Josef

Josef is a legal automation software company founded in Melbourne in 2017 by Tom Dreyfus, Sam Flynn and Kirill Kliavin, all three of whom are still associated with the business. It is independent and founder-led, backed by early-stage venture investors rather than a strategic parent, and runs a distributed team serving customers in Australia, the United States and Europe.

Josef began as a no-code platform for building legal chatbots and document generators, raising roughly US$7 million across a 2019 seed round and further rounds in 2021 and 2022, the last of which was led by OIF Ventures with Carthona Capital, Flying Fox Ventures and Jelix Ventures. It has since narrowed its line to three offerings, Josef Q for grounded AI question answering, contract automation and workflow automation, and reported sharp growth in use of the question answering module through 2025.

Josef at a glance:

• Founded: Founded in 2017 in Melbourne by Tom Dreyfus, Sam Flynn and Kirill Kliavin, who started the company to close the gap between legal services and the people who need them.
• Headquarters: Headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, with a distributed team and customers across Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe.
• Ownership: Independent and founder-led, backed by OIF Ventures, Carthona Capital, Flying Fox Ventures, Jelix Ventures and Saniel Ventures, with no private equity or trade owner.
• Legal Technology Portfolio: Sells Josef, a no-code platform combining Josef Q for grounded AI question answering with contract automation and workflow automation modules.
• Market Focus: Serves in-house legal and compliance teams plus law firms, universities and legal aid bodies, strongest in Australia with growing presence in the United States and United Kingdom.

What legal teams should know: Josef is a small, independent vendor, so buyers get direct access to the founders and quick configuration but should weigh company scale and support depth against larger platforms. It suits departments that want business users to self-serve on routine questions and documents without a systems integration project. Its access-to-justice work also makes it common in legal aid and university settings.