Legora

<p>Graham Norton on a horse (Revolut). Gordon Ramsay&nbsp;swearing&nbsp;on the phone (PolyAI).&nbsp;Jude Law smoldering in an ironic kind&nbsp;of way (Legora).&nbsp;AI may&nbsp;be&nbsp;a new technology,&nbsp;but gaining brand recognition in a crowded market&nbsp;still relies on that most old-fashioned&nbsp;of techniques—star-pulling power.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>Three-year-old&nbsp;Legora&nbsp;is one of Europe’s fastest-growing AI businesses. It works in the famously conservative&nbsp;legal&nbsp;sector&nbsp;(think whiskery judges partial to a glass of claret at lunchtime).&nbsp;Growth is stellar in a sector ripe for disruption. Backers include&nbsp;NVentures, Nvidia’s corporate VC fund, and&nbsp;leading legal firm,&nbsp;Bird&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;Bird, which specializes in the tech sector.&nbsp;Its most recent&nbsp;$550&nbsp;million&nbsp;Series D fundraise valued&nbsp;the business at&nbsp;$5.6&nbsp;billion.&nbsp;Not bad for a bunch of self-confessed “engineers and hackers” from Sweden.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>Outside the world of lawyers, few would have heard of&nbsp;Legora&nbsp;until one of the cheesiest marketing ideas in history (“We’re a&nbsp;legal&nbsp;business, how about getting Jude Law to talk about us?”) became an advertising sensation. For weeks&nbsp;across the U.S.&nbsp;and Europe, Jude Law in a crisp white shirt and sharp grey suit&nbsp;was appearing on social media&nbsp;feeds and staring down from digital billboards&nbsp;from&nbsp;New York&nbsp;to&nbsp;London.&nbsp;Name recognition soared.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>“Somebody internally said, given that we’re building AI-powered law, what if we just got Jude Law&nbsp;to be&nbsp;AI powered?” Max Junestrand, the CEO and co-founder&nbsp;of&nbsp;Legora&nbsp;told me. “And&nbsp;maybe one&nbsp;or two bottles of wine later, we ended up committing to the idea.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https://t.co/2tCRVOwAWG\" alt=\"\" class=\"lazyload wp-image-4510982\" src=\"https://t.co/2tCRVOwAWG\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" original-width=\"960\" original-height=\"1034\"><figcaption>Max Junestrand, the CEO and co-founder of Legora</figcaption><div class=\"image-credit\">Legora</div></figure>\n\n<p>Months of to-ing and fro-ing with his agent later (Law was concerned that&nbsp;Legora&nbsp;might be a here-today-gone-tomorrow type of business) and the&nbsp;project&nbsp;was agreed.&nbsp;“Nagging is an underappreciated form of negotiation,”&nbsp;Junestrand&nbsp;said of&nbsp;Legora’s efforts to engage a film star more used to playing Vladimir Putin and Albus&nbsp;Dumbledore.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>“It was clear to us that AI—and the intersection between AI and law—was an interesting space, but the technology was not mature enough to solve real problems&#8221;</p><cite>Max Junestrand, CEO and co-founder&nbsp;of&nbsp;Legora</cite></blockquote></figure>\n\n<p>“We had to prove to him that we were quite sophisticated and serious about it—he really liked the concept,”&nbsp;Junestrand&nbsp;said. “He insisted on bringing his own cinematographer and scriptwriter, so we got the cinematographer from&nbsp;<em>Oppenheimer&nbsp;</em>and a&nbsp;<em>Saturday Night Live</em>&nbsp;scriptwriter, and together they came up with this magically funny concept [Law walks around a lavish house demanding the camera stays on his face while&nbsp;he purrs ‘collaborate seamlessly’&nbsp;and ‘draft precisely’]. The results speak for&nbsp;themselves.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>This year,&nbsp;Legora&nbsp;crossed the $100&nbsp;million&nbsp;annual recurring revenue threshold and now says it serves 1,000&nbsp;law firms&nbsp;and in-house legal teams across 50 markets.&nbsp;Alongside Bird &amp; Bird, Linklaters and Cleary Gottlieb are also clients.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>Junestrand&nbsp;grew up in a remote part of Sweden where there were few ways to, as he describes it, “compete in the education system”.&nbsp;So, he became a video gaming&nbsp;expert and coded in his spare time (a common origin&nbsp;story for many tech entrepreneurs).