Ex-Legora and Big Law lawyers get a16z backing for AI law firm Athena

In commercial real estate, speed can make or break a deal. Offers move in hours and capital moves in seconds, yet legal paperwork can still take weeks. Athena is changing that.

The company has raised a $2.5 million pre-seed round led by a16z Speedrun.

Athena’s proprietary AI agents work alongside experienced transactional attorneys at its affiliated law firm. They deliver complex deal documents in hours, at a fraction of the traditional cost. Legal work can finally move at the speed of dealmaking.

Legal AI is booming, but most of it is being sold to firms that still make money by the hour. When AI turns ten hours of work into two, those firms stand to lose revenue.

Athena flips those economics. Athena’s affiliated law firm charges a fixed fee per transaction, typically 30-50% less than clients paid on recent deals. The faster Athena works, the better the economics for both the firm and its clients.

For commercial real estate investors completing 10-15 acquisitions a year, that speed can make a material difference.

“Most legal AI companies sell tools to traditional law firms. We took a different approach,” said Cem Ucan, Co-Founder and CEO of Athena. “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.”

For clients, working with Athena feels like working with a traditional law firm. They send documents to their attorney and receive legal work back. Behind the scenes, proprietary AI agents handle much of the heavy lifting.

Athena’s affiliated law firm advises on commercial real estate acquisitions, sales and financing. Its work runs from purchase agreements and due diligence to loan documents and closings.

When a new agreement comes in, Athena’s agents review it against the deal terms and identify inconsistencies. They prepare redlines and draft client communications. They also draw on previous transactions to understand each client’s negotiating preferences.

Experienced attorneys review the work, make the legal decisions and approve everything before it reaches the client.

The results are already showing. On an early transaction, the team turned around a purchase agreement in under 48 hours. It was the fastest turnaround the client said they had experienced.

“A lot of firms in our industry have an AI task force in name only,” said L. Miguel Arce, CEO at Mox, a Texas-based multifamily real estate investment, property management, and development company. “What stood out about Athena is that the system learns from every deal, from what the attorneys change to what we prefer. Speed only matters if it’s quality work, and the Athena platform gets us both.”

And the platform gets better with every deal. Attorney corrections and client preferences feed back into the system, reducing the work needed on future transactions. In its first six weeks, Athena cut attorney review time by more than 70%.

“I measure our progress by how quickly an attorney can review an AI agent’s work and confidently stand behind it,” said Kieran John Keenan, Co-Founder and CTO of Athena. “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.”

In commercial real estate, speed can determine who wins a deal. Some Athena clients make several offers a week and submit dozens of offers for every deal they close. Once a property goes under contract, every day counts.

That urgency could soon extend across the market. Many commercial properties acquired in 2021 and 2022 were financed with three-to-five-year loans now approaching maturity.

As refinancing pressure builds, Athena’s founders expect more properties to change hands. That would drive a new wave of transactions and legal work. Athena is positioning itself to handle that volume. It aims to give investors the speed and cost advantages of AI, with experienced attorneys accountable for every deal.

Athena’s founders met at Legora , where they both saw the potential of AI and the limitations of selling it to traditional law firms.

Cem Ucan had spent years in Big Law, at one point billing 3,000 hours annually, before moving into legal innovation at Baker McKenzie and Legora.

Kieran John Keenan studied law before building an automated legal reasoning system at his own startup. It combined legal understanding with hands-on AI engineering and evaluation. As Legora’s founding evaluations engineer, he then built systems to assess and improve AI performance across drafting, research and agentic workflows.

The idea for Athena took shape when Kieran built a prototype that could turn hundreds of documents into a first-draft due diligence report. The founders saw an opportunity to build a new kind of legal service around the technology.

José Braz, who developed Legora’s legal research agent and broader legal research capabilities, joined as founding engineer. Together, Kieran and José built what is now Athena’s own end-to-end deal platform.

Troy Kirwin, partner at a16z Speedrun, said: “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.”

Commercial real estate is just the beginning. Athena plans to expand across property types, geographies and eventually other areas of transactional law, with an ambition to fundamentally change how quickly business gets done.

“We want legal work to be measured in seconds and minutes rather than weeks and months,” said Ucan. “Our ambition is to free a 21st-century economy from a 19th-century legal delivery model.”

Athena helps commercial real estate investors close deals faster. Its proprietary AI agents work alongside experienced transactional attorneys at its affiliated law firm on acquisitions, sales and financing, from purchase agreements and due diligence to loan documents and closings.

Legal services are provided exclusively by Athena Circle, which offers fixed-fee pricing, with attorneys responsible for every legal decision and all work delivered to clients. Backed by a16z Speedrun, Athena is building a new model for legal services that makes complex transactions faster and more affordable.

Contributed article. Not produced by the TNW newsroom and does not reflect the editorial stance of TNW.