Why we're called Andri

When you're naming a company, you either pick something completely abstract (vague Latin words, meaningless syllables) or something that means something. We went with meaning.

Andri comes from Alexandria, specifically the Library of Alexandria.

The original legal research problem

The Library of Alexandria, built around 300 BCE, was history's first attempt to gather all the world's knowledge in one place. Older libraries existed, but that universal ambition was new. Scholars came from across the ancient world. Ships arriving at the port had their scrolls confiscated, copied, and catalogued. The goal was to have everything: every piece of human knowledge, organised and searchable.

For its time, it worked. Need to know what Aristotle said about property? It's in the collection. Looking for Egyptian legal codes? Filed and accessible. The library didn't just store knowledge, it made it usable.

Sound familiar?

What solicitors actually need

Every solicitor faces a version of the Alexandria problem. The law exists: in case reports, statutes, regulations, treaties, commentary. But it's scattered across dozens of sources, in different formats, with varying quality of indexing. Finding what you need takes hours. Understanding how it all fits together takes longer.

The Library of Alexandria was an attempt to solve this with physical infrastructure: scrolls, cataloguers, buildings. We're solving it with AI.

When you ask Andri about a legal question, the system doesn't just search, it reasons. It finds the relevant law, understands how pieces connect, checks for conflicts and updates, and explains its thinking. The same service those ancient librarians provided, but faster and at scale.

The scholars who used it

What made Alexandria powerful wasn't just the collection: it was what people did with it. Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference. Euclid systematised geometry. According to tradition, Archimedes studied there too. They didn't just access knowledge; they built on it.

That's the goal with Andri. Not just finding law, but using it. Understanding how precedents apply to your specific case. Building arguments that hold up. Developing strategies that work.

The library was a tool for thinking. So is this.

Why the name stuck

We considered a lot of names. Most were either too generic ("LegalAI") or too clever (puns that only worked in one language). Andri worked because it sounds like a name (someone you'd ask for help), while carrying the Alexandria connection for those who know it.

It's also short, available as a domain, and easy to say in both English and Dutch. Practical considerations matter when you're building something you want people to actually use.

What we're building

The Library of Alexandria was eventually lost: fire, neglect, shifting empires. The knowledge scattered again.

We're building something more durable: a legal research system that gets smarter over time, stays current with new law, and actually helps solicitors do better work. Not a static collection, but a living tool.

That's the vision behind the name. Whether we get there is down to execution. But we thought the aspiration was worth encoding in what we call ourselves.

Curious what we built on that idea? Try Andri.