Let’s start this Wrap with some thoughts on Harvey’s and also Legora’s IPO plans. News ‘leaked’ 🙂 yesterday that Harvey has chatted to advisors about a potential public listing – and AL sources confirm that did indeed happen and is ongoing.
Likewise, sources have told this site that Legora is doing exactly the same, namely chatting to ‘The Street’ about what a future IPO could look like, valuations, timelines, main backers for the listing, and so on. All very sensible and logical things for any fast-growing business with major backers to do. (Note: JP Morgan is now an investor in Legora…hint, hint.)
AL put the IPO question to Legora last night and their spokesperson replied: ‘We don’t comment on speculation. Max [ Junestrand, CEO ] has always said he’d like to take Legora public one day, but it’s too soon to say when. Right now we’re focused on our customers and growing the business.’
And in regular language this means: yes, of course we’re going to do an IPO if we can – when the time and market conditions are right. The same goes for Harvey.
One additional point here for Legora is that they stressed to AL after their last raise a few weeks ago that they were really all about the long-term. Of course, an IPO changes that totally. It changes ownership and it changes the kind of pressures a company is under. So, ‘long-term’ may have meant they want ‘to exist’ for decades. But, it certainly won’t be decades before Legora changes ownership in some radical way.
So, what does this tell us, and why the sudden rush to plan for going public? After all, the messaging from both companies since they got started has been VC money, VC money and more VC money.
For AL the most logical reason for the potential acceleration of plans is that the legal AI market may be about to enter a period of turbulence. Why?
- The long-expected AI bubble crash seems increasingly likely as stories about data centre deal financiers selling off their debt gather pace. The Democrat win of the House in the US – sometimes connected to opposition to the building of new data centres – which has been a policy for some candidates during the Mid-Term elections – only makes it more likely AI investment could slow. Plus, gravity eventually hits all surges in growth. It’s just natural. That could trigger a wider macro readjustment of AI company valuations – and that would include those in legal tech. And Harvey and Legora both have very good valuations – higher than what we’ve usually seen in legal tech before.
- Anthropic will be a massive test case. If they do their IPO and all goes well, then AL guesses that will be the green light for legal AI IPOs as well. If not, then that raises some issues. Do you go ahead anyway? Do you say: ‘It’s a blip, it’s a different kind of thing to legal AI’ ? Or do you say: ‘Oh no, that scuppers things for us. Better wait another year or two or even three….’ ?
- The Big Tech moves into the legal vertical are no doubt on the minds of the fast-growing legal AI platforms. People have poked fun at Microsoft in the past for some of their legal sector products, but this time it’s different. The team – from Robin AI – (see video interview below) are building something long-term for legal, and they’re very serious about improvement and working closely with lawyers. I.e. this is a real strategic push. Plus, Copilot for Legal could potentially reach 100,000s of lawyers – absorbing a lot of the future growth Hargora is aiming at, especially among smaller firms and legal teams. That – and the moves of Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and others into legal – all make future planning for growth more complex. So, why not go public ASAP before those giants moving into legal AI take market share for real and cause problems for valuations?
- And finally, it’s worth adding that just because you talk to the investment banks about supporting an IPO – and of course they will want to because…hey, money from fees….right……that doesn’t mean a listing is going to happen soon. In fact, you can even get as far as filing some preliminary paperwork with the SEC and still not make a move – see Relativity for example, which has explored an IPO, but not done so yet.
Plus one final thought: does any of this actually matter? For AL, this site has got to say, although it will be fantastic for the founders to become actual billionaires from their hard work and ingenuity; for the legal world, for society as a whole, it’s just one more detail in the wider picture of a technological change that hopefully makes the operation of this civilisation of ours a little better. If making loads of money acts as an incentive to all involved to make this happen (HT to Adam Smith’s invisible hand), then cool. Societal evolution is the goal. If that involves IPOs, or anything else, then good…LFG….as they say.
If Harvey and Legora have more cash on hand to invest in growing and improving their platforms, and reaching more lawyers, then great. That is all for the greater good. But, AL feels the same way about every other player in this space. If Microsoft’s new focus on legal helps more lawyers to remove bottlenecks and inefficiency that’s great. Same for Clio. And Spellbook. And in fact every single participant in this market space.
P.S. Just wrapped Legal Innovators UK for 2026, and guess what? Of the dozens of people this site spoke to and heard speak, only one person showed any real interest in the financial plans of Harvey and Legora. 99% of people in this market just want to know:
- Can your product help to solve the problem they have.
