# Query Juriste

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/query-juriste/ · added 2026-11-08 · updated 2026-11-08

**In short.** Query Juriste (AI legal research for French lawyers: searches French and European law and case law and writes a sourced research note, France): Sold to Lexroom with terms not disclosed, September 2026. Evidence grade E: no revenue figure was checked. Team: 3 co-founders (an engineer, a salesperson and a lawyer) with a team whose size was not published; all joined Lexroom in September 2026. Launched April 2024; sold 29 months after launch.

AI legal research for French lawyers: searches French and European law and case law and writes a sourced research note · France · AI-native · team of 2 to 10 · sold · group: Legal and law firms

- Outcome: Sold to Lexroom with terms not disclosed, September 2026 (evidence grade of the headline number: E; no revenue figure)
- Launch: April 2024; months from launch to the outcome: 29
- Team: 3 co-founders (an engineer, a salesperson and a lawyer) with a team whose size was not published; all joined Lexroom in September 2026
- Outside funding: None before the sale (Pulse 2.0: "bootstrapped"); bought by Lexroom in September 2026
- Main factor: Local legal data
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 1
- Tags: AI-native, Small team, Bootstrapped, Exit, B2B, Legal

Links:

- Visit query-juriste.com: https://www.query-juriste.com/

**The product.** A research tool for French lawyers and in-house legal teams. The user asks a legal question; the system searches French codes, court decisions and European law for several minutes and returns a structured research note with its sources. The company's FAQ compares the note to the work of a junior associate. It is sold to firms at custom prices after a demo.

**Why it worked.** Three co-founders, an engineer, a salesperson and a lawyer, built it in Paris from 2024 without outside investors. They chose slow, sourced answers over instant chat answers, and connected the tool to official French and European legal sources. Large Paris firms such as Bredin Prat adopted it. In September 2026 the Italian legal AI company Lexroom bought the whole company to enter France.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; E = no revenue figure found, so the headline is a non-money fact and the other facts carry their own grades; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

Query Juriste is a legal research tool: legal research is the work of finding the laws and court decisions that apply to a question and explaining how they apply. The tool does this with an AI agent, a program that uses a language model to plan and run many searches by itself before it writes an answer. A note takes 5 to 10 minutes, according to the company's press kit, and cites the decisions and articles of law it used.

Etienne Le Guay, Emile Lombardo and Maxence Mortagne founded it in Paris in 2024, according to Pulse 2.0, and the French company register shows the company was created on 24 May 2024. It was bootstrapped, which means it grew only from customers' payments, with no investors. On 8 September 2026 Lexroom announced that it had bought 100% of the company, which then had nearly 300 customers and around 1,000 paying users.

No sale price, revenue figure or price list was found, so this page has grade E: no revenue figure. The customer and user counts come from the buyer's announcement as reported by three trade publications.

## Pricing

Query Juriste prices: none are published (read 8 November 2026 and in an Internet Archive copy of 6 March 2026, grade C)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free trial (before the sale) | 0 | 0 | 14 days, cancel at any time |
| Law firms and companies | not published | not published | custom prices after a demo |

The site today says "Tarifs sur mesure, adaptés à votre structure" (custom prices, adapted to your organization, translation) and offers a demo booked through Calendly. Before the sale, the home page of 6 March 2026 offered "Commencer 14 jours d'essai - Annulez à tout moment" (start a 14-day trial, cancel at any time, translation). No page read for this story gives a price, a plan name or a billing period. The buyer's announcement speaks of around 1,000 paying users.

## How much did Query Juriste make, and what was it sold for? The numbers, graded

A French legal research tool built by three co-founders without investors and sold to a larger Italian competitor 29 months after its site first appeared; no money figure is public

