Legora on r/legaltech
Legora's AMA on r/legaltech. Every question and answer below is verbatim from the live Reddit thread. Chapters are ordered by community upvotes on Legora's reply.
01 Why does almost evert legal AI tool start from the premise that lawyers do a lot of summarising of documents ↑53
Asked by u/firstLOL · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Why does almost evert legal AI tool start from the premise that lawyers do a lot of summarising of documents?
I appreciate it’s what LLMs are good at generally, but I have lost count of the number of demos where the first use case in the demo is emphasising how good the product is at summarising, as though that’s some massive problem law firms are desperate to solve.
In most practice areas we have to read the whole document, the whole redline, the whole thing - a summary might be nice but it’s only ever going to add to your workflow: look at the summary and then check the whole document anyway.
Thank you! Even the bar association in Washington State got caught using AI summaries for a rule that passed the court. And of course the summary was so generic. It’s okay for PR purposes but law is not PR…
I didn’t know this! Crazy
Scroll down to the bottom. The staff are now required to say when they use AI.
The Washington State Bar went all in on AI. If there is an AI bubble like people are saying, it’s going to be bad for the court when it bursts. (But the connected people already made their money on lobbying et al)
https://www.wsba.org/docs/default-source/legal-community/volunteer/volunteer-toolbox/wsba-administration-of-supreme-court-boards-policy-faq.pdf?Status=Master&sfvrsn=21241bf1_5
Yeah, totally agree. Most lawyers aren’t sitting around thinking, “if only I had a summary of this contract....”
I think the real reason is that most builders are lazy, and it's a "low-hanging fruit" use case that's easy to demo.
Since 2023, I feel like we've grown a lot in terms of sophistication of use-cases (large-scale extraction, drafting, reviewing, researching etc.) and what we demonstrate / market.
It's not even a real use case in LegalTech I've never heard a client request a summary of anything ...
It may not be for lawyers but business users love summaries, saves the time and effort to process legalese
you have evidence of this? In my entire life, I've never once heard a "business user" utter "I love summaries". In contrast, what I have heard is that they want answers, and they want them quickly and accurately. A large language model can do quickly, but accurately - not quite!
You don't get to ask for evidence when you hide behind a fake ID on social media
Fangirl boohoo
I bill by the hour why would I want to reduce my billables by making things quicker?
Because the heavy incoming pay shift will be towards work product produced, same as any factory.
Go faster, get more.
Said the Ford Factory Worker in 1960.....
You are spot on. u/firstLOL what would you say are your biggest workflow time sucks - that you would hope AI or automations could help make you more productive?
02 What’s unique about the product that cannot be done with ChatGPT or Gemini ↑11
Asked by u/huchela · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
What’s unique about the product that cannot be done with ChatGPT or Gemini?
A lot of stuff.
The main features of Legora are: 1) Assistant 2) Tabular Review 3) Word Addin 4) Workflows 5) Portals
with Enterprise functionality and supporting integrations with legal-specific document management systems, legal data providers, and CLMs.
This allows lawyers to use Legora to e.g: Extract data from +10.000s documents Create workflows that redline contracts according to firm-specific playbooks Draft contracts while keeping formatting in Word Leverage precedent and internal knowledge basis as context * etc.
There is for sure some overlapp with all "general purpose" AI tools, but also a lot that makes us unique!
Could you feed it redlined contract 1, and tell it make that some markup to contract 2 in track changes?
I have the same qn
can you explain that problem again?? i dont think i quite understand what the outcome is that you're seeking
Sure! As long as the contract is shorter than 4 pages and provided you don’t mind the output in Wingdings font!
Lol
I will say Harvey (at least my version) is pretty lame about this. “I can’t edit documents, but here’s an exhaustive list of every line edit you’d need to make”. Lol thanks Harvey
“You are welcome. Now you can truthfully tell your client that your work product is AI enhanced and collect an extra 0.7 of billables attempting to make sense of my comments. Can I help you with anything else?”
I think the more important question is how Legora differentiates from a software platform like Gavel and Gavel Exec, especially on the contract review/analysis/playbooks/workflows where those tools are trained by lawyers and build all their features for lawyers. Legora and Harvey price most law firms and even some in house teams out, but in my trials, they don’t add any value on the contract analysis side and the results of the suggested redlines are better with other tools.
