In celebration of the TechStars Sydney ‘Demo the Future’ evening, Startup Daily is profiling the 12 startups and their founders in the 2025 cohort.
Next is Briefcase – helping the justice system to streamline with tech, without dehumanising it.
Briefcase
Founder: Kirk Simmons
One-liner: Enabling faster and smarter decision-making for justice and arbitration systems
What’s the future of justice?
“Justice – in most countries – is built on the past.” says Kirk Simmons, founder of Briefcase.
“Our entire legal system is based on precedent. What has been decided in the past, is often used to inform the judgement made today.”
That sounds like the ideal scenario for replacing judges with AI and humans in decision-making roles with robots.
“Informed is the key word though,” he explained.
“As the world accelerates, humans must remain the ultimate decision maker of what is fair, right, and just for our society. We should not replace human thoughtfulness and ethics, but we should make their roles easier. That’s where AI comes in.”
What’s the problem solved and why does it matter?
Hopefully, you’ve never tried to formally dispute something. An insurance claim, a parking ticket fine, a disagreement over a rental bond, a suspension or selection decision in sport, or any number of other things.
If you have, you’ll know that it takes a long time. If you make it to court, it can take you 12 months to resolve your dispute based on data from the Productivity Commission of Australia.
“That delay isn’t just annoying,” Simmons said.
“It’s costly, stressful, and sometimes parties walk away from the dispute entirely. And the delay isn’t because we have too many cases, it’s because we’re running workflows that are manual, paper-heavy, use legacy software, and are years out of date.
“Every industry in Australia ultimately answers to a decision-maker – a court, a tribunal, an insurer, an ombudsman, a disciplinary panel. When those systems are slow or inefficient, they become a handbrake on everything and everyone that relies on them.
“Delay is not just inefficiency, it’s injustice.”
Explain Briefcase to a potential user
Briefcase is an all-in-one case-management platform that brings every step of a dispute into one digital workspace.
It replaces paper-based casefiles, disconnected email systems, and manual processes with a clean, structured system customisable for courts, tribunals, ombudsmans, insurers, disciplinary bodies and more.
With Briefcase, you can:
- Turn any casefile into a fully digitised, structured, and searchable record.
- Manage a matter from intake to final decision without switching systems.
- Automate orders, reminders, workflows, and compliance steps.
- Build custom templates, forms, and processes without any development work
- Use safe, narrow AI to extract facts, format orders and detect hallucinations
“Ultimately, we’re creating the operating system for modern justice,” says Kirk. “A platform that outlasts any one registry, decision-maker, or organisation. And keeps the knowledge, structure, and history of every case alive.”
Kirk says the future of the justice sector excites him.
“It’s a field built on precedent while the world around it accelerates. Decision-makers (e.g. judges, arbitrators, or in-house decision-makers) won’t hand their judgment over to AI. However, they will increasingly rely on AI to enhance preparation, analysis, and the quality of their decisions,” he esplains.
What don’t people understand about the legal industry?
Most people don’t realise how wide the gap is between justice and technology.
“The justice sector is deeply traditional; the tech sector moves fast and breaks things. Very few people sit in the overlap of that Venn diagram,” Simmons, who is one of the few who do, said.
“I started my career in the Supreme Court of NSW, and my last role was at Canva, where I was Head of Legal globally and grew the team from just me, to more than 50. That crossover gives me a clear view of the enormous opportunity to modernise how cases are resolved.”
Why did Techstars invest?
“Anytime you see someone leaving Australia’s largest unicorn company to start something of their own, you pay attention,” says Techstars Managing Director Christie Jenkins.
“When you double click and see they not only led the legal team at Canva, but started that team as the first legal employee, you pay even more attention.”
“And when you look even deeper and see the founder has the ability to attract incredible talent to them – including Canva engineers with nearly decades of experience – you simply write a cheque.”
What’s the most important lesson Techstars Sydney taught you?
“Years ago, a partner once told me, ‘pressure makes diamonds,’ while I was belting out some late-night submissions for a barrister,” Simmons said.
“Techstars Sydney brought that lesson roaring back. Between the networking, mentor sessions, and the founder sessions with people like Tim Fung (Airtasker) and Max Marchione (Superpower) there’s been a lot to juggle. But that intensity is the point – the pressure forces you to level up fast, and you can feel every startup in the cohort sharpening up like pencils because of it.”
Your long term ambition?
“Our product is in the pilot phase with some key private and public customers,” Simmons said.
“Next year, we’ll start materially improving access to justice at scale. That means both working with arbitration and case management systems in the private sector, and partnering with governments to modernise the court system.”
It’s human morals, assisted by technology, so decisions can be made in a whole lot less than 12 months. It’s a common saying in legal systems that the justice system is a system of record.
“That’s not enough. Justice should be a system of action,” he concludes.
- Read about the other Techstars Sydney startups here.
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