Positioning an AI startup for the legal market.

The situation

A venture-backed Silicon Valley startup had built an AI email client for lawyers. Its founders were technologists from Eastern Europe, early specialists in applied AI, with an engineering team in Armenia. The company was getting meetings with the largest firms in the world, and nobody inside could say why. One of its investors introduced me, and I spent a year with the company as its first CMO.

What I did

• The strategy. I wrote the memo arguing the company had two businesses: a product, and a capability for finding a firm’s operational problem and solving it with AI. I proposed anchoring the company with a few non-competing blue-chip firms.
• The repositioning. I moved the story from “mobile email app” to a legal productivity and AI platform, with a branded product suite, a new website, a content program, and a plan for the industry’s main conference.
• The research. I interviewed lawyers and a general counsel. Sensitive-matter lawyers won’t accept automated filing without control, and automatically identifying the client and matter wins them over.
• The sales plan. I designed a 30-day pilot with about 20 attorneys, measured on additional hours billed.
• The rest: demos, outbound campaigns, videos and early-stage presentations.

The result

Three law firms signed on as clients and development partners, and the company had a purpose-built strategy for the legal market.