Count on AI to make legalese easy as A, B, C

Harshit Garg and Kiran Mohan, computer science engineering graduates from Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), chose different career paths - Garg pursued a PG in legal studies in Melbourne and became a barrister, while his friend Mohan stayed back in Singapore to work as a software engineer. When they met in the city-state a few years later in 2025, and got talking, they discovered that legal services globally had not kept pace with other industries in adopting AI. This laid the foundation for Lexi, a legal-tech startup that drew the attention of international accelerator, Y Combinator, securing the first round of fundraising. Lexi is the first Indian legal-tech company to be backed by Y Combinator for building AI-powered legal associates for lawyers, says Garg, co-founder & CEO."Our extensive research involved discussions with about 200 lawyers and law firms spanning India, Australia and Singapore. In India, we spoke to lawyers in district courts, high courts and the Supreme Court. We found that a majority of legal services were executed manually. A few lawyers observed that they were facing challenges in taking up fresh cases or adding new clients as preparing drafts was time-consuming. These processes could be automated to ease document drafting, and AI could offer a one-stop solution," said Mohan, co-founder and CTO.Their specialisation in AI during varsity years and their industry experience came in handy. Garg had founded an online ticket-booking platform before moving to Australia, while Mohan was leading a team engaged in blockchain infrastructure, security products and scaling AI applications at a Singapore-based firm.Both quit their jobs and returned to India to launch Lexi, a Latin word referring to law — in June 2025. Hailing from a family of two generations of lawyers in Punjab, Garg focused on legal while Mohan from Chennai handles tech. "After the launch, we applied to Y Combinator in the US. Raising funds from the accelerator is not easy because one needs to convince them in 10 minutes online. We cleared it and received $0.5 million in our maiden round of fundraising," said Garg.Today, the Chennai-headquartered startup has operations in India, Singapore, and San Francisco. Currently, more than 100 law firms and lawyers handling over 7,000 cases have been onboarded. Over the past six months, the company has raised another $0.5 million from multiple sources, including venture capital firms. "We will be raising an additional $2 million this year to scale the company across product and sales," Mohan added.So what is the platform's USP in an era of multiple AI options, several of which are open access? According to Mohan, leading law firms have teams of associates who review contracts, research case law and prepare drafts round the clock. "We are giving every lawyer that same firepower through AI-powered associates. We ensure that privacy is absolute. Every document shared on Lexi is protected with end-to-end encryption and can be accessed only by the lawyer. We never use customer data to train our models," he added.Garg points out that rental agreements, which can take a few hours to a couple of days to draft manually, depending on the property, can be created in less than two minutes. "The same applies to notices, affidavits, and other legal documents. Also, our AI-powered legal associates have separate models for each of the three countries — India, Singapore, and the US — to suit their respective legal systems. Lakhs of judgment copies cited in courts are available at the touch of a button on our platform," he said. Going forward, the company plans to expand its capabilities deeper into the case lifecycle. "Today our AI agents handle research, drafting and contract analysis, but we are further upgrading our platform so that the agent can manage a case end-to-end," Garg added.