Amit Kothiyal was recently appointed Head of India to captain Legora's operations at its Bengaluru office. The company recently raised $150 million and partnered with Manupatra to offer AI solutions to law firms and in-house legal teams alike..In this email interview with Bar & Bench, Kothiyal reveals what sets Legora apart from other legal tech AI, how Indian law firms and in-house legal teams are increasingly embracing AI, expansion plans and more..Edited excerpts follow..You have a few Indian law firms on board and have also tied up with Manupatra. Are you also planning to collaborate with legal teams of companies?.Amit Kothiyal: Absolutely. Legora adds the same efficiency gains to in-house legal teams as it does for private practice firms - reducing the burden of low-value, high-volume legal work and allowing General Counsel (GCs) and their teams to act as strategic advisors to the C-suite and wider business. The requirements of legal teams in companies are different and we are working closely with them to build specific workflows for their needs. We count a number of large, international corporations among our client base already and expect this to continue growing.Moreover, Legora fundamentally reimagines how in-house teams and law firms work together. The outdated model of email-based client-firm correspondence is slow, inefficient, fragmented and can lead to buried documents and a lack of real-time oversight. Legora’s Portal function provides a new AI-powered shared workspace that allows both sides to work on live matters in unison. This strengthens collaboration and synergies between in-house teams and external counsel, whilst reducing friction and enabling private practice lawyers to focus on complex, high-impact advisory work..How is Legora priced for the Indian legal community, considering you are competing with Harvey and a few others?.AK: We’re unable to discuss details of our pricing models. Legora creates immediate and lasting value. With Legora supporting firms to think sharper, move faster and deliver more for their clients, it provides a strong and fast return on the investment..What sets Legora apart from other legal tech in terms of aiding legal research and processes in firms?.AK: We’ve put collaboration at the heart of everything we do at Legora and that philosophy still remains. The platform has been built for lawyers, with lawyers, right from the beginning. We still collaborate very closely with our clients at every stage of innovation and this carries over into how we support adoption and implementation. Our engineers and customer support teams take a very hands-on approach with every client, partnering with them in their adoption journey. This includes identifying specific use-cases and challenges that Legora can solve and then working with them to implement Legora into existing matters, workflows and processes to ensure it delivers immediate, lasting value and return on investment. We don’t believe in just handing over licenses to our clients. We work with them as strategic partners to co-develop the platform with them, not just for them. We have the pace and ability to innovate at rapid speed, because we’re not guessing what lawyers want and building it; we’re finding out what lawyers need and solving it.We’ve joined up with over 150 legal resource organisations that lawyers already use and worked with them to establish seamless integration with our platform. This includes partnering exclusively with leading legal research platform Manupatra to integrate its comprehensive data base into Legora. The agreement means that Legora is the only legal AI platform that has access to Manupatra’s repository, which includes an extensive citation covering over 320 Indian and 130 international journals.Similarly, we have a strategic partnership with NetDocuments and iManage, the cloud-based document organisation platform widely used by law firms, which has native and seamless integration with Legora. We are also working natively to bring India-specific legislation and case law into the Legora platform. This will allow lawyers to complete research for legal matters governed by Indian law with greater confidence, speed and efficiency. .Lawyers, especially the older generation, are known to be quite tech-averse. How much of a challenge is that when it comes to getting a law firm on board, and how have you addressed it?.AK: We’re actually seeing law firms approach adoption and integration with a ‘lead from the top’ mentality, with partners and firm management acting as the driving force behind AI transformation. There is typically a rigorous change management approach to embrace change amongst law firm partnerships, because they can see the immediate and lasting value that Legora creates. For example, enabling them and their teams to meet client requests that previously would have taken days in a matter of hours and allowing senior lawyers to step away from supervision of low-value work and focus more on high-level advisory work.Moreover, when leadership sees that AI enables them to achieve better outcomes for their clients, the conversation naturally strays away from needing to learn how to use new technology and towards gaining strategic competitive advantage. This is really driving top-down advocacy, as AI transformation is being championed as a business necessity, not an IT project.We’re firmly aligned with this belief that senior buy-in is crucial. A culture of visible advocacy at the top cascades down, building confidence around AI use throughout the firm and reassuring both teams and clients that this isn't just 'tech for tech's sake,' but a core part of the firm's future strategy..How much of a law firm's workforce will AI render redundant in the near future?.AI can turbo-charge legal workflows and create value, but it will always need human oversight and lawyers will always be needed to add their own experience, expertise and nuance.Amit Kothiyal.AK: Legora is designed to support lawyers, not replace them. We have designed the product to work with “lawyers in the loop”. AI can turbo-charge legal workflows and create value, but it will always need human oversight and lawyers will always be needed to add their own experience, expertise and nuance. We firmly believe that humans supported by AI will always outperform humans on their own, and AI on