WillC

Harvey is valued at $11B. Legora just raised at $5.5B. I built their entire web application in two weeks and I'm making it open-source and free for everyone to use. Say hi to Mike: mikeoss.com. When I got the chance to try Harvey and Legora, I was surprised by how simple they were. A thought came to mind: I could probably build something similar in no time at all with Claude. And so I did. Assistant, project, tabular review and workflows. You get it all without vendor lock-in. Mike offers law firms an alternative, where they own the application layer and aren't stuck with a vendor they're renewing forever. You can try Mike in the demo on the website, or go to the GitHub link on the site to download the code and run a local version yourself.

True legal specific workflows: e-discovery and due diligence, for ex. these are not being satisfactorily automated by Harvey or Legora. Imagine you give the AI 500 documents, it works agentically non-stop and produces a DD report in the firm's house style with traceable citations.

@willchen500 As an ex lawyer turned software architect (now building agentic solutions) I am enjoying seeing this play out. Whats your take on what constitutes a defensible moat in legal tech?

While I get where he is coming from, this is a reductive argument that misses the nuance that there are thick wrappers and thin wrappers. 1. People who make this argument miss that Harvey and Legora offer similar core product features as ChatGPT or Claude with in my view insufficient differentiation for the legal vertical. They are then repackaged to sound like they are tailored for law. File uploads in projects -> vault. Custom prompts -> workflows. But great tech businesses in the world are built on 1. A great product that provides real value add 2. Great distribution. This sort of argument ignores 1. 2. mikeoss.com went viral was because it managed to replicate Harvey and Legora’s core functions in 2 weeks, with some extra functionality like version control for docs, and a Coding IDE type interface for working across legal docs in a project. Much harder to vibe code great software businesses like Stripe, Google or Revolut in two weeks. 3. Can you use AWS for your payments and CRM out of the box? A law firm can use ChatGPT or Claude enterprise and get most of the value of Harvey and Legora. Claude has the word add-in and Microsoft just introduced its legal focused word add-in as well. Global law firm Freshfields has recently directly announced a partnership with Anthropic, shunning Harvey and Legora. When your suppliers are competing with you in the same vertical with the same product features, you are a reseller.

Legal tech vibe-coding is a nice one @RampCapitalLLC > positive and productive #legaltech

@ArtificialLawya Thanks for having me on AL

Mike, the Open Source Legal AI Platform – Will Chen Interview #legaltech - AL hears from Mike creator @willchen500 on the why, how, + what of the #opensource legal AI platform. Many thanks to Will for the interview. artificiallawyer.com/2026/05/04/mik…

@TiredBambooLaw Thank you Justin

@willchen500 It's been awesome seeing Mike blow up. I think it'll be super useful for a lot of lawyers. It made it pretty clear that Harvey/Legora, likely won't have a moat around wrappers. It's going to come down to that "we guarantee no hallucinations or that if it says XYZ it actually is"

“I Like Mike”

@zubairsapi Thank you Zubair

We said that it’s very impressive product of @willchen500 ,will change the dominance of legal techs over legal industry and going to end this two-player market game anymore. Check it out here, it’s incredible open source soft/tool and great local model. Mikeoss.com

@scottastevenson Thanks Scott will have a read

@willchen500 Good project, aligns with some of the thoughts I had in Champagne AI is Going Flat (x.com/scottastevenso…). There is a job at Spellbook if you want one :)

Harvey is valued at $11B. Legora just raised at $5.5B. I built their entire web application in two weeks and I'm making it open-source and free for everyone to use. Say hi to Mike: mikeoss.com. When I got the chance to try Harvey and Legora, I was surprised by how simple they were. A thought came to mind: I could probably build something similar in no time at all with Claude. And so I did. Assistant, project, tabular review and workflows. You get it all without vendor lock-in. Mike offers law firms an alternative, where they own the application layer and aren't stuck with a vendor they're renewing forever. You can try Mike in the demo on the website, or go to the GitHub link on the site to download the code and run a local version yourself.

