Law firms sold the legal AI they built and rented Legora's instead

The sellers and the buyers are the same firms

CMS co-initiated Noxtua in 2024 and Dentons backed it from the start. This week they sold, exiting their stakes as Noxtua closed a Series C above €100 million↗ that hands majority control to German legal publisher C.H. Beck ¹². Trade coverage tied the exits↗ to Harvey and Legora rollouts inside the two firms ³, and Dentons already sits on Legora's published client roster ⁴. The consolidation runs through the customers, not the platforms.

Every lawyer on one platform

Brodies LLP went firm-wide on Legora after a three-month pilot↗, the first Scotland-headquartered firm to do it; managing partner Stephen Goldie insists adoption stay "thoughtful, responsible" ⁵. That is the sales evidence. Legora counts more than 130,000 lawyers across 2,000 legal teams, most of the growth now from in-house counsel, with the US its biggest market ⁶. Renting compounds there: clients and their outside firms land on the same platform. Harvey says it is used by 80% of the 100 highest-grossing US firms ⁷.

The price fell while the business doubled

Legora is in talks to raise at least $300 million at roughly $8.5 billion pre-money↗ ⁸⁹, up more than 50% from March's $5.55 billion Series D of $550 million, plus a $50 million April extension that brought in Nvidia's NVentures and Atlassian ⁹¹⁰. Mid-August reporting had the talks above $10 billion ⁴. In between, reported ARR doubled from $100 million to $200 million↗ ⁶. Revenue doubled; the talked price fell.

Two horses, one price list

On the new ARR, $8.5 billion is about 42 times revenue. Harvey closed $550 million at $15.5 billion on 9 September ⁷, on reported annualized revenue above $350 million ⁴, roughly 44 times. In August, Legora's talked $10 billion against $100 million of ARR stood near 100 times ⁴. The multiple halved in a month: revenue grew faster than the price investors would pay, and the price is up only against March's Series D.

The European exit is not a surrender

Noxtua says revenue quintupled in four months; users top 30,000↗ ². Founder Leif-Nissen Lundbæk's line is "less Hollywood, more substance," and he counts three camps: global platforms like Harvey and Legora, general-purpose model makers, and jurisdiction-deep players like his own ². CMS and Dentons remain Noxtua anchor clients ¹.

Watch the close, not the talk

The round is unclosed and could land anywhere ⁸. The two-horse price list assumes lawyers rent their AI rather than own it, and this week the lawyers agreed. The rent has a landlord: both platforms run on foundation models from labs that could become competitors, and when Anthropic launched a legal plugin for Claude in May, several publicly listed legal software stocks dropped ⁴¹⁰.