Green Sofa Interview Series | Ep. 1 🛋️
Our first guest on the Green Sofa Interview Series is Til Bußmann-Welcsh, legal professional and Co-founder of Anita a legal research platform already used in over 500 law firms across Europe. We spoke with Til about the startup’s roots, their patented explainable AI, and why real transparency in legal tech is long overdue.
What is Anita — and how does it actually work?
Til: Anita is your digital assistant for legal research. It automates the legal research process from the initial query to the final legal text. What really sets us apart is that our AI produces footnote-level citations that are 100% verifiable. No hallucinations, no made-up sources. That’s possible because we built a patented explainable AI software that gives us full transparency over how the model thinks, and what it references.
Where did the idea come from?
Til: It started during my second semester at law school. Legal tech was booming, but I felt the tools being developed weren’t addressing the deeper issues in legal work. Later, I connected with my co-founder Frederik Tholey, we were both working in a boutique law firm, both frustrated by how outdated legal processes still were. We made a pact: once we finished our legal training, we’d start a company to fix it.
How did the collaboration with Fraunhofer HHI help you build this?
Til: We formed a unique coalition with Fraunhofer HHI through the Silicon Allee venture lab, and together we developed a patented explainable AI software. It enables us to move beyond the black box and actually understand how the model reasons. We can even go a step further and force the model to only use certain sources to generate an answer. That’s a totally different offer because now we’re bringing trust back into legal tech.
You also touched on legal data gaps in Europe. What’s the problem there?
Til: In Germany, only around 1% of court decisions are published. That means if you want to do serious data-driven legal analysis i.e. how judges behave, how long cases take, which arguments win, then you’re stuck! So we started building an alternative database by partnering directly with law firms. It’s a community-led effort to break through the monopoly some companies have on this data.
What does “explainable AI” really mean in this context?
Til: It means we can see how the model arrives at a decision, and even control the sources it uses. It’s not a black box anymore. And the beauty is: we’ve done this without adding computational cost or slowing things down. It’s fast, accurate, and most importantly, trustworthy. That’s essential in law.
Why the name Anita?
Til: We named it after Anita Augsburg, the first woman in Germany to earn a PhD in law. At the time, it was illegal for women to do that in Germany, so she went to Switzerland. She was a trailblazer and a human rights activist. For us, this name is about more than a product. It’s about supporting transparency, democracy, and the rule of law in today’s legal landscape.
đź“ą Watch the full Green Sofa Interview with Til BuĂźmann-Welcsh here:
Stay tuned for Anita’s exit story when they graduate from Silicon Allee at Fraunhofer HHI – more milestones ahead. Find out more about Silicon Allee and our offerings at Fraunhofer HHI here.