Legal tech startup Qura has raised €2.1m in a Seed round to develop an AI-driven search engine for lawyers. The round was led by Cherry Ventures, which has bases in Berlin, London and Stockholm.
In terms of how it works, Qura uses natural language queries, as you’d expect from an LLM-based system, it then explores the relevant databases and you can review all the sources, plus instead of just generating an answer, Qura shows you what passages are most relevant and worth your time that connect to your question. And, because it gives you the specific text related to your query, then hallucination risks are greatly reduced. In the future, they also plan to be able to connect to a law firm’s DMS.
So, how did Qura get started? As co-founder Erik Nordmark explained, it started during his second degree in law.
The Sweden-based company stated: ‘Erik dropped out after realising that the Swedish legal databases were dinosauric to navigate and that LLMs would change everything. He brought in technical co-founders Kevin Kastberg and Arvid Winterfeldt, both with backgrounds in Physics and the former in AI research.’
And on that point Winterfeldt, who is now CEO at Qura, said: ‘LLMs are changing how people work with text. A legal archive that lawyers took two weeks to search is combed in eight seconds with an LLM. It goes far beyond chatbots; Qura is a new way to structure and search databases.’
The new company added that its fourth co-founder is Elisabet Dahlman Löfgren, who left leading Scandinavian law firm Mannheimer Swartling after 22 years as a lawyer, and who was responsible for the firm’s legal tech initiatives over the last seven years.
Dahlman Löfgren stated: ‘There is a reason I decided to join Qura; we solve an actual problem – locating intel in vast databases – instead of being a technology looking for a use-case, like most GenAI chatbots who are struggling with adoption in legal. That is why we are winning market share.’
And finally, Sophia Bendz, General Partner at Cherry Ventures, and one of the early leaders behind Spotify, is joining the board.
In terms of the legal databases they already connect to:
- Sweden: Covering SFS, SOU, NJA, IMY, FI, and +50 other subcategories
- EU: Covering EUR-Lex, ESMA, EDPB, and +30 other subcategories
- New Jurisdictions coming 2025.
All well and good. There are of course a lot of companies working in the field of legal research, not to mention one or two giants out there. But, there is everything to play for and a focus on Europe may well provide the company with an edge in terms of competing with other more Anglo-centric legal research businesses.
Let’s end with a comment from Winterfeldt the CEO, on how Qura will stand out from the crowd: ‘ChatGPT created hype around AI’s ability to write. Qura shows the power when AI reads. That is where lawyers who need more than a chatbot find actual use for AI. Instead of spending days in a database, reading hundreds of pages, searching for a niche source or argumentation, you explain in detail what you are looking for and let Qura’s AI read and analyse every page, amongst millions, with careful attention.
‘The heavy work is done in seconds, leaving you with a broad selection of suggested relevant extracts. The primary result is a major reduction in time spent on research. But more interestingly, our AI finds relevance in unexpected sources you would never even open by yourself; that is a game-changer for research.’
Good luck to them!
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