Justima Spins Out of Osborne Clarke

In what is the first spin out in international law firm Osborne Clarke’s history, Justima, a Germany-based regulatory monitoring platform, is forming a separate business. The firm will retain an ownership share, they told Artificial Lawyer. (See AL interview below).

Using AI agents Justima continuously monitors hundreds of European and other international regulatory sources, delivering business-relevant updates to clients. It was created by Alexander Lilienbeck, CEO, and Christian Braun, CTO, and the management team is completed by Gereon Abendroth, Chairman & Managing Director, Partner at Osborne Clarke and Chair of the firm’s global AI Management Board, (pictured).

They explained that the platform analyses more than 200 legal and regulatory sources daily, and that such ‘monitoring tasks have consumed substantial resources within corporate legal departments while still carrying the risk of critical updates being overlooked’.

AL Interview

How many people in the spin-off?

Justima launches with a core team of five: co-founders Alexander Lilienbeck, CEO, and Christian Braun, CTO, both from Osborne Clarke Solutions; Gereon Abendroth as Chairman & Managing Director focusing on the strategic aspects; and two additional hires who joined in April 2026.

Further growth is planned for the second half of 2026. The lean team structure is a deliberate architectural choice: AI agents handle a wide range of operational workflows, allowing the human team to focus on areas where judgement is irreplaceable – e.g. engineering, regulatory expertise, and direct customer relationships.

What company structure will it have?

Justima is incorporated as a separate company, with its own management, infrastructure and market presence. 

Justima will go to market independently while being strategically embedded in Osborne Clarke’s broader regulatory and technology capabilities. The product is designed for cross-border European regulatory monitoring and is built as an AI-native SaaS platform. It is a software product, not a legal services offering.

Will OC still own part of it? 

Yes, Osborne Clarke holds a shareholding in Justima as a strategic investor and holds the majority. The investment is structured through Osborne Clarke’s German legal tech entity for the sake of agility. 

Why do this now? 

The timing reflects three things coming together: validation, market need and technology readiness.

First, Justima has completed a structured validation phase. Around 30 corporate users have been using the platform productively for  several months, allowing the team to test it against real regulatory workloads and refine the relevance logic with Osborne Clarke’s regulatory practice.

Second, the market need is clear. Regulatory complexity across Europe continues to grow, while many in-house teams still rely on fragmented alerts, newsletters and manual monitoring. The issue is no longer access to information; it is identifying what actually matters to a specific business.

Third, the technology is ready. Osborne Clarke was well placed to act on that moment: it combines a strong footprint and strategic focus in regulatory work with a top-tier AI engineering team experienced in regulated domains.

Now is the time to build a vertical AI system. We have seen major improvements with General-purpose legal AI systems and even Foundation model providers tipping into legal. The next step closes the gap between a general-purpose model and an enterprise workflow: AI systems integrated directly into the operational process, with domain expertise engineered into the product rather than prompted into a generalist model at runtime.

This is why Justima is built as vertical AI. A product engineered bottom-up for one task – regulatory monitoring for corporate compliance teams. From our perspective a generic assistant repurposed for the same problem will not get you there.

The broader principle is simple: Osborne Clarke does not believe clients should pay lawyer rates for work that software can do. They should get lawyers where lawyers add the most value: judgement, interpretation, risk and strategy.

That is exactly where Justima fits. It handles the high-volume monitoring layer and surfaces relevant regulatory change earlier and more clearly. Legal advice remains separate: if a client wants advice on interpretation, enforcement risk or implementation, that is handled by the law firm the client chooses, under a separate mandate. Justima is a software product, not a legal services provider.

Thanks and congrats!

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More about Justima here.

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