in a statement: ‘The investment and spinout from Deloitte represent a logical step forward for Moonlit. We’re grateful to build on years of investment made by Deloitte and expand our reach as an independent entity. Our technology makes cross-border legal research more efficient, and this spinout makes it accessible for all legal professionals across Europe.’

It goes to show that just when you think every area of legal research has been covered by the very large legal publishers an enterprising new company pops up to handle a specific need. It’s also good to see more legal tech companies coming out of Europe.