An Interview with Ruli.ai’s Bryan Lee: Why Corporate Legal Departments Need a Digital Brain in 2026

Continuous Legal Intelligence: How Ruli.ai is Building the Digital Brain for Corporate Legal Teams

In an era where corporate legal teams are drowning in data, racing to keep up with regulatory change, and expected to operate at the speed of the business, Ruli.ai is taking a radically different approach to legal technology. Fresh off a $6 million seed round, the AI-native startup is pioneering what it calls continuous legal intelligence, an emerging category designed to shift in-house teams from reactive risk management to proactive, real-time guidance. In this interview, Ruli.ai’s CEO and Co-Founder Bryan Lee discusses how the company is building a “digital legal brain,” why contextual AI is the future of enterprise law, and how his background across global law firms and tech giants shaped the platform’s ambitious vision.

Q: Congratulations on the recent $6 million seed funding round. Could you start by telling us what Ruli.ai is and what problem it’s solving?

Bryan Lee:
Thank you. Ruli.ai is an AI-native legal intelligence platform designed to make legal expertise as dynamic and responsive as the businesses it serves. In-house legal teams today face massive data complexity and constant regulatory change.

We’ve built what we call continuous legal intelligence to empower corporate legal teams to move from managing risk after the fact to predicting and guiding it in real time.

Q: That term, “continuous legal intelligence”,  is interesting. How does it actually work in practice?

Bryan Lee:
It’s a fundamentally different approach from typical legal tech. Instead of relying on one-off queries or generic AI chatbots, Ruli’s infrastructure understands the context of a company and keeps learning from them.

The platform integrates into existing workflows like Microsoft Word or internal document systems, so it doesn’t add friction.Think of it as a digital legal brain working alongside your team, not replacing lawyers, but extending their capacity and foresight.

Q: You come from both the legal and technology worlds. How did your background shape Ruli’s vision?

Bryan Lee:
My journey started in law, at firms like Allen & Overy and GE,  but I later transitioned into tech roles at Google and Meta, focusing on trust, safety, and emerging AI applications. Those experiences gave me a firsthand view of how legal teams lag behind the velocity of modern business.

We founded Ruli to bridge that gap by combining deep legal experience with AI engineering to create an infrastructure that keeps legal synchronization with the business in real time.

Q: Your advisory board just welcomed Michele Lee, former General Counsel of Pinterest. What does her addition mean for Ruli.ai?

Bryan Lee:
Michele brings an incredible perspective at the intersection of technology, law, and governance. She’s seen firsthand how in-house legal departments at fast-growing tech companies need tools that scale with both complexity and speed. 

Q: The legal tech space is crowded with contract management tools and AI copilots. What makes Ruli different?

Bryan Lee:
Most tools today focus on automating tasks, Ruli goes further by connecting the dots across those workflows. We’re not automating isolated functions; we’re orchestrating intelligence across the entire legal stack.

For example, our system can continuously monitor new regulatory changes and automatically flag which of your active contracts might be affected. It can also support real-time board reporting and compliance documentation and those things that usually take hours or days to piece together manually.

Q: You describe Ruli as “AI-native.” Why is that distinction important?

Bryan Lee:
Being AI-native means that intelligence isn’t a feature, it’s the foundation. Every layer of Ruli is built around understanding data, context, and feedback loops. We didn’t retrofit AI onto existing software; we built a platform that is intelligence.

That’s how we can deliver contextual, real time insights instead of static dashboards or limited assistants. It’s what allows Ruli to feel like an extension of your legal brain rather than just another tool on your desktop.

Q: How will you use this new round of funding to accelerate growth?

Bryan Lee:
This funding, led by Album VC with participation from SignalFire, PJC, and others, allows us to expand our team and accelerate product development, including our real-time AI assistant, intelligent archive, and advanced redlining tools.

We’re also growing our partnerships with enterprises who see legal not as a cost center, but as a strategic function that can lead with intelligence.

Q: Finally, what’s your long-term vision for Ruli.ai and for the legal industry as a whole?

Bryan Lee:
Legal work has always been about judgment, context, and timing, and that’s where AI can be most transformative. Our long-term vision is to make legal intelligence continuous and collaborative across every business layer.

As legal teams confront mounting regulatory complexity, accelerating AI adoption, and increasing expectations for strategic impact, platforms like Ruli.ai signal a major shift in how legal work will be done. Bryan Lee’s vision for continuous legal intelligence points toward a future where in-house counsel no longer chase issues after they arise, but anticipate them with the same precision and speed as the business units they support. With new funding, seasoned advisors, and an AI-native architecture built for real-time insight, Ruli.ai is positioning itself at the forefront of a broader industry transformation—one where legal becomes not only more efficient, but more predictive, integrated, and central to enterprise decision-making. If current trends hold, the next few years may mark the moment when intelligence is defining the modern legal function.