Former Allen & Overy senior partner Wim Dejonghe co-founds AI-native law firm Falcon, targeting fixed-fee contract review at a fraction of traditional costs
Former Allen & Overy global senior partner Wim Dejonghe has co-founded Falcon, an AI-powered law firm launched first in Belgium, with plans to expand to London, Paris, and Amsterdam. The venture, announced on 7 October 2026, is backed by €1.5 million in pre-seed funding. Falcon's model offers businesses up to six commercial contract reviews per month, including non-disclosure agreements and data-processing agreements (contracts governing how personal data is handled), for a flat fee of €1,000 (approximately £800) per month. Documents are submitted via Slack or Microsoft Teams and reviews are returned the same day. The firm claims equivalent work at a traditional firm would cost between €3,000 and €4,000 and take days or weeks. Despite the AI-first approach, every contract review is signed off by a qualified lawyer. Dejonghe has said clients still want the judgment of a lawyer alongside the speed AI provides. The team includes former Freshfields lawyer Rémy Bonnaffé and the founders of Belgian HR start-up Mbrella. Falcon is described as being in talks with potential founding lawyers in London, Paris, and Amsterdam. Dejonghe, who led the A&O Shearman mega-merger as A&O senior partner in 2023, frames Falcon as a direct challenge to the billable hour model, arguing that hourly billing passes firm inefficiencies on to clients and that AI makes a fixed-fee alternative commercially viable at scale.
Why this matters
Falcon is notable not just as another legal tech start-up but because its founder occupies a uniquely credible position: the architect of one of the largest law firm mergers in history is now launching a direct competitive threat to the traditional model he helped build. The fixed-fee, AI-reviewed contract model has existed in legal services for years, but Dejonghe's involvement and the explicit targeting of Magic Circle-adjacent work makes this a signal that senior legal talent views the disruption as real and near-term. The firm's planned expansion to London places it squarely in competition with City firms for routine commercial contract work, which is often a significant revenue line for mid-market and transactional practices.
On the Ground
This development is directly relevant to AI and Law practice groups, legal innovation teams, and law firm strategy. Firms will face pressure to articulate how their AI-assisted service offering differs from a flat-fee AI-native competitor, particularly for commodity contract review. A trainee at a City firm working on AI governance or legal technology would assist with technology licence review, data processing agreement markup for AI vendor contracts, AI governance policy drafting, and vendor due diligence questionnaires assessing AI tools proposed for integration into legal workflows. The story also raises regulatory questions around professional indemnity and the supervision obligations when AI performs substantive legal analysis.
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