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Legal technology company Legora plans to expand its India presence by hiring professionals familiar with domestic legal practice, deepening its product capabilities for Indian law and pursuing growing demand from in-house legal teams, as it looks to convert rising interest in artificial intelligence into everyday use across legal workflows.
The expansion plans follow the company's $550 million Series E funding round at an $8.8 billion post-money valuation, led by Atreides Management, with participation from new and existing investors. Legora intends to use the capital to expand across the US, Asia-Pacific and other international markets, while investing further in its agentic operating system, which enables lawyers to work with AI agents on tasks such as research, drafting, contract review and due diligence.
For India, the company is focusing on building a team that understands the country's legal system and developing products that reflect the requirements of local practice. Its India operations are part of a broader Asia-Pacific presence that includes offices in Bengaluru, Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul.
"Hiring is our top priority across Asia-Pacific. We expect the team across the region to reach more than 100 people by the end of 2026," Heather Paterson, vice-president of Legora APJ, told ETLegalWorld.
"In India, that means hiring people who know Indian practice from the inside, many of them lawyers who join us as legal engineers and work alongside firms and in-house teams on live matters," she said.
The hiring strategy reflects the company's emphasis on implementation alongside technology. Rather than relying solely on access to software, Legora is working with legal teams to adapt its platform to their existing workflows, precedents and research requirements.
From AI experimentation to everyday legal work
Legora said Indian law firms are increasingly integrating AI into document-heavy assignments, including legal research, drafting, contract review and due diligence. These activities often require lawyers to work across large volumes of documents, identify relevant provisions and verify information against underlying legal sources.
Chandhiok & Mahajan rolled out Legora across the firm following a competitive pilot, during which the company's legal engineers worked alongside its lawyers to ensure the platform reflected the requirements of Indian legal practice, Paterson said.
Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas and Dua Associates also work with Legora. The company has separately entered into an exclusive partnership with Manupatra to bring Indian case law, regulations and commentary into the same workspace in which lawyers draft and review documents.
The integration is intended to reduce the need to move between separate research and drafting environments, allowing lawyers to access relevant Indian legal material while working on a matter.
For legal research, lawyers can pose questions using Indian legal sources and receive answers linked to the underlying material, which they can verify. In drafting and contract review, the platform works within Microsoft Word, allowing lawyers to draft from precedents, examine counterparty documents and mark up agreements.
For due diligence and bulk contract review, the platform can extract and compare key terms across large document sets in a structured view, rather than requiring lawyers to examine each contract independently.
These applications address tasks that consume significant time in legal departments and law firms, particularly when teams are working against transaction deadlines or handling high volumes of agreements.
However, Legora has not disclosed India-specific figures quantifying reductions in legal costs, turnaround times or hours spent on these assignments.
Paterson said the impact is visible in how teams handle routine work, maintain consistency and allocate senior lawyers' time.
"Routine work moves faster, which shortens turnaround for clients and business teams. Quality is more consistent, because teams work from shared playbooks and precedents rather than individual habits. Senior lawyers also spend less time on first-pass review and more on advice and strategy," she said.
She added that the company's measure of success is whether lawyers continue using the platform every day on live matters, rather than simply accessing the technology during a trial or pilot.
In-house legal teams emerge as a growth area
While law firms remain a key entry point for Legora in India, the company is also targeting in-house legal departments, which handle recurring commercial agreements, internal approvals, contract reviews and requests from business teams.
For corporate legal departments, the opportunity lies in standardising high-volume work and reducing the time spent on initial reviews, allowing lawyers to focus on matters requiring legal judgment, risk assessment and strategic advice.
Paterson said in-house teams are increasingly becoming an important part of the company's growth. Globally, they accounted for more than 40% of Legora's new customers in the third quarter, compared with a much smaller share of its customer base a year earlier.
The shift indicates a broadening of demand beyond law firms to businesses seeking to integrate AI into internal legal operations. The company has not disclosed a separate figure for the contribution of Indian in-house teams to new customer additions.
Legora plans to continue prioritising leading law firms in India while pursuing demand from corporate legal departments.
"We'll keep investing in the product for Indian practice, including Indian legal content through Manupatra, and customers here will get each new part of the Legora aOS as soon as it's ready," Paterson said.
The company's India strategy will therefore combine hiring, customer engagement and product development, with legal engineers expected to work directly with law firms and in-house teams on live matters.
$550 million fundraise backs international expansion
Legora's India plans form part of a wider expansion strategy following its latest funding round, which values the company at $8.8 billion post-money, up from $5.6 billion at its previous round.
Atreides Management led the Series E round. New investors included Baron Capital, Capital Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Glade Brook Capital Partners and J.P. Morgan. Existing investors, including Accel, Benchmark, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, ICONIQ, Insight Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and Sands Capital, also participated.
The company said the capital would support expansion in the US, Asia-Pacific and other international markets, as well as further investment in the Legora agentic operating system, or aOS.
Legora reported that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) grew from $1 million to $100 million in less than 18 months, with the next $100 million taking less than six months. Its ARR now exceeds $200 million, according to the company.
Founded in 2023, Legora launched its platform in October 2024. It now has more than 1,000 employees across 18 offices and says its technology is used by more than 140,000 legal professionals at over 2,400 law firms and in-house legal teams across more than 80 markets.
The company is positioning its latest investment around a transition from AI assistants that respond to individual prompts towards agents that can carry out multiple steps in a legal workflow.
"The opportunity in legal is enormous and we are still early. AI is changing the role of the lawyer, with more time for judgement and advice, and it is reshaping how law firms and in-house legal teams are organised and how their work gets done," Max Junestrand, chief executive and co-founder of Legora, said.
The company plans to introduce additional capabilities, including agentic intake, horizon scanning and legal research, as part of its aOS offering.
For India, the challenge will be to translate this broader product expansion into tools that work reliably with domestic legal sources, established drafting practices and the requirements of individual legal teams.
Implementation remains central to adoption
Legal AI adoption requires more than deploying a tool. Firms and corporate legal departments must also determine how AI-generated outputs are checked, how internal precedents and playbooks are incorporated, and where lawyers need to retain direct oversight.
Legora's approach, as described by Paterson, places legal engineers and customer engagement at the centre of implementation. Its lawyers remain responsible for reviewing the underlying legal material, validating outputs and making decisions on matters.
The company is also betting on integrating research and document workflows within a common workspace, with its Manupatra partnership providing access to Indian legal content.
Whether this approach delivers measurable improvements in cost and productivity across Indian legal teams will depend on adoption in live matters and the extent to which AI-assisted workflows can be embedded into routine practice.
For now, Legora is prioritising expansion of its regional workforce, investment in Indian legal content and deeper engagement with law firms and in-house departments. The company's next phase in India will test whether growing interest in legal AI translates into sustained use across the country's legal services market.
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