How Legora Went From YC to $100M ARR in 18 Months

The Legora cofounder describes how the company approached Jude Law for an advertising campaign after he initially declined. Customer stories about lawyers reviewing a thousand agreements in a day helped persuade him, and he brought a Saturday Night Live writer and the cinematographer of Oppenheimer onto the project.

Before starting Legora, the cofounder studied computer science and business, worked at McKinsey, and tried roles at startups. He said starting the company felt manageable while he still had a McKinsey offer, but he turned it down after Legora got into YC. During the YC period, the team worked overnight sales calls across time zones, and the cofounder said YC helped bring investor interest ahead of a week with about 80 meetings.

At general availability in October 2024, Legora had about 30 people and $1 million in ARR. Its product plan focused on an AI assistant, tabular review, and a Word add-in, with the aim of combining areas competitors addressed separately. The cofounder said Legora later surpassed a tabular-review competitor that had nearly $50 million in revenue, and argued for planning around how lawyers may work ten years ahead.

The cofounder said Legora grew from 40 people a year earlier to nearly 500 across the US, Europe, India, and Australia, and had passed $100 million in ARR. He described a shift from helping lawyers with individual tasks to agents that can use enterprise documents, email, and tools to complete parts of larger workflows. For M&A due diligence, for example, an agent can organize a data room, apply a folder template, and check whether requested information is missing.

Asked about competition from OpenAI and Anthropic, the cofounder reframed the issue as whether a company can remain defensible as models get smarter. He pointed to proprietary data, workflow patterns, and user behavior as inputs Legora considers, and said the company understood it needed to grow quickly.