Jonathan Williams and Legora: The Winning Formula

Folding bike in one hand, iPhone in the other, Jonathan Williams has the look of a man that’s super busy. Yet the soft-spoken Devon native is far from stingy with his time when he sits down with Leaders League to discuss Legora, the Swedish legaltech which raised $80 million in Series B funding in May.

Williams first crossed paths with Legora’s founders while seeking an IT solution for a client of his previous employer, Calame, and “understood right away” the massive potential of the legaltech, founded by Max Junestrand and Sigge Labor in 2023.

Currently valued at $675 million and having gone from a staff of 30 to 100 in the past six months, Legora is on an impressive trajectory; a fact that did not go unnoticed by Seth Pierrepont, the general partner of Iconiq, which participated in the latest funding round. “It was immediately evident to us that they are building with rare clarity and velocity, creating a platform that doesn’t just fit into legal workflows [but] elevates them, and understands the nuance and pace of modern legal teams,” noted Pierrepont.   

Harder than Harvard to get into
Max Junestrand, not to put too fine a point on it, doesn’t know the first thing about law, insists Williams. But that’s a good thing, he adds, since it means the 25-year-old tech-whiz has no preconceived ideas about the lawyer’s craft and, what’s more, has an extremely forward thinking, innovative perspective, decades ahead of its time. Along with a couple of friends, the Stockholm native joined start-up incubator Y Combinator, and in a few short months raised the necessary capital to launch Leya (as Legora was initially known) ─ a collaborative AI platform for lawyers.

Legora’s founders are “daring individuals born at the right time,” insists the Englishman, whose startup’s arrival on the market coincided with the advent of ChatGPT 3.5. “Legaltech startups are traditionally staffed with recruits from major law firms or prestigious legal departments,” yet the majority of the Legora’s employees are fresh out of college and “not shaped” by conventional corporate orthodoxy, a key factor for the startup’s leadership. The duo overseeing recruitment at Legora interview on average 70 candidates per week, and have a “preference for ex-McKinsey employees and their ilk.” “Avowedly elitist,” states Williams, Legora has a lower acceptance rate than Harvard.

Brimming with staff from nine in the morning, whether in Stockholm, London or New York – where Legora established a presence in March – the various offices of the startup are a hive of activity. So fast, in fact, has the company grown that Legora has opened and subsequently shut four offices in its short life as the influx of new staff meant more space was soon required.  

Currently valued at $675 million and having gone from a staff of 30 to 100 in the past six months, Legora is on an impressive trajectory

Having gone from a handful to a hundred staff in less than two years, and about to open an office in Paris, followed – possibly – by Dubai, Legora now operates in over 20 countries alongside big names like Bird & Bird, Cleary Gottlieb, Goodwin and Deloitte.

Heady days for the legaltech sector
According to Williams – who landed in France thanks to an exchange between the Paris and London Bar Associations and never went back – France is fertile ground for the legaltech industry, thanks to “efforts by government, which wants to stay ahead of the AI curve,” spearheaded by ex-Mission French Tech director, Clara Chappaz, who served as secretary of state for AI and digital technology under Prime Minister Michel Barnier. In terms of homegrown AI success-stories, France can point to Mistral AI, for one.

There is no getting away from the fact that the hourly rate for French lawyers struggles to reach €1,000, while counterparts across the pond, such as at Kirkland & Ellis, can bill at $2,000 an hour. “European Bar Associations have an approach that is less focused on productivity,” remarks the University of Liverpool graduate. A fact that hasn’t stopped Legora from capturing the signature of one of the country’s most prestigious firms, Jeantet. Indeed, thanks to Williams' extensive network of contacts in the French legal community, Legora has been able to sell its services to a number of dispute-resolution outfits too. 

The partnership with Jeantet was announced in April, and Williams subsequently took to LinkedIn to post that “AI has the potential to change absolutely everything about the way lawyers work. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to have front row seats at what is, by some margin, the most interesting time in history to be a lawyer.” He believes that we have only seen 1% of the AI revolution so far, a revolution he expects to have an impact on humanity on a par with the invention of the printing press or the creation of the internet, as new methods of communication to have revolutionized the exchange of knowledge.

When he was a lawyer at Gide in 2010, some colleagues still dictated their conclusions to assistants. Those days are well and truly over. Nevermind by the next decade, the man charged with spreading the Legora gospel in France insists that the lawyer’s job will have changed considerably by this time next year. Legora has already received messages from grateful lawyers who, thanks to their firm availing of its services, are now able to spend quality time with their kids at the weekend, instead of slaving over the latest due diligence. The startup promises to free lawyers from onerous, repetitive tasks thanks to an intelligent, intuitive and secure platform which optimizes their workflow, using servers located in Europe.

Williams, who also acts as a bridge between Legora’s tech and legal teams, has seen the structure of companies change markedly in the past five years. “Artificial intelligence has been incorporated at all levels.” Yet with AI developing “at the speed of light,” it can be difficult for law firms – who invest vast sums in the latest technology, only to see it become obsolete in months when the latest version of ChatGpT launches – to know where to turn. Which is where Legora comes in as it is, in the words of Williams, “a legaltech born in the AI era.”

Despite its current AI growing pains, Williams predicts exciting times ahead for the legal industry, pointing to Jevons Paradox, which states that as efficiency improves, the cost of a resource falls and then consumption increases. What’s more, he has faith in the invisible hand of the market to correct any unintended side-effects of AI technology. The efficiency generated by AI, meanwhile, will bring people back to the office as what will set one firm apart from another “will be its people”.