General Catalyst’s Jeannette zu Fürstenberg sits down with Max Junestrand, co-founder and CEO of Legora, which builds collaborative AI for legal professionals.
This interview has been edited and condensed. Watch the full video below.
Jeannette: Right after a significant raise, you told your board you’d stop selling for six months. Why?
Max: The models were in their infancy. If a partner at a prestigious firm tries a prompt and it doesn’t work, you lose their trust immediately. So from May to October 2024, we didn’t sell anything.
We didn’t launch the product until we could onboard a thousand lawyers a day. Since then, we’ve basically doubled revenue every quarter. In our market, if you try it and it doesn’t work, you burn your shot. When you only get one chance, you’d better make sure it works.
If you try it and it doesn’t work, you burn your shot. When you only get one chance, you’d better make sure it works.
Jeannette: You once said there’s only winning, and everything else is losing. What does that mean?
Max: In Sweden we have Jantelagen, the Law of Jante: you shouldn’t think you’re something. A lot of European companies become the biggest tech company in their country and feel done. But internationally, that makes them a big fish in a small pond, which is still a pretty small fish. When Paul Graham was in Stockholm, he called us a big Swedish fish. That’s what we strive for.
Jeannette: You went through YC, then went back to Sweden. Why?
Max: We’d have zero competitive advantage as the fifteenth legal AI company in San Francisco. In AI, a few breakout companies compound much faster than everyone else. The biggest firm in Korea wants the best global player, not the best Korean one.
Jeannette: Are you building a European company or a global company that happens to be European?
Max: A global company that happens to be European. We have to build globally category-winning companies with European values, and treat Europe as more than an afterthought to the US. There’s a real risk that much of the value AI creates will happen somewhere else, because of easier business climates and access to talent. Unless we move with the right intensity, grounded in what makes Europe great, we risk letting this continent fall behind. The US is our biggest market, and we’re split between New York, London, and
Stockholm. But it matters to show that companies like this can be built here.
Jeannette: How do you stay ahead?
Max: We think of ourselves as professional swimmers. You swim faster when you look down at the water, not sideways at the competition. Legal software has looked like it was built in Windows 95, and many of our users have never experienced delightful software. My favorite metric is time spent in the product per active user, which is about an hour and a half a day. Lawyers are too busy to spend that kind of time on something that isn’t delivering value. In a land grab, it’s easy to over-index on sales, but we’re at mile two of a marathon.
We think of ourselves as professional swimmers. You swim faster when you look down at the water, not sideways at the competition.
Jeannette: When does fully agentic AI arrive in the legal industry?
Max: We’re already there. We recently acquired a company, connected Legora to the data room, and had it produce a first pass of the due diligence report. It was frighteningly good. We’ve reached the point where it would almost be unethical not to have a system like Legora check the work before it goes out.
Jeannette: People leave meetings with you wanting to help you. Why?
Max: You can just ask for help. When we started Legora, I’d message partners on LinkedIn and offer to pay their hourly rate to have lunch with me and teach me about litigation or M&A. No one ever took the money. More often than not, they paid for lunch.
Jeannette: Legora’s brand stands out in legal tech. Where does that come from?
Max: My superpower is finding people who are much better at it than I am. In London, we built our own pub for 48 hours around a big legal tech event. We called it the Red Line, a play on the Red Lion, the most typical pub name in Britain. Almost 300 people came through. Our Jude Law campaign got 70 million views, which never happens for legal tech. What comes from me is saying yes. In marketing, you’re not bold enough unless 30% of what you try fails.
Jeannette: Where do you want the story of AI in law to land?
Max: I want lawyers to feel empowered to do more by AI, not reduced to less. Law is extremely supply-constrained, and technology can meet more of that demand. Done well, legal could be a lighthouse that other industries learn from.
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