Wilfried Kramer is the founder and CEO of Dok.legal, a company based in Sneek that automates complex legal documents. The NOM Startup Program led him to a realization that changed everything. “The process brought me exactly where I needed to be.”
Wilfried Kramer chooses his words quickly and precisely. And when he has an opinion on something, he doesn’t hesitate to voice it. Eight years of entrepreneurship have taught him that this directness is an advantage—especially in a market rife with red tape and legal caution. By training, he is an engineer. Wilfried studied mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and industrial engineering. He never saw coming that the world of legal documents would become his calling.
Starting his own business was the obvious choice, even though he didn’t realize it himself for a long time. As an employee, there was always a certain amount of friction—not with people, but with the pace and the way things were done. “My ambition and drive were consistently higher than what the environment around me demanded,” he says. “I didn’t realize that until later.” As head of product at a major ticketing platform, he was closely involved in finalizing legal contracts with banks, among others. He was frustrated by the length of those processes. “They took longer than the technical issues we had to solve,” Wilfried smiles. “Yet at its core, the legal world is simply technical. It lends itself very well to an ‘if this, then that’ approach. So surely legal documents could be automated as well?”
Hybrid AI Models
Together with Bas Könst and Christiaan ten Klooster, he founded Dok.legal in 2018. The idea was as simple as it was ambitious: to capture experts’ knowledge in smart models and use them to generate reliable legal documents. To do this, Dok.legal uses what Wilfried calls hybrid AI models. “We’re leveraging the benefits of generative AI to automate documents,” Wilfried explains. “Based on experts’ knowledge, we then built our own AI model. That model works exclusively with verified and validated data and therefore operates entirely without external AI.”
The generated documents are legally sound and fully compliant. That is also the core of Dok.legal’s value proposition. “Knowledge workers want to be 100 percent certain that everything is correct,” Wilfried explains. “We can offer that certainty. Generative AI cannot.”
Scalability
For now, Dok.legal is focusing on notaries, mortgage advisors, and law firms. “That’s how we’re perfecting the business model,” he says, “so we can eventually roll it out across the board.” The strategy is phased: first, the focus is on the business; then scalability; and finally, making the platform available to anyone who needs legal documents. That scalability isn’t a given. After all, the system is built on reliability and human knowledge. The key lies in an AI solution that continuously builds new knowledge models applicable across various professional groups. To this end, Dok.legal is establishing new companies, such as DocDigi, DeNotaris.online, Contract.nu, and Overeenkomst.nu.
More than two years ago, he took stock of what he had achieved and what he still wanted to accomplish. The conclusion was clear: Dok.legal was still a long way from what Wilfried had envisioned. “I had written down for myself that I wanted to turn it into a northern unicorn,” he says. “To do that, I needed to further develop myself as an entrepreneur and find like-minded people to bounce ideas off of.” He began attending meetings organized by Founded, a network that connects and supports startups and scale-ups in the northern Netherlands. Through Founded, he came into contact with the NOM, which introduced him to the NOM Startup Program—an intensive mentorship program designed to help northern startups validate their ideas, enter the market, and accelerate business growth. Wilfried decided to participate.
For the program, he deliberately chose a well-defined proposition: Overeenkomst.nu, a platform where entrepreneurs can create a professional legal agreement in just a few minutes. Wilfried started with the Validation track, the component where you test assumptions through customer interviews to refine your initial customer group. Dok.legal as a whole is too broad for that purpose. Self-employed professionals turned out to be the ideal customers for Overeenkomst.nu. “That’s the group that has to comply with legislation regarding bogus self-employment but hates drafting agreements,” Wilfried explains. “As a result, they often neglect to do so and end up in a vulnerable position vis-à-vis the client.” But did the Overeenkomst.nu concept truly address that problem, and was the customer willing to take action? The Customer Solution Track was designed to find out.
I’ve been given many opportunities here and would like to give something back to the region—preferably in the form of a northern unicorn. That would be amazing.
Wilfried Kramer
Validate Again
The customer segment was further refined. Self-employed professionals in the financial sector turned out not to be the ideal target group. Discussions revealed that they actually find drafting contracts to be an interesting part of their work. The focus shifted to self-employed professionals in creative fields. Dok.legal already had the technology in-house, so an MVP was built quickly. Yet the expected traction failed to materialize. Why? That wasn’t yet clear to Wilfried.
It wasn’t until later that the explanation sank in. Self-employed professionals in creative fields recognized the problem, but in practice they simply signed whatever the client presented to them. Often, they didn’t even know exactly what they were agreeing to, which left them legally vulnerable. They never said that out loud during the conversations. Wilfried decided to re-evaluate the situation. It turned out that the real client wasn’t the self-employed professional himself, but the organization—the broker—with which he is affiliated to secure his work.
“The broker often handles the contract, but isn’t sufficiently informed about the best way to do so,” he explains. “It turns out our market is structured differently than we thought after all.” That called for a significant change in course. But Wilfried is happy with it. To him, a pivot doesn’t feel like a failure at all. “Validation never stops,” he says. “The more often you validate that something doesn’t work, the closer you get to the real solution. The process has brought me exactly where I needed to be.”
Generic platform
The program gave Wilfried more than just a more clearly defined customer segment. He appointed one of his developers as CTO and gave him ultimate responsibility for the technology. He had him build a new version of the system using a technology he himself doesn’t master. “That way, as a techie, I’m not tempted to get involved,” he laughs. “I want to focus entirely on the customer and on my role as an entrepreneur. This process really sparked that.”
The ambition is huge—that much is certain. In five years, Wilfried wants Dok.legal to achieve annual recurring revenue of fifty million euros. Is that feasible? “Yes, it’s possible,” says Wilfried. “But it’s going to be quite a challenge. A lot depends on whether we can find the right investor. That’s why I also participated in the Investor Program at NOM. I’m preparing thoroughly and leaving nothing to chance.”
About twenty people are now working on the company’s products, and growth is picking up nicely. “Technologically speaking, we can serve all markets,” he says. “Now the challenge is to continue growing into a generic platform for anyone who needs legal documents.”
If it were up to Wilfried, Dok.legal would remain a northern company in the future as well. “I’ve been given many opportunities here and would like to give something back to the region—preferably in the form of a northern unicorn. That would be amazing.”