How Legora Is Building the Operating System for Legal AI

Legora has recruited attorney-editors with decades of experience in building publishers' navigation tools to develop its AI-native citator. Credit: Legora

Leveraging Azure OpenAI, Legora integrates a legal ontology with an AI-native citator to eliminate hallucinations and deliver measurable ROI for global law firms.

European AI startup Legora, built on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service, is establishing a new foundation for legal research through its platform.

The company states it is creating a unified platform featuring comprehensive data grounded in a complete legal ontology and an AI-native citator.

“We are building the operating system that agents run on inside legal organisations, and legal research is a critical part of that,” says Max Junestrand, CEO and Co-Founder of Legora.

Max Junestrand, CEO and Co-Founder of Legora. Credit: Max Junestrand/LinkedIn

“It is also the hardest thing in legal AI.”

Legora’s new legal AI architecture

To power its platform, Legora is developing what it calls a full ontology of the law and “an AI-native citator”. A full ontology of the law maps the foundational categories of legal reality.

The company is building this with proprietary technology from its acquisitions of Qura and Wexler, compressing corpora of thousands to hundreds of millions of documents into structured data that an agent can use to provide reliable output.

“We don’t believe our clients should have to choose between the best data and the best technology,” says Melanie Brown, Head of Legal Data, Legora.

Melanie Brown, Head of Legal Data, Legora. Credit: Melanie Brown/LinkedIn

“The frustration I hear most from clients is that they cannot access the data they already pay publishers for in the AI platforms they want to work in.”

To build its AI-native citator, Legora has assembled a team of attorney-editors who spent decades building publishers' navigation tools by hand. They define the standard, adjudicate the hard cases and run ongoing quality control.

The citator is enabled by building a full AI-native ontology of law that captures the relationships between sources, what each legal proposition means, the hierarchy of authority, temporal validity, and more.

Legal research with comprehensive data

According to an article published in the Law Society Gazette earlier this year, there has been an increasing number of examples, both in the UK and overseas, of litigants and lawyers presenting case law based on AI searches. These have sometimes produced entirely fake, or hallucinatory, case citations, which some judges have quoted in full.

“We have cataloged more than 50 distinct ways AI fails at legal research,” says Arvid Winterfeldt, who leads Legal Research at Legora.

Arvid Winterfeldt, who leads Legal Research at Legora. Credit: Arvid Winterfeldt/LinkedIn

“AI cites a rule and misses the amendment that changed it. It quotes a dissent as the holding. It puts a non-binding agency decision on a par with a Supreme Court case. A passage can look perfectly relevant in isolation and have been made obsolete by a later case.”

Adding value

According to Legora’s report, The Legora ROI Report:
The value of AI
for in-house teams, legal departments worldwide are rapidly adopting generative and agentic AI applications to improve the quality of their work, manage risk more effectively, increase responsiveness and capacity and drive business growth.

80% of firms reported being able to accomplish more in the same amount of time.

Legora’s study found that 97% of respondents using Legora can respond to stakeholders faster or much faster.

77% also reported that project turnaround time is faster or much faster, and 90% reported that ramp-up time has decreased.

Almost half of the participants reported a shift in how they work with outside law firms, with 47% reporting that because they can accomplish more internally, they engage outside counsel on higher value matters that require deeper knowledge in specific areas.

Key partners

• In 2025, the international law firm Trowers and Hamlins announced a partnership with Legora. Rob Mallett, Innovation and Legal Technology Operations Manager at Trowers and Hamlins, commented: “Legora was a standout choice, consistently impressing us across the board. It'squality, ease of use and strong adoption confirmed that Legora is the right tool for us as we take the next step on our AI journey. During the pilot phase, we validated a large number of highly valuable and practical use cases spanning a wide range of our practice areas.”
• In February, multinational law firm Pinsent Masonsannounced its global firmwide strategic partnership withLegora following an extensive pilot programme across its corporate, commercial and property groups. Head of the Change & Innovation Board at Pinsent Masons, Clare Francis says: “This partnership shows that our focus isn’t on simply adopting technology, but on equipping our people to work confidently and creatively with it.”
• In July, Arthur Cox LLP, one of Ireland's leading law firms, selected Legora as a strategic partner to support the next phase of its AI strategy, with a firm-wide rollout now underway. "At Arthur Cox, we have a multi-faceted AI and innovation strategy. Our partnership with Legora is an important part of our broader technology ecosystem. We have invested significantly in the people, governance and capabilities needed to deliver AI-enabled legal services, and Legora complements our strategy to develop market-leading client solutions and deliver exceptional legal advice,” commented Geoff Moore, Managing Partner, Arthur Cox LLP.