- Is it reliable? Is it more than what was in the demo?
- Is it secure? Can I trust it?
- Is it easy to use?
- What is the service and support level like? Are you going to be there and help us?
- What is your roadmap? Will you help us keep up as the AI world advances at speed?
So, to conclude: will Harvey and Legora do IPOs at some point rather than sell to Lexis or TR? That seems likely. It’s AL’s guess that this would be their preferred route.
Are they talking to bankers and lawyers about this happening one day….? Yes. They would be mad not to do forward planning. Is it about to happen next week? Not likely. The market now is in a very fragile state. If the AI bubble pops and/or the Anthropic IPO is a mess, then valuations could tank and it would perhaps be better for legal AI companies to wait until things stabilise.
In short, Harvey and Legora – and their investors – are doing what any sensible business owner sitting on a great asset would do: planning ahead and gauging the market. There could be an IPO from one of them as soon as next year. Equally it could be years away. We shall see.
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A&O Shearman’s ‘$1.1 billion investment over five years into AI’ announcement …..Wow, where to start? Let’s keep this brief. As mentioned on social media, that’s $220m per year, for a $3.7 billion firm, which already spends a ton on legal tech. But, they said that the money is mostly going to be booked as billable time spent by their lawyers developing AI tools.….What ????
That really is hard to compute. They said in a statement sent to AL: ‘The majority of this investment will come from each practice investing at least 3% of its time developing specialist AI tools and services within its area of law.’
First, how does that become $1.1 billion?
Second, you can spin up an agent in Harvey – which they use a lot already – in an afternoon, or even faster. How on Earth does $1.1 billion go into spinning up a bunch of agents? How many agents can any law firm have? And $1 billion of billable time would – AL guesses – translate into 1,000s of agents…. ! Really don’t get this one.
Or, are they talking about building something else? But what? And if it was training their own LLM for example, do they need all the lawyers doing it? And why over 5 years…? That’s a bit slow, right? And why if it’s a really big deal, just 3% of their time? And is it all the lawyers giving 3% of their time..? And when do they give that time? And who’s counting? And what is measured?
And what about all the other legal tech spending? Where does that fit in?
And if they spend a billion dollars of time on non-fee earning work, doesn’t that just make the firm poorer…? Why do this? It’s really a bizarre announcement. Got to say.
And the strangest thing is that AOS is really one of the firms that has been serious about using AI and supporting legal tech use, e.g. their Fuse incubator. It feels like management just had a collective freak out and blurted this to the press without thinking it through fully.
Is this just a marketing wheeze? Is it a reaction to Kirkland getting all the headlines (not that Kirkland and AOS are locked in a death match…) ? Did the clients demand some big statement of intent? If so, will all the other top firms have to do the same now? Will Linklaters announce they will spend $1.2 billion. Then Clifford Chance will announce it is to spend $1.3 billion….?
What on Earth drove AOS to say this? They’ve now chained themselves to a very complex and awkward commitment for the next five years. Every few months people can ring up and ask how it’s going, what’s been spent, what’s been built, what do they have to show for it all? That is a lot of extra tech strategy pressure that no firm needs. Their innovation team needs a ‘danger money’ bonus for sure!
P.S. when AL started writing ‘The Innovators’ fictional series, this site didn’t assume it would become reality so quickly! On that point, your legal innovation heroine, Katie Downer, will return soon, but she is on gardening leave at the moment after getting sacked by her firm. Probably will start again after AL gets back from New York, (see below).
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Man, you know what, we will have to do a special Part Two of the Wrap tomorrow on Saturday. As this is already at 1,500 words and we’ve not even got to the other news yet. So, here’s one great video interview below – all about Microsoft’s Copilot for Legal, and then the announcement that Legal Innovators New York is on November 17 and 18 in Midtown, with the support of White & Case.
It’s the second time we’ve held LI in New York and we’ve some amazing speakers, not to mention an incredible group of legal tech companies taking part. See you there!
More on our speakers here.
And to get your free ticket, please see below for Express Registration.
Legal Innovators New York Conference – Nov 17 + 18
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And here is Artificial Lawyer’s AL TV interview: Copilot for Legal – with Carina Negreanu, Microsoft.
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Right, it’s been a very busy week chairing Legal Innovators in London. Will do some more Wrap things tomorrow.
Have a nice weekend folks!
Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer and Chair of the Legal Innovators conferences.
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