# Legora proved US demand from Stockholm before opening locally

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/legora-proved-us-demand-from-stockholm-before-opening/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Max Junestrand](https://realalpha.app/builders/max-junestrand/) · Max Junestrand is cofounder and CEO of Legora. · Co-founded and leads Legora, an AI workspace for lawyers, after stints at McKinsey and Ericsson.
- Host: [Jack Altman](https://realalpha.app/people/jack-altman/) · General partner, Benchmark · Co-founded Lattice and ran it until 2023, then started his fund, Alt Capital.
- Show: Uncapped
- Episode: [Building an AI-Native Software Company With Legora CEO Max Junestrand | Ep. 44](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/), Mar 12, 2026
- Moment: 33:54 to 39:47 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/legora-proved-us-demand-from-stockholm-before-opening/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2034

## Quote

> “my rule was, if we can **serve two of the biggest clients** in the world, or in the U.S., from Stockholm, then we're ready.”
> — [Max Junestrand](https://realalpha.app/builders/max-junestrand/) at [36:01](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2161) · Uncapped

## Takeaways

1. Win major US accounts from Stockholm before hiring locally.
2. Cleary Gottlieb and Goodwin were the proving customers.
3. European expansion forced multi-country and multi-language support early.

## About this segment

Max Junestrand set a threshold: win two major US firms from Stockholm before opening locally. Cleary and Goodwin signed in competitive pilots, showing Legora could serve them remotely.

From “Building an AI-Native Software Company With Legora CEO Max Junestrand | Ep. 44”, Mar 12, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[34:07](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2047) You know what I also wonder on this? We talked about this a little bit, that like being a Europe-based company means that you are multinational from the beginning. You have to. And I think this, I'm sure some of this is pre-AI. And I think it, I mean, a lot of it is. I also think there's a thing where like, if you started in Europe, you've already learned how to sell to 10 countries. And you know that there's differences in the way that the cultures work and the way they purchase software and what the rules are and the regulations and these things.

[34:36](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2076) And so I'm curious if you thought about that when you invested and you're like, well, actually, maybe coming to the U.S. will be easier one day. I'm curious your experience on that. I mean, Y Combinator weren't particularly excited about backing a company in Sweden. I remember the first interview with Gustav and he's Swedish, like a Swedish partner at YC. And he goes, so you're going to move to the States, right?

[34:57](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2097) And I go, yes, yes, of course. That's the cue to say yes, so that you get the invite to go to YC. You're like, no, I'm good in Sweden. You guys are opening a Sweden office to YC. And then I came to YC and I left three days later because I had so much business going on in Sweden and I couldn't do work between 1 a.m. and 10 a.m. Like that was just impossible. But, you know, like the Swedish legal market is smaller than Kirkland and Ellis.

[35:21](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2121) So, of course, you have to expand. And naturally, we went to Finland. And then we went to Denmark. Then I was like, well, I think we got the hang of it. And the most important thing was, like the first customer we got, Mannheimer Svartling, the big firm in Sweden, Their managing partner had such a good relationship with the other firms in other non-competitive countries that he would just introduce me and I would fly down and I'd say the same thing as I told him, like, AI is going to change the world and you're going to need a partner.

[35:50](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2150) I'm here. Let's work. You know, that sort of made it all start. But then the move to the UK and the US was like when... We really started ripping. How different was coming to the U.S. versus going to Finland? Not at all. I had a rule. So there's actually a few Swedish companies that tried to go to the U.S. but did so unsuccessfully, like Klarna. They tried many times before they actually made it work.

[36:13](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2173) And my rule was, if we can serve two of the biggest clients in the world, or in the U.S., from Stockholm, then we're ready. And then we'll open an office here. So Cleary Gottlieb, amazing Wall Street firm, and Goodwin and Procter. and we served them both. We won their business in competitive pilots and we could serve them from Sweden. Like we did a lot of flights back and forth. But after they signed, we said, okay, amazing.

[36:40](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2200) Now we're ready. Let's open an office here. So one thing about the market structure of legal that we knew about here at Benchmark ahead of investing is that legal has this unique market feature that it's a services industry. And in services industries, technology adoption is slow at first and then rapid later. So if you just look at any marketplace idea in a services area, it's like the marketplaces are usually like supply constrained.

[37:12](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2232) And then the minute supply unlocks, all of the supply comes online into the market and then you become demand constrained. And so if you study marketplaces, especially marketplaces around services, this is something that you just like fundamentally learn as like one of the rules of marketplaces. And so in legal, the market structure is such that like the initial adoption will be very slow and hard.

[37:35](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2255) But once it unlocks, it like really unlocks. There's some kind of like exponential viral coefficient that happens there. That's one part about the legal industry that's really interesting. And then how it overlays into software in legal is that if you look at the most successful legal software companies, they were all started in Europe. Pre-AI, too, by the way. I had a hypothesis that part of the reason why you get that way is that you're used to selling the multi-geography and multi-rule systems from day zero.

[38:06](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2286) So, for example, Lagora sold to a Swedish firm. Yeah, that makes sense. And a Spanish firm and a Finnish firm. And so, yes, they're like laws at the European Union level. Yeah, but like from the beginning, this needs to work for many people. That's right. And if you start in the U.S., what you end up designing is that there's the federal legal system, there's a state legal system, and then there's regional.

[38:27](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2307) But it's not as bifurcated as like literally different countries. And different languages. And different languages. And so you build all this stuff on day zero that you don't if you start in San Francisco. And one of the interesting things that Max showed us in the prototype in the first meeting is he had multi-language support already built and he had like multi-legal framework support already built.

[38:52](https://realalpha.app/v/DdHl7dXVt-w/?t=2332) I remember I demoed Sweden and Spain. That's right. And that was like remarkably impressive because it was a company with five people thinking global scale because they were forced to because they couldn't serve the Stockholm legal market. totally those two things just meant from they launched the product they got a bunch of people to sign that immediately it was like let's go get the two big firms in every geography because we have to it was global from day one and now i mean laguara i think has become a a hub in like a technology hub in europe like people from germany from the netherlands from spain from italy they're all moving to stockholm even in the winter so talk about talk about the culture part of it which