Christian Mellado Hjortshøj (Co-founder, Juristic) traced the idea for his company back to his early legal training: diagrams, timelines, and structured task management are foundational tools for making sense of complex matters, yet most lawyers still build them in platforms never designed for that kind of work, Word and PowerPoint chief among them. He positioned Juristic as a purpose-built visualisation workspace where timelines and diagrams become faster to create, cleaner to share, and easier to reuse, while the underlying structures work like a “programming language” that computers can read, understand, and help power what comes next.

Hjortshøj explored why this matters beyond aesthetics. Lawyers already communicate complex structures visually: group charts, step plans, chronologies, and transaction flows are used to explain, persuade, and align teams and clients. If that “visual standard” is consistent enough that a triangle can instantly mean “fund” to a tax or M&A lawyer, Hjortshøj argued the computer should be able to recognise it too and then automate what comes next.

Where Juristic is landing in practice

Hjortshøj shared that adoption tends to be strongest in “bread and butter” practice areas where complexity and volume make visual synthesis valuable:

• Tax
• M&A
• Litigation/disputes (including chronology-heavy work)

The conversation also surfaced an important point about value: sometimes the ROI is immediate and outsized. A lawyer might build a timeline in 15 minutes, save 30 hours downstream, and not need to log in again for a while, which challenges the usual “usage frequency” way software value is measured.

Learning styles and the case for visual explanation

Drawing on his teaching experience (including pay-what-you-want tutoring), Hjortshøj noted that visual learning is powerful, but not universal: some people struggle to translate visuals into practical action, while others retain information best through writing, listening, or hands-on approaches. Still, both speakers agreed that for many legal concepts, especially multi-step reasoning and sequences of events visualisation can be the clearest bridge from complexity to understanding.

The AI question and the key distinction

When asked about AI, Hjortshøj made a useful separation between:

• Input: using AI to extract structure from raw material (e.g., pulling dates from documents to generate a first-pass timeline)
• Output: using AI to turn a structured visual model into polished narrative, documents, or work product (including rewriting into prose, producing Word outputs, and generating transaction flows)

His core claim: if your platform already has an underlying data structure that “understands what you’re drawing”, AI becomes an accelerator, not a superficial wrapper.

What’s Next

Looking ahead to 2026, He emphasised growth but also the reality check coming to legal tech. He expects sharper differentiation between tools that truly solve problems and those sustained mainly by hype. He bets that products that match how lawyers already think and communicate (rather than trying to retrain them) will have the edge.

His Practical Takeaways

• If your matter is complex, multi-party, or time-sequenced, default to a visual first draft (diagram, timeline, step plan) before you write.
• Treat visuals as living structures, not static pictures. The real win is when you can reuse and regenerate work product from them.
• When evaluating tools, look for those that reduce friction and create a pathway from raw inputs → structured model → client-ready outputs.