Founded by a former Freshfields lawyer, the platform offers custom-built legal services that are co-developed with leading European lawyers and law firms.

Potsdam/Berlin, May 27, 2026 – Many German businesses face the same dilemma when dealing with legal matters: slow and expensive law firms on one side, and generative AI they do not fully trust for sensitive legal issues on the other. At the same time, regulatory pressure continues to increase. German SMEs now spend an average of around 32 hours per month on legal and compliance-related work, a burden the KfW estimates costs the German economy around €61 billion every year. Legal tech startup nu:legal offers businesses a third solution.

Today the company launches the public beta of its platform at nulegal.eu and announces a total funding round of €1.3 million led by Caesar Ventures, with participation from tech entrepreneurs, AI operators, additional venture capital investors, as well as partners from Freshfields and other leading European law firms.

“nu:legal is building a true end-to-end legal services platform, not just another point solution. By combining an exceptional ex-Freshfields team with a full-stack AI platform and human-in-the-loop workflows, they are uniquely positioned to transform legal services for SMEs,” says Carolin Gabor, Managing Partner at Caesar Ventures.

At launch, nu:legal is focusing on employment law and data privacy, two of the biggest operational legal and compliance challenges facing German SMEs. Additional categories, beginning with commercial contracts, will follow in the coming months. The platform is designed to help businesses handle processes such as employment contracts, terminations, privacy policies, and data processing agreements significantly more efficiently. To achieve this, nu:legal’s technology handles standardized every day legal tasks, and offers the option for a specialist lawyer’s review when legal judgment and accountability are required. “Many companies are already using AI systems for legal questions, but generic AI models are still unreliable for sensitive legal work. Not just because of trust, but because they can produce highly confident wrong answers. That creates real risk for businesses,” says Bork Morfaw, Founder and CEO of nu:legal. “And that’s exactly the gap we want to close.”

From Freshfields lawyer to legal tech founder.

nu:legal was founded by Bork Morfaw, a former lawyer at Freshfields, Europe’s leading international law firm. There, he worked on legal tech and GenAI initiatives for the largest international corporations and observed how founders, HR teams, and mid-sized businesses repeatedly ran into the same structural problems: high costs, slow processes, and limited access to practical legal support. In early 2025, Morfaw left the firm to build nu:legal full-time.

Before launching nu:legal, Morfaw created “LegalGPT” (formerly AnwaltGPT), one of Europe’s best-known legal AI products, with more than 200,000 users. The project confirmed the enormous demand for fast and accessible legal support, while also exposing the limitations of AI in legal work, particularly around liability, transparency, and the complexity of German and European regulation. “The real problem isn’t that businesses don’t want legal support,” Morfaw said. “The problem is that the existing system was never built for the speed modern businesses operate at. We want to help

companies spend less time dealing with bureaucracy and focus more on building, innovating, and growing.”

Technology for legal work, not generic AI

nu:legal is neither a traditional law firm nor a pure AI tool. The platform was built specifically for the German market and works together with specialist lawyers and law firms who co-develop the legal workflows, templates, and services available on the platform. Every workflow is co-developed with specialist lawyers who have at least 5 years of experience and is continuously improved based on feedback from legal experts and practical use cases.

“We don’t believe in replacing lawyers,” Morfaw said. “We believe in making legal expertise scalable through technology. Many standard legal processes are still handled largely manually today. That costs businesses time while also tying up resources on the law firm side.”

Focused on German and European regulation

Unlike many international competitors, nu:legal is specifically focused on German and European legal systems. The platform is designed for German employment law, data privacy law and data protection law workflows and supports GDPR and European data protection compliance. All data is processed and stored within the EU. In addition, nu:legal implements technical and organizational safeguards designed around legal confidentiality requirements and German data protection standards. “Law is extremely local,” Morfaw said. “You can’t simply translate US products and expect them to reliably understand German labor courts or European privacy requirements.”

Building European legal infrastructure

Currently, services are co-developed with specialist lawyers and law firms. Long term, nu:legal plans to expand into a platform where specialist lawyers can build and scale their own technology-enabled legal services. A corresponding model is already in development.

The public launch will initially follow a controlled waitlist model via nulegal.eu. Platform access will be expanded gradually in order to further refine product quality and user experience. Over the medium term, nu:legal also plans to expand into additional European markets.

About nu:legal

nu:legal is a legal tech platform, founded in Berlin, Germany, that helps European businesses handle legal work faster, at a fraction of traditional legal service costs. Instead of waiting weeks and paying high law firm fees, small and medium-sized companies receive employment law and data privacy support in hours. The platform combines proprietary technology with the expertise of specialist lawyers. The focus is not on generic AI answers, but on legally sound, practical solutions built specifically for the German market.

nu:legal was founded by Bork Morfaw, a former lawyer at Freshfields and former legal tech and GenAI lead in the international law firm environment. With his first project, LegalGPT, he reached more than 200,000 users, laying the foundation for the creation of nu:legal. For more information, visit nulegal.eu or follow nu:legal on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Press contact

Laetitia Delorme, PR & communication mail@laetitia-delorme.de

+49 176 64928379

Product Fact Sheet

Company

Name: nu:legal
Headquarters: Potsdam, Germany
Founded: 2025
Public Launch: May 27, 2026
Founder & CEO: Bork Morfaw (ex-Freshfields)

Funding

Total funding raised: €1.3 million
Investors: VC firms, entrepreneurs, AI operators, law firm partners, and angel investors

Product

nu:legal is an AI-native legal platform for small and medium-sized businesses across Germany and Europe. The platform combines:

specialist-built legal workflows,
intelligent automation,
transparent human review,
and legally robust execution.

Launch Focus Areas

Employment Law: Employment contracts, Terminations, Warning letters, Separation agreements, Employment references

Data Privacy: Privacy policies, Data processing agreements (DPAs), Consent forms, Data deletion concepts, Records of processing activities (RoPA)

Target Audience

SMEs with 50-500+ employees
Founders
HR teams
Operations teams
Growth-stage companies

Key Differentiators

Built specifically for German and European law
Not generic AI, but specialist legal systems
Combination of technology and expert review
Focus on speed, transparency, and reliability
Data processing within the EU
Attorney-client confidentiality protections under German law

Proof Points

More than 200,000 users of LegalGPT
More than 50 LOIs and pilot customers before public launch
Platform developed together with specialist lawyers

Media FAQ

What exactly is nu:legal?

nu:legal is an AI-native legal platform for businesses. The platform helps SMEs handle legal processes (particularly employment law and data privacy matters) faster, more transparently, and more cost-effectively.

Is nu:legal a law firm?

No. nu:legal is not a traditional law firm. It is a technology platform that combines legal workflows with specialist legal expertise.

Does the platform replace lawyers?

No. The goal is not to replace lawyers, but to make legal expertise scalable. Technology handles repetitive tasks, while legal professionals are involved wherever legal judgment and responsibility are required.

Why launch now?

Generative AI has fundamentally changed how companies expect legal support to work. At the same time, many businesses still do not fully trust generic AI tools in legally sensitive contexts. nu:legal positions itself directly within that trust gap.

Why focus on employment law and data privacy?

Employment law and data privacy are among the biggest operational legal challenges for German SMEs and create particularly high time and cost burdens.

What role did LegalGPT play?

LegalGPT served as the proof of concept for the demand for faster and more accessible legal support. The experience and insights gained from LegalGPT became the foundation for nu:legal.

How does the platform work?

Users describe their legal issue or request. The platform then creates structured legal workflows and documents. For more complex or sensitive matters, specialist legal professionals can be brought into the process.