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sale | Lexroom bought 100% of the company, announced 8 September 2026; no price given | B | Pulse 2.0: "Lexroom has acquired 100% of French legal AI company Query Juriste". Tech.eu: "Legaltech Lexroom today announces the acquisition of French legal AI company Query Juriste". None of the three reports gives a price or terms. The French register, read 8 November 2026, lists Paolo Fois, Lexroom's chief executive, as president of the company. | [1, 2, 3, 4] |
| Customers and paying users at the sale, September 2026 | nearly 300 customers and around 1,000 paying users | B | Tech.eu: "In France, Query Juriste brings nearly 300 customers and around 1,000 paying users". The same words appear in Pulse 2.0 and Artificial Lawyer. This is the buyer's statement; no source gives revenue. | [1, 2, 3] |
| Company start | QUERY JURIST, a French SAS (simplified joint-stock company) in Paris, created 24 May 2024 | A | Official company register (Recherche d'entreprises), read 8 November 2026: the only match for "query juriste". Its officers include Etienne Le Guay, Emile Lombardo and Maxence Mortagne. Pulse 2.0: "Founded in Paris in 2024 by Etienne Le Guay, Emile Lombardo and Maxence Mortagne". | [4, 2] |
| First appearance of the site | 15 April 2024 | B | The earliest Internet Archive copy of query-juriste.com, a script page titled Query Juriste. The launch date on this page is that month; no source gives a launch day. | [12] |
| Founding team | 3 co-founders; total headcount not published | C | FAQ (also in its Internet Archive copy of 6 February 2026): "Query repose sur trois co-fondateurs aux profils complémentaires : Étienne, l'ingénieur suisse mais pas protestant ; Émile, le commercial ; et Maxence, le juriste" (Query rests on three co-founders with complementary profiles: Étienne, the Swiss but not Protestant engineer; Émile, the salesperson; and Maxence, the lawyer, translation), "accompagnés d'une équipe talentueuse et dévouée" (with a talented and dedicated team, translation). The register gives no headcount band. | [7, 4] |
| Outside funding | none | B | Pulse 2.0: "The bootstrapped company has expanded beyond legal research into document analysis and drafting". | [2] |
| Named customers | Bredin Prat, De Pardieu Brocas Maffei | B | Pulse 2.0 names both law firms as customers. The company wrote on 27 February 2026 that "Bredin Prat a déployé sa solution sur l'ensemble des avocats du cabinet" (Bredin Prat has rolled out its solution to all the firm's lawyers, translation) after several months of tests. | [2, 9] |
| How the product works | a sourced research note after 5 to 10 minutes of searching | C | FAQ: "notre système engage une recherche en profondeur pendant 7 à 9 minutes, raisonne comme un juriste, et produit une note juridique structurée" (our system runs an in-depth search for 7 to 9 minutes, reasons like a lawyer, and produces a structured legal note, translation). The press kit says 5 to 10 minutes. | [7, 8] |
| Legal data | more than 5 million French and European legal documents from 18 official sources | B | Tech.eu gives the 5 million documents; Pulse 2.0 gives "18 official French and European legal sources". The FAQ lists the codes, more than 2.7 million court and administrative decisions from open data, decisions of the Court of Justice of the EU, and EU regulations and directives. | [1, 2, 7] |
| Counts on the company's pages before the sale | more than 1,000 users (press kit); 250+ firms and companies and 500,000+ queries (home page) | C | Press kit, Internet Archive copy of 6 February 2026: "Basé Station F, Query Juriste compte plus de 1000 utilisateurs" (based at Station F, Query Juriste has more than 1,000 users, translation). Home page, copy of 6 March 2026: "500 000+ requêtes effectuées" and "250+ cabinets & entreprises". | [8, 6] |
| Time from the first site copy to the sale | 29 months | calc | Calculated: April 2024 to September 2026. | [12, 1] |

How to read this table: grade A is the official French company register. Grade B is the buyer's announcement as reported by the press, or the Internet Archive's dated copy. Grade C is the company's own pages. An "X" value was computed on this page. No revenue figure exists in any source read.

## When did Query Juriste launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From a first web page in April 2024 to a sale in September 2026. Each entry carries its grade.

- **15 April 2024** (grade B [12]): The earliest Internet Archive copy of query-juriste.com.
- **24 May 2024** (grade A [4]): The company QUERY JURIST is registered in Paris as a simplified joint-stock company.
- **12 May 2025** (grade C [10]): The team announces its move into Station F.
- **27 February 2026** (grade C [9]): The company announces that Bredin Prat has rolled out the tool to all its lawyers after several months of tests.
- **6 March 2026** (grade C [6]): The home page offers a 14-day trial and counts more than 250 firms and companies and 500,000 queries.
- **8 September 2026** (grade B [1, 2, 3]): Lexroom announces that it bought 100% of Query Juriste, with nearly 300 customers and around 1,000 paying users. Etienne Le Guay is to lead Lexroom in France and the brand is to move to Lexroom over time.

## Why did Query Juriste work?

### Slow answers on purpose

The home page says "Pas de réponses instantanées, mais un raisonnement fiable" (no instant answers, but reliable reasoning, translation). A note takes several minutes because the agent searches and reads the cited documents first. For a lawyer who must cite real decisions, a sourced note is worth the wait.

