No More Blank Pages: How an Atlanta Startup Is Using AI to Scale Patent Expertise
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After years in the legal space, Yuri Eliezer believes there is a better way for important patents to get done.
Eliezer is co-founder and CEO of Atlanta-based Junior, a startup developing AI-native patent drafting tools for law firms and corporate counsel.
The Junior team said that traditionally, a patent attorney or agent spends anywhere from 25 to 60 hours to produce a strong first-draft of a utility patent application. That includes hours on specifications, claims, strategy, and inventor interviews, followed by time for review and rewrites.
“Junior isn’t just faster — it collapses that entire process into a few hours instead of weeks,” Eliezer added. “More importantly, it’s smarter about patents, turning repetitive tasks into strategic assets while scaling seamlessly from solo practitioners to Fortune 500 teams."
“For 30 years Microsoft Word has been the universal canvas of law, but Junior transforms it from a blank-page typewriter into an active, firm-specific intelligence. Junior already knows your style, Junior masters your claim conventions, and Junior carries your prosecution playbook in its DNA. [It] proves the future of legal AI isn’t about bigger models; Junior shows it’s about better, reusable, firm-owned prompting. Junior lets firms stop typing one-off instructions to a chatbot and lets Junior curate libraries of prompts that compound expertise across generations.”
The startup can also help with the staff turnover problem that plagues the patent law space, where junior associate talent turns over quickly.
“Junior turns institutional knowledge into living, scalable agents so Junior never lets that knowledge walk out the door every 18 months,” Eliezer added.
Those outside of Atlanta have already taken note. Gideon Myles, associate general counsel for patents and trademarks at OpenAI, recently joined the startup’s advisory board.
An Equity Play
Junior’s LegalTech platform is also an equity play that “empowers more startups to protect breakthroughs early,” the team says.
“For most early-stage startups, securing a patent isn't just a legal checkbox—it's a make-or-break investment in survival,” Eliezer added.
The average cost for a full utility patent application can cost upwards of $20,000 for software and hardware inventions. But that number can nearly double when revisions and maintenance fees are factored in.
“Add in 4–6 weeks of drafting time, and resource-strapped founders often hit a wall: They can't afford the billables, the delays, or the risk of infringement lawsuits that average $1 million+ in defense costs—expenses that wipe out 90% of bootstrapped ventures before they scale. This creates a systemic access-to-justice gap: Innovation from underrepresented founders like in the Southeast or from diverse teams gets sidelined, favoring well-funded coastal players who can front the cash for IP moats,” he added.
As an “AI associate,” Junior “democratizes high-quality patent drafting—slashing costs by up to 60% and timelines from weeks to days, without sacrificing defensible precision.”
“For a startup, this means filing a provisional application (as low as $120 for micro-entities) with attorney-level claims in hours, not months—buying that critical 12-month "patent pending" window to pitch VCs or launch without fear of copycats. We're not just automating drudgery; we're scaling expertise—pre-trained on firm standards but adaptable for solos or bootstrappers via shared libraries and Word integration, so even a first-time founder gets outputs that pass §112 scrutiny 95% of the time.”
Building LegalTech In Atlanta
CEO Eliezer is a well-known name across the Atlanta tech ecosystem. He is a graduate of both Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University College of Law. He went on to co-found the firm Founders Legal in 2014 at Atlanta Tech Village.
Throughout his legal career, he has prosecuted patents for Microsoft’s Xbox, Office, and Surface product families. He also helped build out the global IP portfolios for Cisco and Coca-Cola, and
has served many of Atlanta's leading startups as IP counsel, including Calendly and PrizePicks.Outside of his legal practice and his startup, Eliezer is currently pursuing a Master of Science in ECE with focus on Quantum Computing at Georgia Tech.
For Eliezer, building in Atlanta is intentional.
“We've seen Atlanta founders—often overlooked vs. Silicon Valley—secure funding post-filing because "patent pending" signals legitimacy without the $15K+ hit. Ultimately, it's about access: More protected IP means more competition, less monopoly, and justice that rewards ideas, not bankrolls. Junior is committed to that because innovation shouldn't be a privilege.”-Product screenshots provided by Junior Law
