• Adjunct, founded in 2024, develops an AI assistant that automates legal research and compliance tasks for South African lawyers.

• The platform identifies relevant legal documents from public databases and, when authorized, from internal firm resources, then produces structured, source-referenced outputs.

• Co-founder and CEO Alessandro Scarcella previously worked as a data scientist and machine-learning engineer in several South African tech companies.

He targets a core segment of legal work through artificial intelligence. His innovation aims to transform how legal professionals access information and manage case files.

Alessandro Scarcella, an entrepreneur and artificial intelligence engineer based in Johannesburg, serves as the co-founder and chief executive officer of Adjunct, a start-up that develops an AI assistant for South African lawyers.

Adjunct, which Scarcella and chief operating officer Julia Ramsunder founded in 2024, supports legal practitioners in their research, their compliance duties and their management of judicial procedures. The platform primarily addresses professionals operating in South Africa and uses legislation and court decisions drawn from the national legal framework.

The tool automates a share of routine work inside law firms or legal departments, and it frees time for analysis and strategic advice. It does not replace legal reasoning, and it operates as a support system for information processing.

Users start by submitting a question in natural language. The request may be a precise query, a list of issues or notes taken during a meeting. Based on this initial input, the assistant may ask follow-up questions to clarify the need and direct the search.

Once the request is defined, Adjunct identifies relevant documents in public databases and, when authorized, in the internal resources of a firm or organization. The tool then generates a structured response grounded in these sources and returns it with precise citations to allow verification.

The platform connects to several types of legal content, including national legislation and case law. The company plans to integrate additional categories, such as provincial laws, regulations and local administrative orders.

Scarcella graduated from the University of Cape Town, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in finance in 2014 and a master’s degree in machine learning and statistics in 2016. He built his career in several technology companies before launching his start-up.

He joined Cortex Logic in 2017 as a data scientist and became a machine-learning engineer in 2019. He moved to the online delivery service Mr D Food in 2022, where he worked as a data scientist until 2024.

This article was initially published in French by Melchior Koba

Adapted in English by Ange Jason Quenum