# Legora’s Jacob Lauritzen explains building legal agents without seeing client data

Digest AI · Agents & Tools · published 2026-11-02T22:54:03Z

Canonical: https://digestai.news/story/legoras-jacob-lauritzen-explains-building-legal-agents-without-seeing

## Summary

Legora’s CTO, Jacob Lauritzen, discusses how the legal AI company develops agents that handle sensitive client data without direct visibility. Founded in a Stockholm basement with ChatGPT and Swedish law tools, Legora now offers features like drafting documents, reviewing 10,000 contracts at once, and coordinating workflows between lawyers, clients, and other agents. The company uses simulated environments—modeled after customer workflows—to test agents, mimicking reinforcement learning worlds. One example: citation accuracy jumped from 70% to 99% after a single release without code changes, showing the power of iterative testing in controlled settings.

Legora runs everything on Azure for privacy and security, avoiding open-weight models and ElevenLabs. The company’s Tabular Review tool—a million-cell spreadsheet—has become an industry standard. Legora’s 100 engineers (up from 20) now struggle to keep pace with demand, despite Lauritzen’s early bet that 20 engineers would suffice. The firm also uses its own product for acquisition due diligence and is hiring engineers in New York, Stockholm, and London. Lauritzen speculates that 60% of legal work is already handled well by models, but the remaining 40% requires smarter, more specialized agents.

## Key points

- Legora tests agents in simulated environments modeled on real customer workflows, improving accuracy without direct data access
- Citation accuracy in drafts improved from 70% to 99% after one release, showing iterative testing’s impact
- Legora runs on Azure for privacy, avoids open-weight models, and now employs 100 engineers after starting with 3

## Why it matters

Legora’s approach to agent development without direct data access offers a scalable model for legal tech, where privacy is critical. Its simulated testing method could inspire other industries handling sensitive data, while its 100% accuracy jump in citations demonstrates how iterative refinement can outperform traditional engineering changes.

## Sources

1. [Building Legal Agents When You Can't See the Data - Jacob Lauritzen, CTO of Legora](https://latent.space/p/building_legal_agents_when_you_can_t_see_the_data_-_jacob_lauritzen_cto_of_legora) (Latent Space, 2026-11-02)

## Cite

Digest AI, "Legora’s Jacob Lauritzen explains building legal agents without seeing client data", 2 November 2026, https://digestai.news/story/legoras-jacob-lauritzen-explains-building-legal-agents-without-seeing

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