03 Copied from the announcement thread because I’m very curious: “Max, be honest, is the endgame world domination ↑3
Asked by u/Yassssmaam · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Copied from the announcement thread because I’m very curious: “Max, be honest, is the endgame world domination?
I mean, it started out as a GPT wrapper with a really solid citation system, and suddenly Legora’s shipping new features weekly, hiring at scale, and transforming from a few Swedish friends into a few hundred people in Stockholm. Law firms start signing on - first a few, then the big ones. You differentiate on features and evals, and we enter what feels like the “first round of Risk”: firms across the world picking sides ("Mumbai Indian Law Firm chooses Legora!" "Bingo Bongo Law Firm becomes first Madagascan Law firm to adopt Harvey!!").
But then, to get real value, firms start uploading workflows, precedents, playbooks - your team helps them do it. You do not train any models on their data, sure, but the meta-knowledge of how legal work is structured globally compounds fast. Eventually, the line between platform and practice starts to blur.
So, tinfoil hat off for a moment, is there a version of the future where Legora actually becomes the law firm?”
Credit to u/Street-External99 for this one. Thanks for porting it over!
No
04 You guys have some legal research tool but I know it’s not as good as Lexis / westlaw ↑6
Asked by u/dangerra · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
You guys have some legal research tool but I know it’s not as good as Lexis / westlaw. Do you plan to build a competing product here. Be honest with no fluff
Looking forward to hearing the answer to this one, especially with the vlex acquisition by clio
Ha, I love the “be honest with no fluff”, like Max is a ChatGPT wrapper.
I can confirm I am not a ChatGPT wrapper :)
We're always looking at how we can bring the most value to our users and platform.
Sometimes, this will mean building our own functionality, sometimes this will mean partnering with others. Our legal research functionality is also very dependent on jurisdiction - where different strategies will make the most sense.
05 Copied from announcement thread ↑5
Asked by u/Grooveman76 · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Copied from announcement thread. Thanks for doing this! Very cool.
What are your thoughts on John LaBarre’s recent podcast with Mary O’Carroll? I was surprised to hear him so plainly state that they’re an application layer and “not selling AI”. Seems a complete abandonment from what got them traction in the first place.
Do you think of Legora as an application layer? If so, what do you consider your primary moat against newer entrants? With AI also speeding up how quickly anyone anywhere can create a full stack, modern website, application, or database, I’m wondering if there even is such thing as a moat any more.
Does portal play into this line of thought?
One of the early selling points of harvey was that they were fine-tuning models. They had close access to openAI, and their models much before their public release. In the very early days, it might have made a difference to fine-tune the models, but very quickly, the "general" models from openai, anthropic and google became really good. Our strategy was always to deliver the best adaptation / experience / product on top of these models, and use them in ways to improve the daily work of a lawyer. We are not in the business of competing with the foundational models, but bending them to the benefit of our users: lawyers! Therefore, I absolutely think of Legora as an application lawyer. There are many moats to any business:
- having a delightful, intuitive and powerful product
- speed of new development
- distributions and happy clients who rave about you
- marketing, brand and trust
- culture & team
- etc.
From my pov, Legora has many of these moats, but I only believe we have done 0 to 1 yet! There is so much left to build, and more long-term moats and value to build. And AI making it easier to write software is actually just helping us build more! We're big fans of e.g. cursor.
I actually think that line of reasoning “we’re not competing with the foundational models, we’re just building on top” is a strategic fallacy that misunderstands where defensibility in vertical AI really comes from.
How so?
Because general models level the playing field. If everyone uses the same foundation, the only lasting edge is owning the legal reasoning data and the feedback loops that make your model think differently.. not just look prettier.
I'm really interested in this point. I feel like a lot of people are misunderstanding what type of company Legora is. In my opinion they're not an AI company - they're a workflow company similar to other workflows. What are your thoughts in this regard?
06 Hey Max ↑4
Asked by u/RayasOasis · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hey Max! A million questions, but first, congrats on Precedent and the recent announcement of Portal.
- How will Portal differentiate itself from Microsoft Sharepoint + 365? Obviously having a non Microsoft model running AI workflows is already huge, but so many big firms (law firm and in house) are already on Sharepoint / iManage / etc, how will you help people to transition?
- There’s a lot of push back especially from corporations that law firms are acquiring these tools and then passing the costs to their clients (the corporations). Frustration doubles when billable hours stay the same despite firms touting their adoption of tools like Legora. What’s your talk track around this? How do you see this shaking out in three years when everyone (I’ll hope!) is on Legora, both at law firms and in house?
