Qura – which launched in 2023 and has about 10 people – has been bought by Legora. Unlike some of its more acquihire moves, this looks like a real acquisition and is designed to give the legal AI platform greater legal research capabilities – something that is a key strategic step.
Max Junestrand, CEO & Co-Founder of Legora, said: ‘Legal research will be a cornerstone of the legal AI stack, and Qura has built one of the most impressive foundations in the world.
‘We evaluated legal research startups globally, and Qura stood out by a wide margin. Their ability to combine deep legal understanding with truly AI-native infrastructure is exceptional. Together, we’re building the world’s best legal research product that works across jurisdictions and sets a new standard for the industry.’
At present Qura is focused mostly on the EU, and a spokesperson for Legora told AL that Qura was ‘just entering US/UK, so no commercial launch yet’ there.
AL covered their 2024 fundraise and explored what they do.
Legora said of the company:
‘Qura has rapidly established itself as a category-defining company in legal research by building structured, AI-native legal databases and systems that go far beyond traditional retrieval methods or RAG (Retrieval-Augumented Generation). The result is a product that enables precise, reliable legal reasoning, rather than surface-level search.
‘Qura has demonstrated the disruptive potential of this approach, winning the trust of law firms that have previously relied only on traditional publishers. The company has also shown early scalability internationally, particularly in competition law, where its product is now live across 27 jurisdictions [i.e. mostly the EU] Qura’s revenue has grown 40% month-over-month, underscoring strong market demand.’
Arvid Winterfeldt, CEO of Qura, commented: ‘From day one, our ambition at Qura has been to rethink legal research from first principles. We’ve built a system that doesn’t just retrieve legal information but understands it in context. Joining Legora allows us to scale that vision globally, faster. Together, we have the team, technology, and conviction to build the future of legal research.’
What Does Qura Bring?
To understand what they bring, here’s the interview that AL did with the company in September 2024, when the product was well-developed, but when they were still adding jurisdictions to the platform. At that point is was mostly focused on the EU, and as noted it is now moving into the US and UK, but has not launched formally in those areas at the time of the deal, it appears.
AL Article on Qura from Sept 2024
” ….. 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.’
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
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.’…..”
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Conclusion
This deal helps Legora in two ways. First is the gaining of legal research data from across the EU, but it’s actually the way that Qura works that could be most important of all.
As noted, they approach legal research in a way that they believe is better than the approach taken by the major legal data companies.
If Legora can build out its own really comprehensive legal research capability then it increases its value – especially as a standalone platform.
It doesn’t have what TR or Lexis or Clio have – and unless one of those combine very closely with Legora they will likely never have that level of curated legal data. But….they can work around it with new approaches to legal search and tapping data that is open.
Perhaps they will also seek to buy several small legal research companies across the world, in an effort to build their own case law vault? There are still independent legal publishers in Germany, for example, and in France.
On this last point, that’s just AL wondering out loud. Either way, as Max says above, ‘Legal research will be a cornerstone of the legal AI stack’…in fact, it already is.
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