Meet the Legora founder, 25, shaking the legal technology industry

During a burning spring walk through New York Central Park, Max Junestrand, the 25 -year -old Swedish founder behind the Legora legal technology startup, opened a chip on his shoulder.

He launched his business for more than a year after the Harvey Foundation, the startup of legal technology supported by OpenAi which has become the predator Apex in a rapidly growing market for artificial intelligence products for law firms and corporate lawyers. Harvey experienced a close partnership with the Chatgpt manufacturer and obtained main law firms as customers.

Now, while Legora presents himself in new world markets, Junestrand told Business Insider that his business is gaining ground on the chief rival Harvey – with less money and fewer employees.

“We are not here to be a European n ° 2,” he said. “We are here to play.”

Founded in Stockholm in 2023, the startup helps professionals of the right to work more intelligently with a digital workspace built on models of large languages. Its application is used in nearly 20 countries by more than 250 customers, including the World Cabinet Bird & Bird and Mannheimer Swartling, the largest Swedish law firm.

Last week, at Legalweek, Legora threw the glove at Harvey by deploying new features of products aimed at serving global levels in level 1, as a Microsoft Word supplement. Legora said he had signed Goodwin, a leading law firm for technological offers, as a customer. He also opened a new office in New York, the first outpost of the company outside of Europe, where Junestrand will be based.

Not long ago, the sale of software to law firms looked like a losing company for startups. Lawyers have mainly worked from documents that are difficult to read for software. They stored these files on physical servers on site for superior security and control over their data. But in recent years, because even lawyers opposed to technology recognize the clear potential of artificial intelligence, a new class of startups attempts their chance of providing software to the legal industry.

Related stories

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know

As a teenager, Junestrand competed professionally in video games before learning to code, decorating a career in technology could open more doors than eSports. In 2020, he met his future co -founders, Sigge Labor and August Ersés, during a volleyball match in the depths of the pandemic. The roommates shared the fascination of Junestrand for the intelligence of the machines and the desire to build.

The work and the Ersés had played with software that could perform simpler legal tasks, but the state of large -scale language models at the time limited its usefulness. Chatgpt has changed this. “He just became obviously obvious that it was a paradigm shift,” said Junestrand. He left university and the trio launched a business, obtaining a conference room in a Swedish law firm from work.

An investor shared on LinkedIn a year ago, Legora had reserved nearly $ 900,000 in annual recurring income, or the annual value of income. Legora refused to share a more recent figure.

To date, Legora has raised more than $ 35 million in funding from investors such as Benchmark, Redpoint, Y Combinator and Jack Altman’s Fund, Alt Capital.

Legora’s web application looks like a cross between chatgpt and a graphics manufacturer. Its search bar allows users to ask questions about the content of their internal data and browse web and case judge. The application killer function is a tabular examination. It allows the download in bulk of documents and performs software called “agents” to answer specific questions on the content of these documents.

Junestrand took bi by a demo as a lawyer to claim SpaceX on the rise in an equity turn, in which the company’s investors want to know his financial health before deciding whether to pass a check.

Junestrand dragged a file containing dozens of loan agreements in the tabular examination. File names filled the column on the far left. In the following column, Junestrand wrote “Loan amount” and clicked on a button that has expanded his invitation, telling agents to extract the value of the contract. He repeated these steps to determine the duration of the loan.

The agents killed loan agreements at flamboyant speeds. In a few seconds, the columns filled with up dollar amounts and dates. Junestrand clicked in a field and an agreement appeared in the right component, showing the section where she gleaned the answer.

“Excellent software must be intuitive,” said Junestand. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of software in the legal space that seem to be built in the 90s and does not prioritize design and ease of use.”

Although he does not name them, it is easy to understand who he is talking about. Lexisnexis and Thompson Reuters are two of the largest players in legal technology. They have decades of experience in the creation of products for law professionals.

However, the former guard of legal technology has a clear advantage on the challengers. Lexisnexis and Thompson Reuters are seated on data protected by copyrights that feed their legal assistant products.

Sean Fitzpatrick, Managing Director of Lexisnexis North America, United Kingdom and Ireland, spoke in Legalweek how this data gives him an advantage. “The systems are as good as the data behind them,” he said, “and veracity is important in law. This matters a lot.”

Junestand thinks that inherited software providers will find it difficult to keep the pace of legal technology from the Chatgpt era. He said technology moves too quickly for operators operators to evolve. He added that he had made a conscious decision to keep the engineering team of Legora Small and Nimble, so that they can quickly respond to the latest models and trends of AI.

As for his battle with Harvey, Junestrand thinks that the best product will condemn lawyers, even if Harvey’s ties to Openai help stimulate his brand and credibility.

“When we started, we were immediately disadvantaged. We were a year late,” said Junestrand, referring to the tip of Harvey in Legora. “And therefore the pace and the speed of execution have become the things we have optimized.”

Do you have a tip? Contact the journalist by email to mrussell@businessinsider.com or reports to @ Meliarussell.01. Use a personal email address and a non-work device; Here is our guide to share information safely.