Founder's Story

How HAQQ started, from the people who started it.

Antoine Kanaan, Co-Founder & CEO

Antoine Kanaan is the Co-Founder and CEO of HAQQ Legal AI, one of the fastest-growing legal technology platforms, serving 15,000+ law firms, in-house departments and enterprises, and legal professionals across 200+ countries.

HAQQ built Justinian, its proprietary legal AI reasoning engine, as a secure intelligence layer between enterprise data and underlying AI models. The platform also includes a complete practice management suite, enabling law firms to manage legal research, drafting, document automation, matter management, billing, and client workflows from a single secure environment. Built with native Arabic capabilities and broad international coverage, the platform is designed to help legal professionals work more efficiently while meeting the highest standards of security, compliance, and data sovereignty.

Antoine is a TEDx speaker, Lecturer in Legal AI at the Dubai Legal Affairs Department, Evaluator with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Bar Association (IBA), and a published author. He previously served as an elected Board Member of the Emirates Legal Network and Editor-in-Chief of the Lebanon Law Review. Today, he is a frequent speaker on the future of Legal AI, responsible innovation, and the transformation of legal services through artificial intelligence. He regularly engages with local, regional, and international media through interviews and public appearances.

Abbas M. Kabalan, Co-Founder & Chief Legal Officer

Abbas Kabalan is the Co-Founder and CLO of HAQQ Legal AI. He is a corporate lawyer with more than 11 years of experience, as well as the Founding and Managing Partner of Kabalan&Kabalan Attorneys, a Beirut-based law firm.

He leads HAQQ's legal vision, shaping the development of AI systems that combine legal methodology, jurisdiction-specific reasoning, and enterprise-grade reliability to transform how legal professionals research, draft, and deliver legal services.

A member of the Beirut Bar Association, Abbas is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in financial markets, with a specialization in alternative financing. He is also a frequent speaker on Legal AI and AI governance. Through conferences, industry forums, and media appearances, he promotes greater access to legal knowledge and contributes to the conversation on building trusted, sovereign AI ecosystems for the legal sector across the MENA region and beyond.

The story, in the founders' words

Background, journey and vision — answered by Antoine and Abbas, and reproduced here as given. Quote from it directly.

What was your background/situation prior to starting HAQQ?

Grew up in Lebanon in an environment where instability, uncertainty, and self-reliance were normal.
Started working at 14 as a metal worker and painter.
Learned early the value of discipline, speed, and responsibility.
Was exposed to both manual labor and service work long before entering tech or law.
Lived through the Lebanese uprising at a formative age, shaping a strong sense of justice and urgency.

What was your profession/occupation prior to HAQQ?

Metal worker and painter during early teenage years.
Busboy in restaurants at 18.
Founder and operator of a legal publishing business by 19.
Scaled that business to 100 people in under a year during national turmoil.
Actively helped connect individuals with lawyers globally for corporate, civil, and domestic abuse cases.

How did the idea come about to get into this field?

Received 300+ unsolicited requests from people seeking legal help across multiple countries.
Saw firsthand how hard it was for individuals to access competent legal support.
Identified the structural gap: billions of people, millions of lawyers, zero scalability.
Realized legal services were limited by human bandwidth, not lack of demand.
Concluded that AI could multiply legal expertise, not replace it.
Decided to build HAQQ to digitize justice and make legal access affordable, transparent, and scalable.

Are there any compelling stories from your personal journey?

Started working at 14 as a metal worker and painter.
Worked as a busboy at 18 to support himself.
At 19, during the Lebanese uprising, scaled a legal publishing business to 100 people in under a year.
Received 300+ direct requests from strangers seeking help to find lawyers worldwide for corporate, civil, and domestic abuse cases.
This exposure revealed how inaccessible justice is at a global scale.

Are there any compelling stories from your business journey?

The influx of real legal help requests revealed a systemic gap between people and legal access.
Identified the imbalance between global population and available legal professionals.
Decided to build technology that scales legal expertise instead of legal headcount.
In 2022, founded HAQQ to digitize and systematize justice delivery with Abdo and Abbas.

What challenges did you face when building HAQQ?

Building trust with lawyers around AI handling sensitive legal work.
Designing AI that adapts to each lawyer's tone, structure, and jurisdiction.
Scaling a complex legal platform across multiple countries and legal systems.
Building and scaling from Lebanon during economic and political instability.

What are the company numbers?

Revenue-generating and venture-backed.
Growing clients week-over-week (roughly 2x onboarding velocity).
Team: lean, senior, execution-first.
Active in 200+ countries.
Customers across MENA and expanding internationally.
Partnerships with governments and banks.
Platform used daily for client management, billing, and case work.

What is unique about HAQQ?

Lawyers create their own AI Twin that learns how they think and write.
AI drafts documents in the lawyer's exact tone and structure.
Connects CRM, documents, tasks, billing, and communications in one system.
Designed to work inside real legal workflows, not as a standalone chatbot.

What are you most proud of?

Lawyers trusting HAQQ with live matters, billing, and client work.
Making legal help more accessible without lowering professional standards.
Replacing 5–7 tools with one system without killing productivity.
Turning AI into a practical tool for justice, not a buzzword.

Any notable clients, customers, advisors or investors?

Used by thousands of law firms globally.
NVIDIA Inception member (accelerator program, not a customer).
Partnering with bar associations, governments and banks.
Adopted across corporate, civil, and personal legal practices.

What do you want to achieve in the next 5 years?

Continue digitizing justice at a global scale.
Expand legal AI capabilities across more jurisdictions.
Make legal services more affordable, transparent, and accessible.
Become core infrastructure for the legal ecosystem.

What tactics or frameworks did you use to grow?

Solving real legal problems observed firsthand, not hypothetical ones.
Founder-led vision grounded in lived experience.
Product adoption driven by daily utility, not marketing spend.
Expansion through trust, referrals, and institutional partnerships.

Key facts for press and video content

Antoine's early manual labor background.
Clear split: AI Chat vs Practice Management.
The 300+ real requests for legal help.
The global justice gap insight.
The concept of the AI Legal Twin.
Real usage numbers and global reach.
The mission: justice should never be out of reach.
Lebanon-built, global-standard execution.

Headshots and approved photography of both founders are on People.