“I loved being a lawyer. I liked the work, the clients and the people. What I could never get past was the technology,” says Sabih Siddiqi, co-founder and CEO of Irys.
Siddiqi spent approximately seven years practicing law in New York at the international law firm Watson Farley & Williams. He trained as a litigator, but his work eventually crossed disputes, corporate matters, asset finance and the day-to-day needs of longstanding institutional clients. For approximately a year, he also served as outside general counsel to a financial institution.
That breadth gave him a simple view of legal practice: lawyers are ultimately there to solve problems. But too much of their time was spent solving problems created by their own technology.
“You could be working on an extraordinarily sophisticated matter and still spend hours searching through emails, finding the right document, moving information between systems and recreating context that someone on the team already knew. The lawyer became the connection between all these disconnected tools,” Siddiqi says.
Then ChatGPT arrived.
Siddiqi began using generative AI in his own work and immediately saw how much it could change the profession. But he also saw the limitations. “ChatGPT changed what I thought was possible. But it didn’t know the matter. It didn’t know the parties, the documents, how I write or how all those things fit together. I wanted the intelligence of the best AI, but with the context and workflow of actually practicing law.”
That desire became Irys.
One Place for Legal Work
Irys is designed around a simple idea: the lawyer should focus on judgment while the technology handles more of the work required to get there. The platform brings documents, research, drafting, matter context and connected systems such as email and document repositories together in one workspace. It integrates with tools lawyers already use, including Microsoft Word, and is designed to maintain the context surrounding a matter rather than requiring users to repeatedly start from scratch. “We are not trying to build another chatbot for lawyers. We are trying to make the entire process of doing legal work substantially easier,” Siddiqi says.
That can mean reviewing a large collection of documents, understanding the relationships between people and entities, researching authority, identifying inconsistencies, producing a first draft or continuing work that another member of the team began earlier. The goal is not to remove the attorney from the process. “It is the opposite. We want the technology doing more of the mechanical work, so the lawyer has more time for the thing clients actually hire lawyers for: judgment,” Siddiqi says.
Built by Lawyers and Technologists
Siddiqi founded Irys with Devansh, the company’s co-founder and head of AI, whose work focuses on AI infrastructure, reasoning systems, retrieval and applied machine learning. The combination was intentional. “I understood the workflow because I lived it every day as a lawyer. Devansh understood how far the underlying technology could actually be pushed. Then we built an engineering and product organization around those two perspectives,” Siddiqi says.
That approach continues today. Irys conducts substantial internal research and development while working closely with practicing lawyers and legal teams to determine what ultimately becomes part of the product. “We can build incredibly sophisticated technology. But if a partner, associate or paralegal cannot sit down and immediately understand how to use it, none of that sophistication matters,” Siddiqi says.
That approach is already resonating across the legal market. Irys is working with more than 300 law firms and in-house legal teams, ranging from solo practitioners and boutiques to major enterprises and Fortune 500 companies. The company has also attracted senior leaders from the profession, including Eric Friedman, former chairman and executive partner of Skadden.
“What matters to us is that the same platform can be genuinely useful to a solo lawyer and sophisticated enough for some of the largest legal organizations in the world,” Siddiqi says.
Legal Technology Should Be Easy to Try
That philosophy also shapes how Irys sells the product. Siddiqi believes powerful technology should not be hidden behind months of sales conversations simply because the buyer works in law. “You shouldn’t need six meetings just to see whether a product makes your life better,”
he says.
Legal professionals can go directly to irys.ai and try the platform for free. Firms and legal departments that want a more tailored experience can schedule a customized demonstration with the Irys team and arrange an extended evaluation around their own workflows and use cases. “We want people to actually use it. If we have built something genuinely valuable, the product should be able to demonstrate that,” Siddiqi says.
Outreach Programs
Irys also invests in the broader legal community. Its partner program gives lawyers, clients and other legal professionals a simple way to introduce firms and teams to the platform, reflecting an industry where trusted referrals have always mattered. The program offers referral benefits.
Through Irys University, the company makes educational materials on AI and machine intelligence available to clients, the legal industry and the public. Irys also works with universities on AI education and offers discounts to nonprofit organizations. “We want you to succeed with us,” Siddiqi says.
Siddiqi is also a co-founder of DEYAH – Development in Education, Youth and Health – an initiative supporting clean-water and education access in underserved communities.
A Bigger Goal
Even as Irys invests in education and community programs, its core focus remains the legal industry. For Siddiqi, however, the long-term ambition extends beyond making individual tasks faster. Legal services remain expensive, labor-intensive and inaccessible to many of the people and organizations that need them. Improving the productivity of legal professionals is the first step toward changing that equation.
“The more efficiently lawyers can work, the more value they can deliver to their clients. That ultimately expands what is possible across the entire legal system,” he says. Irys today serves legal professionals and organizations across different stages of practice and continues to expand the workflows that can be completed within the platform.
Siddiqi describes the ultimate goal simply:
“I didn’t leave law because I stopped believing in lawyers. I left because I believed lawyers deserved better. We are building the platform
I wished I had when I was practicing, and we want everyone to be able to experience it.”
Legal professionals can try Irys free at irys.ai or request a customized demonstration for their firm or legal team by contacting [email protected].
