Legora hits $5.6 billion valuation as legal AI push goes global
The Swedish legal AI startup says it now serves 1,000 legal teams and has crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
Legora, a three-year-old Swedish AI company serving the legal industry, has reached a $5.6 billion valuation after a $550 million Series D funding round, Fortune reported. The company’s growth signals that law firms are starting to adopt AI tools in a profession long known for caution around new technology.
The company says it has passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue and now works with 1,000 law firms and in-house legal teams across 50 markets, according to Fortune. Its backers include NVentures, Nvidia’s corporate venture capital arm, and London-based law firm Bird & Bird.
Legora’s customers include Bird & Bird, Linklaters and Cleary Gottlieb, Fortune reported. The company builds AI tools for legal work, a field where automation has drawn interest because many legal processes still rely on manual, repetitive tasks.
A celebrity campaign drew attention
Legora also gained wider attention this year through an advertising campaign featuring actor Jude Law. Fortune reported that Law appeared in social media ads and on digital billboards in cities including New York and London.
Max Junestrand, Legora’s CEO and co-founder, told Fortune the idea came from an internal joke about pairing “AI-powered law” with Jude Law. He said the company pursued the actor for months before reaching an agreement.
Junestrand said Law wanted assurance that Legora was a serious company, according to Fortune. He also said Law brought in his own cinematographer and scriptwriter; Fortune reported that the production involved the cinematographer from Oppenheimer and a Saturday Night Live writer.
The campaign placed Legora alongside other technology companies using well-known performers to stand out in a crowded market. Fortune cited ads by Revolut featuring Graham Norton and PolyAI featuring Gordon Ramsay as other examples.
ChatGPT changed the company’s path
Junestrand told Fortune that Legora’s founders had been interested in the overlap between AI and law before the technology was ready to handle practical legal work. He said the release of ChatGPT and access to OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 model through an API marked a turning point for the company.
He described that moment to Fortune as his generation’s equivalent of the internet arriving. Junestrand said the company began as a group of “engineers and hackers” and now sees a responsibility to make sure its technology serves the legal industry well.
Junestrand grew up in a remote part of Sweden, coded in his spare time and became skilled at video games, Fortune reported. He told the publication that Legora has built only a small portion of the software it expects to create over the company’s lifetime.
Law firms weigh AI’s risks and uses
Bird & Bird was Legora’s first international law firm partner and continues to advise the company on product development, Fortune reported. Christian Bartsch, Bird & Bird’s CEO, told Fortune that Legora’s team is collaborative and trusted, and said the Jude Law campaign had made legal technology easier to discuss outside work.
Bartsch said many law firms still rely on fragmented systems, middleware and manual processes. He told Fortune that high-value legal advice is often supported by repetitive workflows, making parts of the profession well suited to AI.
Legal AI also carries risks. Fortune noted that AI systems have produced fake case law, a concern in a profession built around accuracy and precedent.
Bartsch told Fortune he does not expect AI to replace law firms outright. He said firms that use AI well are likely to gain ground on those that do not, and predicted that future lawyers will combine human judgment with machine support.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.