- Other than your rapid growth, what do you think makes Legora bubble proof compared to the dime a dozen AI legal tech start ups these days?
- Vibe coding: yay or nay?
I have tons but that’s a lot already, so thanks!
Hey! Thank you so much :)
- We are not trying to be a DMS. Legora (and the portal) will integrate with both iManage and Sharepoint. The portal will serve as a collaborative workspace between the law firm and their clients, so that they can work more seamlessly together.
- AFAIK most law firms are not passing on the costs of the tools to the clients - but even if they were, I think clients (in-house teams) will always look to get the best service and value. Tech will be a part of that, and they'll increasingly go to legal service providers who are leveraging tech in a sensible way.
It's very hard to say what the future will look like 3 years from now, but I hope that legal work that can by done by AI, is done by AI, so that we can focus on solving more interesting problems.
- I like to think that Legora has been able to grow so quickly because we are generating massive value for a lot of clients. This value and the high-usage we're seeing combined with our clients wishes for us to build them more things makes me feel comfortable in our position even if we live in an "AI bubble"
- I've spent enough time with lawyers to learn to say: "It depends!"
07 What has been the most popular addition you made to the product since starting ↑2
Asked by u/TheBoys_at_KnBConstr · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
What has been the most popular addition you made to the product since starting?
The most popular feature addition has been our Word integration!
08 Hi Max, “trust” seems to be a big issue currently in the legal tech industry ↑2
Asked by u/LightAdmirable7575 · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hi Max, “trust” seems to be a big issue currently in the legal tech industry. What’re you doing to ensure trust with clients especially in regards to security and AI hallucinations/summarizations? Thanks!
Hi! For sure.
Clients are trusting us with their most sensitive data, which means that we both technically and organizationally must show a high degree of sophistication.
We have multiple certifications, like ISO27001, SOC2, ISO42001 etc. which basically means that we apply certain standards. Don't leave laptops open, all data encrypted at rest and in transit etc.
With regards to AI hallucinations, we
1) instruct the llm to include citation tags in all answers and then we can verify live if they are correctly grounded in the source data and only answer if they are. 2) make LOTS of evals to make sure all types of questions have high quotation and quotation correctness levels. Fun side note is that our "product priorities" at Legora goes: 1) Security/Trust 2) Transparency/Accuracy 3) Speed 4) Cost
09 Hi Max ↑2
Asked by u/epicter112 · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hi Max. Been following you ever since Futurelaw in Talinn and a big fan.
- Have you/are you planning on differentiating Legora's product offering for in-house legal teams vs Law firms? Portal from an intial glance seems to be more suited for Law firms so was wondering if this will result in a more bespoke offering?
- Legora with the rebrand have adopted jazz as a New branding theme. What was the inspiration for this and any stories on how it came about?
Many thanks from Finland!
Hi! I'm glad to hear that :)
- Yes, the use-cases look quite different for law firm vs in-house teams. The portal will naturally be an extension of firms who are looking to provide their clients with more value, and the in-house teams will naturally benefit from this!
- I need to give our marketing team all the credit for this! I don't know how it came about, but last night at our event we were giving out Jazz records, so it's part of the DNA now!
Thank you!
10 What is the next big vision for legora ↑1
Asked by u/dangerra · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
What is the next big vision for legora? Are you just scaling the company now or are there any specific product you want to launch?
We've just introduced our vision for collaboration between law firms and clients in the Portal. That's something I'm really excited about.
There are so many products and features left to launch that I really feel like we've only started scratching the surface of what's possible!
11 Are you planning to enhance your Word Add-In function to flawlessly input manuscript amendments ↑2
Asked by u/DonAdzII · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Are you planning to enhance your Word Add-In function to flawlessly input manuscript amendments?
You would certainly become a staple of our workflow if you could execute this well.
Our Word Add-in can already automatically and accurately make edits or redlines directly into a Word document based on the user's instructions. I'm glad that sounds useful! (or did I missunderstand?)
Let me clarify - I’m referring to scanning handwritten notes, interpreting those notes and implementing into the live word doc via tracked changes.
We recently trialled Legora and I tried this with about 30% success via the use of Riders.
