Copenhagen legal tech company SmallClaims has raised a €2 million seed round led by the Finnish fund Vendep Capital. Its AI agents carry a small-claims case from first assessment through negotiation, court filing, judgment and enforcement, while a team of lawyers reviews the work and appears in court when a case goes to a hearing. The company says it handled more than 3,200 cases in 2025, has over 500 customers, and needs about 1.5 hours of manual work per case, compared with more than 15 hours the traditional way.
The figure I keep coming back to is that time saving. Small disputes are rarely complicated. They are simply too expensive to handle by hand, so most of them are never pursued. SmallClaims estimates that more than €930 billion in claims are written off across the EU every year. Cut the labor by a factor of ten and a large share of that becomes workable business.
I also like how the company is built. Software does the repetitive steps and licensed lawyers stay accountable for the result. That is the same structure we chose for iQuash, where AI checks tickets, fines and notices for defects and then connects people with licensed lawyers. Courts and regulators will accept that pairing much sooner than full automation.
The difference is which side of the claim you are on. SmallClaims' customers include debt collection agencies, law firms and businesses chasing unpaid invoices. As AI makes it cheaper to file claims, individuals need equally cheap tools to check what lands in their mailbox and to push back when the paperwork is wrong. Founders building that consumer side are exactly who ELP Ventures exists to back.