@moderndas @tobyeggleston Harvey Legora

@tobyeggleston @willchen500 trying to understand comments. L/H means? legal/healthcare? thanks

Harvey and Legora are essentially sales organisations that resell tokens. They have hired legions of ex big law juniors and mid levels as sales people (“GTM”) along with some ex partners to wine and dine their former colleagues. They slap on a UI that makes them look different from ChatGPT but the product differentiation and vertical specific features are far and few in between. You could just as well use both for any white collar job. Their web apps are basically 1. A chatbot interface 2. A projects function where you can upload your files 3. A tabular review function where you can bulk review documents in a table 4. Workflows which are just custom prompts you write for the chatbot or tabular review. I was able to build everything plus some additional functionality they do not have like version control in mikeoss.com in two weeks. I call this the “token reseller theory”. They are like car dealers or real estate agents but for tokens. The model providers get them to do the selling to crack open the reticent legal market. What happens to H/L now that the model providers want the market for themselves? Does not bode well for them.

@BrettBaronR32 Do you have a source for that. I can’t think of a legal basis to distinguish them from any other chatbot

@willchen500 harveys whole claim is that a users harvey chat logs cannot be subpoenad and chatgpt/claude logs can. thats their "moat". its yet to be tested in court ironically

I understand where you are coming from but there’s nuances to this. Google beat all the search incumbents due to a better search algorithm that no one else was able to replicate. The brand etc is true, but if a true competitor emerges with a radically better product provided there is distribution the market adjusts. That’s how market competition works. All the stuff you mentioned has value but so does product. You can’t exclude product from the list.

@willchen500 @samuvigano Software has never been the moat for any company seed stage or after. Does your valuation take into account distribution? How much value do you place on the brand, GTM and actual contracts?

@realsidjain @samuvigano Aww little Sid is so mad cos his little ego got hurt

@willchen500 @samuvigano Nerds like you get so angry when they realize that the real world doesn’t not financially reward IQ points. Wait until you find out that Postman makes $300M at a $5.6B valuation from an html form that a 10 year old can make on 1 day 🤣🤣

@realsidjain @samuvigano Not much clearly.

@willchen500 @samuvigano You’re right. I’ve only been through four startup exits worth over $3B during my 15 year career as a software engineer. What do I know about technology? 🤣🤣🤣

@realsidjain @samuvigano You don’t understand technology. Is Google Revolut Stripe a html form? Try vibe coding their core functionality in two weeks. Come back when you do.

@willchen500 @samuvigano What does market cap have anything to do with the complexity of the product? Most billion dollar tech companies are just an HTML form slapped on top of a free, open source technology. Market cap is based on the subjective value that customers assign to the service

@Michael__KV There is such a thing called “nuance” in arguments my friend

@willchen500 Based on this logic, you should also have the “Cloud resell theory” that applies to all SaaS companies.

No. Both do no post training. Abandoned after base models outperform post trained Harvey models. Both do not provide case cites in answers. Harvey has a partnership with Lexis that plugs into Lexis API for extra 1200 per seat a month. They are wrappers with some FDEs that help law firms vibe code workflows that no one uses. See my other posts.

@willchen500 From what I have seen, their ability to point to specific cases is better. I thought they had received additional training and data sets that are specific to law (trained on lexis nexus for example)

@mikert89 You can’t vibe code the core functions of Revolut, Google search, Google maps, Stripe etc in two weeks

@willchen500 Most businesses operate on trust, not tech. Tech is trivial

@tomgault Law firm revenues are at record highs and big law is charging more per hour than ever. Harvey and Legora has made no measurable difference to legal practice.

@willchen500 The secret to Harvey's success is that they don't just market to law firms, but to the clients of those law firms, who turn around and ask the law firms "How are you using AI to reduce my bills?" and "Why am I paying so much for associates when Harvey can do the same thing?"

@tobyeggleston True

@willchen500 I don't think the models even need to enter the market themselves. They just raise the cost of token usage and squeeze margin - L/H have no moat.

@MaxGGartner Mike does have additional features that h and l do not have like version control and a coding IDE like interface for editing across multiple docs in projects

@MaxGGartner Does not have out of web app add ons like the word add in, imanage integration (many firms don’t implement due to security) or lexis protege which is an addition subscription for Harvey.