So many of us in the team we’re gobsmacked that Legora could even do this - but in order for this to be truly transformational it needs to be accurate (atm we rely on Doc Specialist teams to markup our docs for our handwritten thoughts)
Sounds like a limited use case. Maybe you should do the first draft electronically.
12 How do you see your new product impacting law firms that currently use Thomson Reuters' HighQ ↑2
Asked by u/ThinkLT · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
How do you see your new product impacting law firms that currently use Thomson Reuters' HighQ? Do you see them as a competitor to this new product or Legora in general?
I think law firms want to partner with companies who are committed to keep building new and exciting functionality, that ultimately will allow them to accomplish more.
I'm not sure what HighQs plans around enabling collaboration with AI are - I'll leave it up to firms to decide that
HighQ isn't even in the same area as Legora as a product - and HighQ is ancient technology. The earlier we get rid of it, the better.
13 Do you mainly talk to lawyers leading innovation (but less focused because of billable pressure) or innovation teams that are not lawyers (and have more time but less focus on work of lawyers) ↑2
Asked by u/rookert42 · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Do you mainly talk to lawyers leading innovation (but less focused because of billable pressure) or innovation teams that are not lawyers (and have more time but less focus on work of lawyers)? Is one better than the other?
This looks very different depending on the firm.
I don't think either is "better", but I think it's important that the innovation agenda is closely tied to what the firm is trying to achieve in the market and the work they are delivering.
14 Hi Max, thank you for doing this AMA ↑1
Asked by u/jwgraf · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hi Max, thank you for doing this AMA!
Congratulations to having clients in 40 countries already - is there a jurisdiction that you found difficult to enter, or one that suprised you in any way?
Hi! Thanks for being part of it :)
China has some regulations around model usage that makes it a difficult region. Other than that, no real hiccups!
15 Max, do you think of ChatGPT’s recent announcement as a market opportunity for you given that they are ceasing any administration of legal advice ↑1
Asked by u/LightAdmirable7575 · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Max, do you think of ChatGPT’s recent announcement as a market opportunity for you given that they are ceasing any administration of legal advice? Or, do you think this sets a precedent for legal AI that people do not want AI to replace the “lawyering” itself. Thanks again!
Since day 1, we've been all about empowering lawyers - not replacing them. I think this is an additional confirmation that lawyers will always be needed.
16 Hi Max - what is the biggest difference in working with European law firms and US firms ↑3
Asked by u/rookert42 · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hi Max - what is the biggest difference in working with European law firms and US firms? And can you name 1 thing that each can learn from each other?
Finally - We need more EU unicorns so please stay EU based and be a Draghi poster child!
I don't think there are major differences tbh. There are much bigger differences between different practice areas and the challenges they are looking to solve!
Thanks for the support!
17 How come every legal tech company goes towards “workflow automation” ↑2
Asked by u/dangerra · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
How come every legal tech company goes towards “workflow automation”. What specifically made yall do this?
As users get more comfortable and savvy with the tools, they naturally want to combine different parts of it to build more advanced use-cases.
In Legora, we allow them to chain together instructions and deterministic tool calling to create these workflows - and we chose to build this because it was something our users were asking for!
18 Hi Max, does your team still hire junior legal engineer 😭😭 I’m always very interested in legal tech and want to bring some changes to this industry, but idk if I should stay in law firms for a few more years ↑1
Asked by u/Chokeonavocado · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hi Max, does your team still hire junior legal engineer 😭😭 I’m always very interested in legal tech and want to bring some changes to this industry, but idk if I should stay in law firms for a few more years. What would you suggest 🫡
Yes. We are hiring lots! https://legora.com/careers
The youngest legal engineer at Legora is straight from law school!
Thanks Max! Will apply!! Do you sponsor visa in the us?
Product manager with legal background here but in Canada, not Stockholm :(
19 Hi Max, does Legora have any access-to-justice or pro bono initiatives planned or currently active ↑1
Asked by u/Aggravating_Ant5395 · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hi Max, does Legora have any access-to-justice or pro bono initiatives planned or currently active?
Yes! We work with several law schools and are working with a couple of law firms on pro-bono work.
20 Hey Max any plans to launch in Mexico ↑0
Asked by u/bermudacircles · Legora AMA · 7 Nov 2025 · Reply on Reddit → ·
Hey Max any plans to launch in Mexico? Theres a bunch of demand and talent
Yes, without a doubt!