AI legaltech company Qanooni [1] has been named winner of the Professional Services category at The Investec Early Stage Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, known as The Easies, in an award sponsored by global law firm Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer.
The Professional Services ESEY category was created to spotlight founders reimagining how professional services operate and to recognise work that blends trust, technology and rigour. This year more than 1,000 founders from over 50 countries applied across The Easies, with only five category winners selected worldwide.
Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer sponsors the Professional Services award as part of its commitment to support innovation in law and professional services and to engage directly with founders working at the frontier of AI. For Qanooni, winning in a category backed by a firm of this scale and reputation is a significant signal to the UK and international legal markets that its product and approach have been closely examined by exactly the type of large, complex firm it is built for.
Qanooni is a legal AI infrastructure platform built natively inside Microsoft 365. It connects the data firms already have, from internal documents and email to external legal authority databases, and turns everyday work into structured, jurisdiction aware playbooks that run directly inside Word and Outlook. The aim is that every draft, review and email reflects the firm’s tone, style and standards, rather than the output of a generic model, while keeping data within the firm’s existing Microsoft environment.
Qanooni is already live with firms across EMEA, including in the UK, where early pilots have reported measurable productivity gains and significant time savings on drafting and review work. Lawyers are using Qanooni as a daily workflow tool rather than a side experiment, which the team sees as critical for serious adoption of AI in legal practice.
The company is now expanding its footprint through a global partnership with leading practice management platform Actionstep. Under this partnership, Qanooni will be available as an embedded AI drafting, review and research layer for tens of thousands of lawyers in the UK and other key markets, plugging directly into existing practice management workflows.
Commenting on the award, Qanooni Co founder Anuscha Iqbal said:
“Herbert Smith Freehills is exactly the type of firm we build for, large, complex and working on matters where there is no room for error. Having our work recognised in an award that they sponsor and support is a real validation of Qanooni’s product, our approach to AI governance and the problems we have chosen to solve.”
Co founder Ziyaad Ahmed added:
“From the beginning we have focused on building legal AI that firms can actually use in production, not just in a lab. The Easies put us in front of a world class judging panel and a sponsor in Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer who understand both the opportunities and the risks around AI in legal practice.”
As part of the award, Qanooni will be showcased with the OPUS delegation at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos in January, alongside founders and investors helping to shape the future of finance, technology and professional services.