its own. By introducing drastic efficiency gains, we’re able to help lawyers achieve more in a day. They can focus less on the time-consuming, lower value work, get to the heart of a matter more quickly and, therefore, focus more on the high-level strategic advisory role that their clients truly value..With law firms using legal tech that will do some of the work of associates, how will it affect partners' billings?.AK: There are definitely varying points of view around how the billable hour structure will adapt to the new age of AI-powered legal work and clients of law firms are paying closer scrutiny to this as they expect more value for less. However, with AI automating lower-level, repeatable tasks, it renders much 'core' legal work into a commodity service. Higher value strategic advisory services - and the business drivers behind these such as client relationships, brand identity and reputation - will take on higher relative value.We see a real opportunity for client expansion through AI, as top fee-earners are able to focus less time on overseeing or reviewing low-value, high-volume work and put more time into growing their existing client relationships, winning new business and extending into new service lines. This can ultimately drive billings to grow, meaning margins will get wider and firms can invest further into AI and other innovations.For associates, one of the benefits of Legora is that when they receive reviewed work, it is not just a redlined document with unexplained changes. Instead, they get a detailed explanation of why changes have been made and the reasoning behind it. That makes Legora a force multiplier for associate training, which is only going to improve.Ultimately, it has historically been a frustration for law firm clients that the low-level, high-workload work needs to be paid for. AI means that they are not paying for hours of document review, but those hours are being converted into higher-value strategic counsel. At the very top of the market, we could see the best practitioners commanding an even greater premium..How should users address issues like inaccuracies and hallucinations when it comes to AI-generated legal advice and research?.AK: AI is not a substitute for lawyers using their judgment for the substance of the advice they give. Legora is grounded on sources that need to be provided and citations are given to verify the source of any information that Legora provides. Transparency is at the very heart of the platform and we consider this a vital aspect of supporting lawyers to research smarter, think sharper and get to the heart of a matter more quickly.Accuracy and reliability have been top priorities from the very beginning of Legora and there are built-in checks and balances that aim to reduce errors or hallucinations. Nonetheless, it remains imperative that lawyers check source material and ensure that AI has found and delivered correct information if they are unsure..India is yet to introduce a regulatory mechanism for AI. What should be at the core of fair policy in this regard?.AK: Europe has been a first-mover in terms of AI regulation, which has been positive for encouraging responsible innovation. However, there have been some snagging points that countries can learn from as they establish their own regulatory systems around AI. For businesses to thrive, regulatory clarity and simplicity is really key, as a patchwork regulatory system is hard to navigate and stifles innovation. Cross-border consistency is also a vital element. The more aligned regulations are between different jurisdictions, the more consistency there is in how legal AI platforms can be safely rolled out and adopted with impact on a global scale..In terms of storage, data localisation remains a major concern for companies entering India, with sectoral guidelines and upcoming data protection laws potentially slowing entry. How do you address that?.AK: We’re operating on a global scale, which requires us to be flexible in how we work with clients to ensure we remain compliant with their jurisdiction’s laws and regulations. For example, in India, we have India-specific storage infrastructure and India-level shared data hosting..In Singapore, Harvey is working with the Singapore judiciary. Do you have plans to work with the Indian judiciary and the government?.We are very open to working with third party organisations, including local judiciaries and governments. We would welcome an opportunity to do so in India and we are already beginning to partner with law schools in the region..How large is the Legora team in India and what are your plans for expansion?.We expect to double in size globally in the first half of 2026.Amit Kothiyal.We expect to double in size globally in the first half of 2026. India is certainly a market in which we are expecting to see strong adoption growth, which will see us expand our local team. We are always on the lookout for the brightest minds from across legal sectors and this includes former lawyers joining the company, as they can offer unique advice to our clients to help them evaluate and implement Legora..What kind of roles do lawyers play in your company?.AK: We do have a number of former legal professionals who have seen what we’re trying to achieve here at Legora and have been excited to jump on board and play their role in building something that will truly revolutionise the legal profession. Having colleagues with first-hand experience working in the legal sector means we are uniquely positioned to help our clients evaluate AI within the context of India legal work flows. It also provides us with a deep understanding of the challenges that Indian law firms face and to then build solutions to the challenges into the Legora platform. This has truly helped us drive deep, widespread adoption across legal teams and measure the return on investment that law firms achieve. We have former-lawyers working across a variety of roles, such as in the legal engineering, legal innovation and our own in-house legal team. We believe that the insight we gain from having former legal professionals in our team adds a huge amount of value, as it aligns with our mission to create with lawyers, not just for them..Follow Bar and Bench channel on WhatsAppDownload the Bar and Bench Mobile app for instant access to the latest legal news.