&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p><strong><em>Read more: <a href=\"https://t.co/Kfi3dh8wrn\">In this AI-driven world, Todd Boehly has spotted the best test for leadership. Someone who is willing to say “I don’t know”</a></em></strong></p>\n\n<p>“It was clear to us that AI—and the intersection between AI and law—was an interesting space, but the&nbsp;technology was not mature enough to solve real problems,” he said.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>That was until the release of ChatGPT and&nbsp;Legora&nbsp;was granted&nbsp;access to&nbsp;the GPT 3.5 model on the API&nbsp;(application programming interface).&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>“That felt like my generation’s internet moment,”&nbsp;Junestrand&nbsp;said.&nbsp;“It was a clear line in the sand. There was a pre-API world, and then we got the API, and the&nbsp;number&nbsp;of greenfield opportunities and problems you could solve just exploded before us.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>“When we started&nbsp;out,&nbsp;we were adventurous engineers and hackers who thought about what this technology could do, and now&nbsp;we’re&nbsp;at a point where&nbsp;we’re&nbsp;one of the fastest-growing startups in Europe.&nbsp;We&nbsp;have an enormous obligation to make sure that this technology continues to serve this [legal]&nbsp;industry in&nbsp;a good way. I feel like we have built 1% of all the software that we are going to build over the history of this company.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>London-based&nbsp;Bird &amp; Bird,&nbsp;and its CEO, Christian Bartsch, have been a&nbsp;central&nbsp;part of&nbsp;Legora’s&nbsp;expansion and&nbsp;this&nbsp;was&nbsp;the&nbsp;first international firm to partner with the&nbsp;company.&nbsp;It continues to&nbsp;advise&nbsp;Legora&nbsp;on product development.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https://t.co/cNL9JAYnvI\" alt=\"\" class=\"lazyload wp-image-4510981\" src=\"https://t.co/cNL9JAYnvI\" width=\"750\" height=\"435\" original-width=\"750\" original-height=\"435\"><figcaption>Christian Bartsch, CEO of Bird &#038; Bird</figcaption><div class=\"image-credit\">Bird &#038; Bird</div></figure>\n\n<p>“They&nbsp;are passionate about what they’re doing, they’re&nbsp;collaborative and trusted and [if they do] a few quirky things along the way, I say the best of luck to them,” Bartsch said&nbsp;of the Jude Law advertising campaign. “And hey,&nbsp;it’s&nbsp;made&nbsp;law interesting at the dinner parties that I go to, so&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;not complaining too much.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>Like many sectors, legal is gingerly feeling&nbsp;its way in the new technological world. Traditionally conservative for good reason—AI has been known to invent non-existent case law—leading practitioners also know that much exists in the dusty drawers of the profession that needs&nbsp;modernizing.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>“They should have been disrupted years ago,” Bartsch said&nbsp;of the profession’s workflows, many of which are still labor-intensive. “You see fragmented systems held together by middleware&nbsp;and&nbsp;a lot of manual processes in law firms.&nbsp;You see really high-value strategic work underpinned by a lot of repetitive workflows.&nbsp;So,&nbsp;it’s&nbsp;ideal for AI.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>“If you look at what AI is going to do,&nbsp;it’s&nbsp;not going to replace law firms, but law firms that use AI well are going to replace those that&nbsp;don’t.&nbsp;This next generation of lawyers&nbsp;is&nbsp;going to be augmented.&nbsp;Hybrid lawyers are going to have that human intelligence, but&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;going to be backed up by machine capability.&nbsp;A&nbsp;lawyer like&nbsp;that&nbsp;is&nbsp;going to out-compete the marketplace.”&nbsp;</p>\n\n<p>“It’s a metaphor,” Graham Norton shouts as his horse walks off&nbsp;in the Revolut advert.&nbsp;In a crowded market, anything that cuts through is worth paying for. If nothing else, Jude Law has made Legora famous.&nbsp;</p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https://t.co/TXvhI2axbS\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https://t.co/aNVu6oh2gT\" alt=\"\" class=\"lazyload wp-image-4403107\" src=\"https://t.co/aNVu6oh2gT\" width=\"1024\" height=\"355\" original-width=\"1088\" original-height=\"377\"></a> </figure>\n<p>This story was originally featured on <a href=\"https://t.co/NQg9ivWIaW\" target=\"_blank\">https://t.co/opgY7EYkBs</a></p> https://t.co/NQg9ivWIaW