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When Logan Brown left Cooley to start a legal tech firm this spring, she moved to New York City. She has begun recruiting lawyers to her venture.

“It’s not that hard of a sell,” Brown, 30, said on a phone call from her apartment in the Financial District. More junior lawyers want to help build the future, not watch it pass them by. For them, New York is the obvious place to be.

Legal tech skyrocketed this year as corporate clients pushed law firms to use tools that can lower costs and improve results. The change is playing out floor by floor in Manhattan office towers — a big reason why legal tech startups are increasingly based in the city.

Legora, a Swedish-born legal tech unicorn, said Tuesday it signed a two-floor lease at 838 Broadway, a newly renovated building just south of Union Square. The company, which sells enterprise software to Big Law firms including Goodwin and Cleary Gottlieb, is expanding after a recent funding round valued it at $1.8 billion.

Founded in 2023, Legora has been trading office rentals all year, starting in a coworking space and relocating twice as its need for desks increased. Its employees must be in the office five days a week.

The strategy is simple: To woo elite law firms and corporate legal chiefs, Legora needs to be where they are.

In 2024, the American Bar Association counted 187,656 lawyers in New York, the most of any state and just ahead of California’s 175,883. Seven of the 20 largest US law firms are headquartered in New York City, and all of the rest maintain offices there.

“New York is the legal services capital of the world,” Patrick Forquer, Legora’s senior vice president of global revenue, said over Zoom. “If you want to win this market, you have to win this city.”

Legal tech’s office land grab

Harvey, one of Silicon Valley’s hottest legal tech companies, said in October it secured a 10-year lease at One Madison Avenue in Midtown. The deal triples its New York office footprint to 97,000 square feet. Legora’s new lease covers 27,238 square feet and lasts five years.

Fresh off a $500 million funding round, Vancouver legal-tech giant Clio has begun searching for office space in New York, according to a spokesperson. Spellbook, which sells tools for contract review to small and midsize law firms and corporates, is also looking for a New York pad, says CEO Scott Stevenson.

Crosby and Covenant, both newish startups that sell legal services directly, not software, are based in New York. So is Hebbia, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup serving investors and lawyers. It has 130 employees across its global offices, including a new site in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood.

George Sivulka, Hebbia’s cofounder and CEO, said in an email that launching the company from New York was “the only option.” The proximity means “buyers make decisions faster and feedback comes quicker,” Sivulka wrote.

Being steps from clients is convenient; Legora’s Forquer said he rides Citi Bike to pitch meetings. The other main draw is talent. New York puts legal tech founders within reach of the lawyers they need to help build and sell their products.

For lawyers, by lawyers

Jen Berrent built her legal career in New York, first as a corporate lawyer, then as WeWork’s chief legal officer. Her startup, Covenant, reviews fund documents for private market investors, work they’d typically farm out to a law firm.

Covenant isn’t training its own large language models. If it were, Berrent would be in San Francisco for the engineering talent. Instead, she has built a scrappy team of Big Law attorneys who use Covenant’s software, built on top of models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, to turn legal work around faster.

“If you believe that the way you’re going to win in a vertical is with the expertise, then the expertise is here,” Berrent said. Covenant occupies a Midtown WeWork, of course.

As investors funnel money into legal tech, hiring is picking up. Suddenly, junior lawyers have more offers than ever to trade billable hours for a shot at shaping their industry’s future.

For associates running on fumes, the startup route has perks, including stock options. Harvey, which opened its first New York office in 2023, offers free daily lunch, is rolling out wellness and fertility benefits in 2026, and grants a four-week paid leave after four years of tenure.

John Nay is also vying for candidates. His company, Norm Ai, builds no-code tools for compliance and legal teams to do their work. Last week, it announced the launch of an independent law firm that will provide services directly to clients, including Blackstone.

While other startups jostle for attention with billboards and conference booths, Nay’s company is taking a different tack. It recently began hosting networking events at New York City bars, as part of a recruiting push into Big Law.

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