### Built on the legal data, not on a chat model

Etienne Le Guay said in the sale announcement, as quoted by Tech.eu, that AI helps lawyers only if it is built on the legal data itself rather than on top of a general-purpose model. France publishes its court decisions as open data, and the tool loaded them with the codes and EU law.

### Three skills in three founders

The FAQ describes an engineer, a salesperson and a lawyer. The company's news posts read for this page are signed by Maxence Mortagne, and large Paris law firms such as Bredin Prat and De Pardieu Brocas Maffei became customers, according to Pulse 2.0.

### A local data layer that a larger company wanted

Lexroom's chief executive said that it does not make sense to reinvent the wheel market by market. A buyer entering a new country needs that country's legal data and customers, and Query Juriste had both.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's own pages (grade C) and from the buyer's announcement (grade B). No source names the language model the product uses.

- An agent that searches for several minutes and returns a structured, sourced note, instead of a chat reply.
- Data: French codes, more than 2.7 million court and administrative decisions from open data, decisions of the Court of Justice of the EU, and EU regulations and directives.
- Hosting in Europe. The FAQ and the press kit name Scaleway, a French cloud provider; the home page of March 2026 named Microsoft Azure.
- A web app with sign-in, a 14-day trial before the sale, and custom prices for firms after a demo.
- Positioned as an aid to legal reasoning, not as legal advice: a company page lists that it does not give legal advice and does not replace a lawyer.

Sources: [7, 8, 6, 5, 11, 1]

## Who tried this before Query Juriste, and why did they fail?

Three companies in our database of failed startups tried to sell AI or software to lawyers and failed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### ROSS Intelligence (2015 to 2018; funding US$13M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: AI legal research that finds the right case law faster than the large legal databases.
- Why it died: Lawyers stayed with Westlaw and LexisNexis, whose decades of data and high switching costs kept customers in place.
- Record: 

### jEugene (2015 to 2018; funding US$120K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: A checker that finds errors and inconsistencies in contracts for law firms.
- Why it died: Rivals with broader AI products took the market while law firms adopted new tools slowly.
- Record: 

### Atrium (2017 to 2021; funding US$75M; cause: Product/Tech Failure)

- Promise: A law firm for startups made cheaper and faster by software.
- Why it died: The automation could not handle real legal complexity, so costs stayed like a traditional firm's.
- Record: 

## What changed

ROSS Intelligence promised the same thing, faster legal research with AI, and lost to the large legal databases. In 2024 two things were different. Language models could read and summarize decisions well enough to write a research note, and France had published millions of court decisions as open data, so a small team could build its own legal corpus.

Query Juriste also did not try to be a law firm, as Atrium did: it sells a tool and says on its own pages that it does not give legal advice. And with no investors, the founders could accept an offer from a funded competitor that wanted to enter France.

## Can one person copy Query Juriste now?

**Verdict: Partly: the method yes, the French data head start no.**

A small team with a lawyer, an engineer and a salesperson can still build a research tool over one country's open legal data. In France the space is now crowded and the funded players buy local teams, so the opening is in other countries, other languages and narrow fields of law.

1. Pick one country or one field of law whose decisions and statutes are published as open data.
2. Load the primary sources and make the agent cite every document it uses.
3. Sell to named firms after a trial or a demo, and publish their rollouts.
4. Stay small and without investors, so that a sale to a larger company remains possible.

**What is still open.** Legal research in countries and languages that the large legal AI companies have not entered, and narrow specialist fields where a general tool is weak.

## What could go wrong for Query Juriste?

- **What is not verified.** No sale price, revenue figure or price list was found. We read the reports of Tech.eu, Pulse 2.0 and Artificial Lawyer, the French company register, the company's home page, FAQ, press kit and news posts, and Internet Archive copies from 2024 and 2026. The counts of nearly 300 customers and around 1,000 paying users are the buyer's statement. A reader could look for the company's filed annual accounts or a later interview with the founders.
- **Claims on the company's pages.** The home page shows a row headed "Déjà adopté par les équipes de" (already adopted by the teams of, translation) with the logos of Veil Jourde, BG2V, De Pardieu Brocas Maffei and Bredin Prat and the names GIBSON DUNN and JEANTET. Pulse 2.0 names Bredin Prat and De Pardieu Brocas Maffei as customers; no other source read for this page names Veil Jourde, BG2V, Gibson Dunn or Jeantet as customers. The pages also disagree on hosting: the FAQ and press kit say Scaleway, while the home page of 6 March 2026 said Microsoft Azure; the live home page now says Scaleway.
- **The brand is being retired.** Tech.eu reports that the Query Juriste brand will gradually transition to Lexroom, and the site now says "Query Juriste fait désormais partie de Lexroom" (Query Juriste is now part of Lexroom, translation).
- **Competition.** Like Maite.ai, a Spanish legal AI tool on this site that was sold to a French competitor, Query Juriste was bought by a larger funded company; Artificial Lawyer notes that Legora and Noxtua have also expanded in Europe by buying companies.
- **Dependence on model providers.** No source read for this page names the language model behind the product. The co-founder's statement quoted by Tech.eu stresses the legal data over a general-purpose model, but the agent still needs a language model from some provider to read and write.

