AI in the deal room

Legora: AI in the Legal Dealroom

Siân Arkan · 29 September 2026

There is a particular moment in a legal deal when the room silences.

All documents are open, deadlines are approaching and hundreds, if not thousands of pages have to be read, understood, re-read, compared, re-read, edited and signed. Somewhere in those pages could be a clause that transforms the value of the deal or rather, exposes a risk.

For decades this has been the work of commercial lawyers.

Now, it is largely becoming the work of machinery that companies are increasingly turning to in this new ‘Age of AI’. Beyond being a topic of curiosity, legal AI is beginning to sit alongside lawyers in the actual work of transactions. Will AI enter the dealroom? One of the companies at the centre of this change is Legora.

Lawyers have had the technology to search and manage documents for years since the standard pen and paper approach. Legora and other legal AI isn’t here just to help someone read a contract. It poses a more significant challenge where AI integrates as part of the Lawyer’s working environment. It becomes more active in working across documents and producing research/drafts at a much greater scale and speed than seen before.

This changes the relationship between the lawyer and the paperwork.

Think of a large corporate M&A transaction. There may be hundreds of documents to review: employment agreements, financial arrangements, commercial contracts and disclosure agreements, just to name a few. Traditionally a lawyer would be relied upon here to read and cross-check the materials themselves.

Legora is designed to revolutionise that process. Founded in Stockholm in 2023 and rebranded as Legora in 2025 (formerly Leya), Legora is a platform that assists lawyers with this legal task heavy lifting. In short, it works alongside lawyers to automate much of the early stage work in a deal: research, document review and drafting. Beyond functioning as a standard, generic AI chatbot, Legora’s autonomous agents actively plan and execute multi-step processes. The platform has the ability to simultaneously analyse legal issues across multi-jurisdictions and rank sources by authoritative weight. These are just a few of its features and according to its website, the AI ‘helps lawyers deliver higher quality work at unprecedented speed and scale’.

Therefore, it effectively positions itself as a product that will cover the groundwork so that lawyers have more time for the judgement aspect of Law. The more human aspect I suppose?

This promise of Legal AI appears to be that a lawyer could spend less time engaging with the most repetitive parts of the job, which sounds great at first… Though, if the general consensus and aims of legal AI is to reduce this supposedly cumbersome and replaceable ground work; where do Trainee Lawyers fall into this? What happens to the way they learn? What bridges the gap between being a Trainee and being a NQ Associate?

Junior Lawyers have traditionally been near the bottom of the solicitor hierarchy, developing their skills by doing exactly the kind of work that AI is now being asked to assist with. Lengthy reading may be a less glamorous aspect of the job, but it teaches lawyers how contracts are structured, to spot risks and what experienced lawyers look out for. If this first review is completed by AI, then of course a junior lawyer will have more time to focus on strategic analysis. But they may also have fewer opportunities to learn through the repetitive work that came before it. The very tasks that laid the foundations for the top lawyers of today (partner status).

This is one of the central tensions in legal AI: this efficient technology is changing how lawyers become lawyers.

Moreover, the rapid growth of Legora exemplifies how serious the market is taking this legal technology, with the company announcing a $5.5 billion valuation in March 2026. Major clients have become part of the company’s story with firms such as HSF Kramer and Linklaters among its customers.

But such numbers and famous firm names are only one part of the story.

The real test is whether lawyers can trust these systems enough to incorporate them into serious transactions. Can they do this whilst maintaining the confidentiality, accuracy and professional judgement needed in legal work. AI has speed advantages across all industries. Yet speed is not the same as understanding, and an answer that sounds convincing may not necessarily be a correct one, as seen in the recent Deloitte AI-Law mishap. Nevertheless, legal AI is here to stay.

All in all,it is unlikely that the future of the legal dealroom will be about Lawyers vs Machines. In fact, it will be about lawyers working differently with machines, as we enter a precarious situation where lawyers who use AI will replace lawyers who don’t.

Therefore, the question is no longer whether AI will enter the dealroom. It already has.

The more interesting areas for thought will be what do lawyers do with this time and possibilities AI gives them? Also, by increasing the ‘efficiency’ of the profession, how does it change what it means to learn and practise law in the first place?

This is a general explainer on industry trends, not advice on any specific tool, firm or transaction, and it isn't legal advice.