Palo Alto-based law firm Cooley has developed an AI-driven platform intended to help early-stage startups make routine legal decisions without immediately hiring a lawyer.
The tool was built in partnership with legal AI startup Legora and trained on Cooley’s internal data. It can analyze nondisclosure and contractor agreements, locate appropriate business forms, and answer legal questions about company documents.
Rollout and target users
Cooley says the product is meant to extend legal aid to smaller businesses that typically would not seek counsel at their stage, rather than replace the work of its 1,400 lawyers. The platform will first be rolled out to the summer batch of Y Combinator startups.
Context and rationale
Media reports have highlighted that companies such as Meta and Snap ran into legal disputes over decisions made in their early years. Business Insider also reported on an episode involving Legora’s CEO, Max Junestrand, who as a software engineer drafted early contracts using ChatGPT and left the company exposed to potentially large damages.
Those examples point to how missing or flawed basic legal work can create significant risk for young companies, and they help explain why Cooley and Legora see demand for a more accessible legal tool.
Limitations and implications
Whether the platform will prevent startups’ next major lawsuit remains to be seen. Nonetheless, its existence suggests legal services are becoming a standard offering for those with access to AI, which may force lawyers to reconsider who their clients are and which services customers will pay for.
Summary
The Cooley–Legora platform offers automated support for fundamental legal tasks—contract review, locating business forms, and answering document-related questions—and will launch first with Y Combinator’s summer startups. Cooley frames it as a supplement to traditional legal work rather than a replacement, while the long-term impact on startup legal risk is still uncertain.
