Some legal AI companies are no longer content to sell software to law firms. They are building the service layer itself: automated or AI-native legal businesses that can attract clients, complete legal work and earn the fee directly.
That is not merely a new product category. It is a fundamentally different competitive bet.
When a legal AI vendor becomes the law firm
The direction is already visible. In 2025, the Solicitors Regulation Authority authorised Garfield as the first purely AI-based law firm in England and Wales, delivering small-debt recovery services through an AI-powered platform.
Eudia, originally a legal AI platform for corporate teams, subsequently launched Eudia Counsel in Arizona to handle contracting and M&A work. Norm AI followed with Norm Law, an independent firm offering “AI-native legal services.” Crosby is even more explicit: it describes itself as a vertically integrated AI-native law firm—not merely an AI tool—and accepts liability for the work it delivers.
These businesses may improve access, speed and pricing. But they also create an unavoidable question for traditional firms: is your legal technology provider helping you serve clients—or learning how to serve those clients without you?
The mixed signals from Harvey and Legora
Harvey and Legora illustrate why the answer is not always straightforward. Both publicly position themselves as law-firm enablers. Harvey co-founder Gabe Pereyra has said the greater opportunity is to help every law firm become AI-first, rather than build one law firm. Legora CEO Max Junestrand has similarly said he would rather be the “shovel seller” to talented lawyers than compete with them.
Yet both companies now sell to in-house legal teams as well as law firms. Harvey says it supports more than 500 in-house teams, while Legora describes its customers as both law firms and corporate legal departments.
That does not prove either company intends to launch a law firm. It does create structural ambiguity. Technology that helps companies complete more legal work internally may reduce the work sent to external counsel. The stated strategy may be partnership, while the product increasingly spans both sides of the lawyer-client relationship.
Vettam is making a different bet
We grow only when the law firm grows.
Our goal is to become the firm’s technology and AI back office: designing, building, integrating and maintaining the systems that improve how its lawyers work and how its clients are served. We do not want to win the firm’s clients. We want the firm to win and retain more of them.
This matters especially for small and mid-sized law firms. Software can now be built and maintained at a fraction of its historical cost. Firms should use that shift to build components of sovereign legal AI: systems shaped around their expertise, workflows, data, risk controls and client relationships.
They should not have to surrender their institutional knowledge to one vendor or remain permanently constrained by an off-the-shelf product.
A legal AI subscription gives a firm access to a tool. A long-term legal technology partner helps it build capability, preserve control and compound its own competitive advantage.
The future of legal AI will not be defined only by what the software can do. It will also be defined by whose business that software is ultimately built to grow.
