- Athena has closed a $2.5 million pre-seed round led by a16z Speedrun to run an AI law firm.
- The founders left Legora, which is valued at $8.8 billion, to focus on providing legal services rather than legal software.
- Athena’s fixed fees are 30-50% less than what clients have been paying recently.
Cem Ucan once billed 3,000 hours in a year during his Big Law days. Athena, the San Francisco startup he co-founded after leaving Legora, starts with a very simple premise: law firms that bill by the hour have no incentive to work any faster, even with AI.
The startup just closed a $2.5 million pre-seed round, led by a16z Speedrun.
Athena provides legal services: its AI agents review agreements, spot anomalies, draft redlines, and prepare client correspondence. The lawyers at Athena Circle, the associated law firm, make all legal decisions and approve all work before it goes to the client.
In one early deal, they completed a purchase agreement in under 48 hours, and the client described it as their fastest experience.
Athena launched publicly in August and has 22 clients. The fresh funds will fund expansion into new property types, new locations, and new areas of transactional law.
From Legora to a law firm of its own
Ucan and co-founder Kieran John Keenan met at Legora, a Stockholm-based legal AI company that recently closed a $550 million round at an $ 8.8 billion valuation. Both founders have been acutely aware of the difficulties of selling AI to the traditional law firm market.
Ucan moved from Big Law to a legal innovation role at Baker McKenzie prior to joining Legora in 2024. Keenan did his law degree, built an automated legal reasoning system at his own startup, and was Legora’s first evaluations engineer.
Athena started when Keenan built a prototype that could take hundreds of documents and produce a first-draft due diligence report. José Braz, who later built Legora’s legal research agent and, more broadly, its research capabilities, joined Athena as a founding engineer. Keenan and Braz built Athena’s end-to-end deal platform.
“Most legal AI companies sell tools to traditional law firms. We took a different approach. Our AI works hand-in-hand with a law firm designed around it from day one, with experienced attorneys focused on the judgment and negotiation that actually move deals forward,” said Ucan, co-founder and CEO of Athena.
Fixed fees, and the claims behind them
Athena’s affiliated firm takes a fixed fee per transaction, typically 30-50% less than what the client paid on the recent deals, according to the company. The company also reports that attorney review time dropped by over 70% in the first six weeks because the system fed attorney corrections and client preferences into it.
“I measure our progress by how quickly an attorney can review an AI agent’s work and confidently stand behind it. A draft produced in minutes can still leave a lawyer with hours of work. Making that review more efficient is how our platform helps us deliver faster legal services with the quality clients expect from Big Law,” Keenan said.
The two-company structure is intentional. In most of the US, non-lawyers are prohibited from owning law firms or sharing in their fees under rules derived from ABA Model Rule 5.4. That’s why so many AI-native firms opt to split off a lawyer-owned practice from an investor-backed services company.
Rivals, and a refinancing wall past its peak
The competition is significantly bigger. Harvey raised $550 million at a $15.5 billion valuation in September and, like Legora, sells software to law firms and legal teams. Moritz raised $9 million in a round led by YC and 20VC in May and aims for AI to do 80% of the work on contracts with lawyers, with lawyers handling the remainder.
Fortune Business Insights is forecasting the global legal AI software market to grow from $5.21 billion in 2026 to $40.94 billion by 2034.
Athena’s growth is entirely dependent on commercial properties changing hands. The company points to several properties purchased in 2021 and 2022 that now have 3-5 year loans coming due, which will lead to significant refinancing and new deals. Some of their clients will make multiple offers each week and, in some cases, do dozens of offers on each deal they close. Speed can be the difference in the market for an investor who’s doing 10-15 deals a year. The refinancing wall is very much there, but it has passed its peak.
“As AI becomes more capable, clients will still want experienced professionals who take responsibility for the work. Athena is building around that need, with a system that can improve through real legal work and a team obsessed with scaling fast,” said Troy Kirwin, partner at a16z Speedrun.
A fixed fee incentivises speed until a deal becomes complex. Whether Athena’s pricing stays competitive during prolonged negotiations, and whether its 22 clients stay as larger rivals make similar promises, will determine whether the model is sustainable beyond initial deals.
