Winston Weinberg, founder and CEO of US legaltech unicorn Harvey, spends more time in rainy London than many residents of San Francisco’s sunny climes might hope to.

Yet for Weinberg, needs must. Harvey has its sights set on Europe — and is fast building out its 75+ person team in London, along with opening offices in Spain, Germany and, as of today, Paris.

“We want everyone to be using Harvey,” the founder, who's been backed by Andreessen Horowitz, along with EQT and Evantic, tells Sifted over a Zoom call.

Currently, Harvey has 1,000+ customers worldwide — mostly large law firms and enterprises — over 300 of which are in Europe. It’s just hit $190 m in annual recurring revenue and, this year plans to also start selling to smaller law firms, in a bid to conquer even more of the fast‑growing legal‑tech market.

But Harvey’s not alone. In Europe, it has one notable competitor: Stockholm‑based Legora. The two will now be increasingly going head‑to‑head for customers and talent.

Legora vs Harvey

Googling “Legora vs Harvey” tells you one key thing: they’re pretty similar. Both companies help do the kinds of time‑consuming, administrative tasks that have long been a chore for legal professionals: drafting contracts, document review, legal research. Both have customers in the US and Europe, including major law and accountancy firms. Harvey has more funding — $1 bn to Legora’s $266 m — but is also a year older, and based in San Francisco.

“Competition is good in general,” says Weinberg. “It’s good for the consumer — we want a bunch of competition so folks are building the best products they can.”

Avoiding getting into any specific comparison with Legora, he instead points to the tech giants.

“Long‑term, our competition is the foundation models — these models are getting so much better, and the labs are getting better at productionising things,” he adds, pointing to Anthropic in particular.

So what hope does Harvey — or Legora — have?

“You have to build things you think they can’t,” says Weinberg, pulling out two differentiating features for Harvey at the moment.

• “A lot of our platform is collaborative and multiplayer,” he says — Harvey makes it easy for lawyers and their clients to work on shared documents, which is “pretty defensible over time”. (This is also something Legora offers.)

• Another: how Harvey ‘remembers’ its clients’ previous requests and personal style, and can understand which documents are more important than others. Harvey also hopes to increasingly incorporate the institutional knowledge of its clients into its platform, so firms can use that historical advantage they have alongside the AI tools.

More products, more people

Harvey could also stay a few steps ahead via acquisitions — and Weinberg says the company is “always actively looking”.

“You can’t build everything,” he adds. Sensible acquisitions could include “incredible point solutions”, he says, such as a tool for patent law.

Building a great team is also a top priority, says Weinberg. Harvey is currently 550‑people strong, 20 % of whom are lawyers. It’s actively hiring across all of its European offices, with 180 new openings planned for 2026.

One of those hires is Jorge Bestard, new VP of EMEA sales, who’s recently joined the company from Canva.

Bestard says it’s important that Harvey employs lawyers wherever its customers are, and builds go‑to‑market teams there too. Like many AI companies, Harvey likes to send its employees to onboard new customers in‑person through training and workshops.

Risks to growth

The biggest risk to Harvey isn’t Anthropic, or Legora, however; it’s simply scaling, thinks Weinberg.

“Are you hiring the right people, are you promoting the right people, are you letting the right people go? That’s the biggest risk to startups,” he says.

One people challenge particular to legaltech: teaching lawyers they don’t need to be perfect.

“Lawyers aren’t used to that mentality,” says Weinberg, who should know — he used to be one. “In a fast‑paced environment you’re going to make mistakes, and that’s OK.”