How we're bringing privacy-first legal AI to billable hour tracking and document analysis
by Mikko Korpela, CTO, Adeu Solutions
A Startup in an old hospital
Maria 01, a startup campus in Helsinki, occupies the former Marian Hospital. It was the city's first municipal hospital built in 1886. Walk far enough along its hallways, and you arrive at our office, a former examination room. The three of us at Adeu Solutions work shoulder to shoulder here. Janne, our CEO, sketches product ideas. Uzair, our Software Engineer, tunes machine learning inference until it sings on modest hardware. I joined in December 2024 to solve a problem almost every lawyer knows about yet rarely fixes: the slow leak of billable minutes.
Why Adeu AI Matters
Law firms still trade time for revenue. If ten minutes spent replying an email or scrolling through a PDF never gets logged, it is lost value forever. Most time-tracking tools demand manual effort or rely on cloud backends that raise uncomfortable questions about confidentiality. We decided there had to be a better way.
A Quiet Revolution in AI Hardware
AI headlines shout about frontier models running on massive infrastructure. Beneath the noise, a subtler shift is underway: large language models are shrinking in size while keeping most of their capability. Techniques like distillation and quantization allow serious AI workloads to run on a normal work laptop. That single fact changes the risk model for professions where privacy is non-negotiable.
When computation and data storing happens on the user’s device, you remove an entire class of threats. There is no central database for attackers to breach, and there is no court order that could be served on a third party which would compromise attorney–client privilege.
Adeu AI in a Nutshell
We build local AI for legal professionals. Our application runs on your laptop and keeps all of client information on your own disk. No user data leaves the device.
Core Features at Launch
Automatic Background Tracking
Adeu AI observes your workflow in the background and classifies tasks into matter codes that match your practice management software. The result is a precise timeline that turns forgotten micro-tasks into revenue. You can edit or approve each entry.
Confidential Document Intelligence
Open a contract, deposition, or expert report in the app. Ask natural language questions like "List all sections that mention GDPR". Answers appear in seconds because the language model and the document both reside locally. There are no concerns about leaking personal data when nothing moves out.
The Local Advantage:
1. Confidentiality: Data processed never touches an external server.
2. Offline capability: The system runs without an internet connection. Work continues in courtrooms, secure facilities, or during outages.
3. Regulatory clarity: Storing data within your national borders simplifies GDPR obligations and cross-border transfer rules.
Try Adeu AI
Adeu AI is available today as an early access build for Windows 10 and Windows 11. Use it and let us know how it fits into your daily practice. Your real-world feedback will steer our feature priorities. Download it at https://adeu.ai
Building a More Ethical Legal AI
I have spent two decades building software tools for real people. Watching a locally run language model summarize a hundred‑page document feels like as exciting a technological moment as when I wrote a short BASIC program that drew a circle on screen and watched real graphics appear for the first time somewhere in the1990s. Yet I am convinced this is still day one of a major shift.
The future of legal AI is private first, offline capable, and user focused. We are building that future in an old hospital ward in Helsinki, surrounded by vintage wooden wall and the quiet hum of modern GPUs. As our small but dedicated team grows, we're selectively bringing on talent who share our vision for transforming legal work while respecting its fundamental need for privacy and security.
The AI Act being implemented by the European Union emphasizes human oversight and privacy protection. These principles perfectly align with our approach. Rather than replacing legal professionals with automation, Adeu AI empowers them with tools that enhance their work while maintaining complete human control and judgment.
Capture every billable minute.
Protect client privilege.
