Moritz, a Y Combinator-backed startup that operates as an AI-native law firm, shared the pitch deck it used to raise $9 million in a seed round that closed in four days. Business Insider published the deck exclusively on Monday, offering a detailed look at how the company pitched legal automation as a venture-scale business.

The Round

CEO Pamir Ehsas, a former outside counsel to OpenAI at a large Norwegian law firm, co-founded Moritz with Stefan Mandaric, a MIT-Fulbright scholar and engineer. They initially targeted $3 million from institutional investors and set up more than 200 VC meetings before Y Combinator’s Demo Day, according to TechFundingNews. They hit their goal on the first day, cancelled most remaining meetings, and closed 3x their target.

Y Combinator and 20VC led the round, joined by Urban Innovation Fund and Inception Fund, a Swedish investor that previously backed legal software company Legora. The angel roster includes founders of Reddit, Instacart, Dropbox, Cruise, Gusto, Runway, Hugging Face, Supercell, and Superhuman, plus employees of ElevenLabs, Lovable, and OpenAI.

How It Works

Moritz does not sell software to law firms. It is one. The company competes directly with traditional firms on commercial, corporate, and employment work, offering flat-fee quotes with a four-hour average turnaround.

AI handles roughly 80% of each engagement: intake, first drafts, document review, and legal research. A network of more than 50 contracted lawyers reviews and approves the final work product. The firm provides full attorney liability.

“I was advising companies building the most important technology of our generation. And I still couldn’t believe how slow and expensive the legal experience was,” Ehsas told TechFundingNews.

The pitch deck, originally prepared when the company was still called Arcline, positions Moritz as a challenger to traditional firms that charge by the hour and take weeks to turn around contracts. Business Insider reported that some slides were redacted for public sharing.

Early Traction

In its first three months, Moritz supported over 100 companies in the US, Europe, and Australia, closing deals worth more than $2 billion in aggregate contract value. One example: the firm drafted a $290 million master services agreement for a US financial services company in 24 hours. The opposing law firm took four weeks to review the same document, according to TechFundingNews. The contract was signed with only two minor changes.

The company has an operations and engineering team of seven. Ehsas told Sifted that Moritz excludes litigation, immigration, and tax work, focusing exclusively on “highly automatable” commercial transactions.

Moritz was one of three law firms in Y Combinator’s Spring 2026 batch. Crosby, backed by Sequoia, reviews and negotiates contracts for companies like Cursor and Ramp. Manifest Law handles work visas for foreign nationals. The LegalTech Fund has also launched a separate accelerator for companies competing directly with law firms, according to Business Insider.

The Professional Services Wedge

Legal automation follows a pattern that has already played out in coding (Claude Code, Devin, GitHub Copilot) and security (Pentest Agent Suite, Mythos). The economics are straightforward: professional services bill at high hourly rates, much of the underlying work is document-based and pattern-heavy, and clients have limited visibility into how long tasks should actually take.

Moritz’s bet is that AI agents can compress the labor side of legal work enough to offer flat-fee pricing that undercuts traditional firms on cost while matching them on speed and quality. The 3x oversubscription suggests investors agree the market is large enough. The question is whether a seven-person team with contracted lawyers can maintain quality at scale, especially as the company expands across European jurisdictions from its new San Francisco headquarters.

Ehsas has said the company rejects “about 99%” of lawyers who apply, according to Business Insider.