## Sources

1. Tech.eu, Cate Lawrence, 8 September 2026: Lexroom makes first acquisitions with Query Juriste and Praven Intelekt deals — https://tech.eu/2026/09/08/lexroom-makes-first-acquisitions-with-query-juriste-and-praven-intelekt-deals/ (grade B). Read in full. The buyer's announcement with quotes from Paolo Fois and Etienne Le Guay. Source for the sale, the customer and user counts, the 5 million documents and the brand transition.
2. Pulse 2.0, Amit Chowdhry, 8 September 2026: Lexroom Acquires Query Juriste And Praven Intelekt, Expanding Into France And Bulgaria — https://pulse2.com/lexroom-acquires-query-juriste-and-praven-intelekt-expanding-into-france-and-bulgaria/ (grade B). Read in full. Source for the 100% purchase, the founders and founding year, the 18 official sources, "bootstrapped" and the named customers.
3. Artificial Lawyer, 8 September 2026: Lexroom Acquires French + Bulgarian Companies — https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2026/09/08/lexroom-acquires-french-bulgarian-companies/ (grade B). Read in full. Confirms the sale and the counts; source for the comment on Legora and Noxtua.
4. Recherche d'entreprises (French government company register API): QUERY JURIST, SIREN 929322261 — https://recherche-entreprises.api.gouv.fr/search?q=query%20juriste&per_page=5 (grade A). Read the full record on 8 November 2026 (French). Source for the creation date, the legal form, the officers and the missing headcount band.
5. Query Juriste home page, read 8 November 2026 — https://www.query-juriste.com/ (grade C). Read in full (French). Confirms the site is live, the note that it is now part of Lexroom, custom prices, the logo names and Scaleway hosting.
6. Query Juriste home page, Internet Archive copy of 6 March 2026 — https://web.archive.org/web/20260306101912/https://www.query-juriste.com/ (grade C). Read in full (French). Source for the 14-day trial, the counters before the sale and the Microsoft Azure line.
7. Query Juriste FAQ, read 8 November 2026 — https://www.query-juriste.com/faq (grade C). Read in full (French), and compared with its Internet Archive copy of 6 February 2026, which has the same text. Source for the three co-founders, the 7 to 9 minute search, the data sources and Scaleway.
8. Query Juriste Kit Presse, read 8 November 2026 — https://www.query-juriste.com/pressPage (grade C). Read in full (French), and compared with its Internet Archive copy of 6 February 2026. Source for Station F, "plus de 1000 utilisateurs" and the 5 to 10 minute answer time.
9. Query Juriste news, Maxence Mortagne, 27 February 2026: Query Juriste se déploie chez Bredin Prat — https://www.query-juriste.com/actualite/query-juriste-se-deploie-chez-bredin-prat (grade C). Read in full (French). Source for the firm-wide rollout at Bredin Prat.
10. Query Juriste news, Maxence Mortagne, 12 May 2025: L'équipe Query Juriste débarque à Station F ! — https://www.query-juriste.com/actualite/l-equipe-query-juriste-debarque-a-station-f (grade C). Read in full (French). Source for the move to Station F.
11. Query Juriste: Ce que Query Juriste fait - et ne fait pas — https://www.query-juriste.com/ia (grade C). Read in full (French). Source for the statement that the tool gives no legal advice and does not replace a lawyer.
12. Internet Archive copy of query-juriste.com, 15 April 2024, and the archive's capture index for the domain — https://web.archive.org/web/20240415181407/https://www.query-juriste.com/ (grade B). Read the copy (a script page titled Query Juriste) and the capture list; it is the earliest copy of the domain.
13. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.

Contact: aiolum@livyden.com. Run Query Juriste? Send corrections or a verified figure to aiolum@livyden.com (subject: Correction: Query Juriste).