Kira Systems created an entire product category from scratch.
Founded in 2011 by Noah Waisberg (former Weil, Gotshal & Manges lawyer) and Dr. Alexander Hudek (computer scientist), Kira pioneered AI and machine learning for contract review. When Litera acquired the company in 2021, Kira served more than half the Am Law 100, 18 of the top 25 M&A practices, and 7 of the Vault 10.
The journey from zero to category leader offers a blueprint for building new markets.
The Market Gap
Traditional contract review was economically unsustainable. On typical M&A deals, lawyers reviewed only small contract sets because comprehensive analysis wasn't feasible. This selective process inherently increased risk.
Manual review faced three problems: Speed (limited documents per lawyer-hour), accuracy (human error from fatigue), and cost (billable hours made thoroughness prohibitively expensive).
Law firms accepted these limitations. They didn't know alternatives existed.
Technology Innovation as Foundation
Kira's breakthrough: machine learning that understood legal concepts, not just keywords. The system identified context, meaning, and relationships within contracts.
The platform launched with "smart fields"—trained AI identifying specific provisions. By Litera's acquisition, Kira could recognize over 1,400 contract provisions across 40+ substantive areas, classify OCR quality, recognize 100+ languages, and identify 50+ agreement types.
This was 10x capability enhancement, not incremental improvement.
Where manual review covered 50-100 contracts, Kira enabled analyzing thousands with greater accuracy. By 2021, Kira processed more than 450,000 documents monthly.
Category Definition Through Education
Creating product categories requires more than superior technology. You must educate the market.
Kira's approach:
Target sophisticated buyers first. Focus on top-tier M&A practices and Am Law 100 firms—the most demanding customers who set market standards.
Demonstrate tangible ROI. Show how comprehensive review changes deal economics. Lawyers could review more contracts in less time, identify more risks, provide better advice, and improve realization rates.
Build credibility through results. Each successful implementation generated reference customers. One satisfied Am Law 100 firm unlocked doors to similar firms. By acquisition, 64% of Am Law 100 and 84% of top 25 global M&A firms used Kira.
Create new workflows, not tool replacements. Kira enabled entirely new approaches to due diligence. Firms could now justify reviewing all contracts in data rooms, not just selected samples.
Market Adoption: Overcoming Conservative Buyers
Legal remains notoriously conservative. New technology faces skepticism, regulatory concerns, and risk aversion.
Kira navigated this by starting with non-core use cases where failure risk was minimal. Early adopters experimented on smaller deals before deploying on major transactions.
Maintaining accuracy is paramount. Legal AI couldn't just be fast—it had to be right. Kira's machine learning emphasized precision, allowing lawyers to trust extracted data.
Integrating with existing workflows. The platform complemented rather than disrupted established processes.
The Exit Strategy: Strategic Acquisition
By 2021, Kira had achieved impressive scale but recognized limits to independent growth. The company was simultaneously serving law firms (due diligence focus) and developing products for corporate markets—two businesses requiring different resources.
The Litera acquisition provided the perfect outcome. Litera offered scale to achieve ubiquity, integration into comprehensive transaction management, resources for continued development, and a strategic home for customers and employees.
Critically, the deal allowed Kira to spin off Zuva, a new company commercializing AI for corporate markets, led by founders Waisberg and Hudek. This split enabled both businesses to pursue their full potential.
For Litera, Kira represented the 12th acquisition in an aggressive roll-up strategy, adding advanced machine learning to their transaction management workflow. Insight Partners became a minority investor in Litera, validating the strategic fit.
Key Takeaways:
- Kira created the AI contract analysis category by solving the economically unsustainable manual review
- Technical innovation (1,400+ provisions, 40+ areas, 100+ languages) enabled 10x improvement
- Market education focused on top-tier firms first, building credibility downmarket
- Customer success drove adoption—64% Am Law 100 penetration validated category creation
- Strategic acquisition by Litera provided scale, while spin-off enabled continued innovation
Kira's success demonstrates that category creation requires exceptional technology, systematic market education, patient capital, and wisdom to recognize when strategic acquisition accelerates the mission better than continued independence.
