A legal tech startup built by a barrister to use AI reasoning system for case law and legislation has raised $2 million.
MiAI Law was founded and designed by practising barrister Laina Chan. After beta testing with lawyers, including international firms and barristers’ chambers, she raised $2 million from family, staff and angel investors in just five days in 2025.
The backers include Wai Ling Chan, Mei-Shan Tan, former General Counsel for Citibank SAR Hong Kong and China, and David Ioannidis, former head of fixed income trading at JP Morgan Australia.
The use of AI in document preparation for legal cases has been fraught, landing some lawyers in hot water and earning the wrath of judges for hallucinated citations. Chan said that rather than merely retrieving or summarising legal material MiAI Law connects authorities methodically and shows how conclusions are reached, and makes each analytical step visible.
She already has some heavy-hitting legal fans – most notably former High Court justice Michael Kirby who said: “MiAI Law is the way of the future and it is great to see an Australian at the forefront”.
‘Killer app’
2 Selborne Chambers silk Danny Feller described it as the “killer app” for lawyers.
“It transcends traditional legal research as it doesn’t just find information; it synthesises it. It has cut my preliminary research time substantially and uncovered lines of argument I might have otherwise missed,” he said.
“It is, without exaggeration, AI for lawyers on steroids, and will become an essential part of a lawyer’s toolkit.”
Chan developed MiAI Law initially for her own practice, spotting a structural gap in existing legal research tools.
“There was no AI system that embedded legal reasoning into its architecture,” she said.
“Law is not just retrieval. It is reasoning from facts and principles. MiAI Law is built to follow that same discipline.”
MiAI Law also has an audit capability through features such as contract review, designed to stress-test legal reasoning and identify gaps or appellate vulnerabilities before advice is delivered or an appeal is filed.
Chan said existing AI legal tools can locate a case or statute, but don’t show why it matters, the connections, or where the reasoning may fail.
“MiAI Law delivers transparent, methodical reports that lawyers can verify and test,” she said, adding that the human aspect of the law remains at the forefront.
“AI can support judgment, but it must never obscure it. MiAI Law is designed to strengthen professional reasoning, not replace it.”
David Ioannidis said he invested because MiAi Law isn’t a superficial large language model wrapper.
“Laina’s ambition was to build an AI-native legal platform from first principles using foundation models as components within a broader reasoning system, not as the product itself,” he said.
“More importantly, Laina’s combined legal and technical depth as well as her refusal to compromise on the objective were key factors. Her relentless resolve materially increases the probability that her vision becomes a reality.”