Legora CEO bets every software company will drop per-seat pricing

The response from law firms was "good" but "mixed," Junestrand said. Some welcomed the change because they could now tie software spending to specific legal matters. Junestrand gave an example: An in-house lawyer for a company can see what it costs to review a batch of documents or run an analysis with Legora, then compare that with sending the same work to outside counsel.

Legora has also built a dashboard that lets customers track their usage and a calculator that helps them forecast spending.

Other customers were more skeptical, especially those still figuring out how AI fits into their work. Junestrand said those firms are still testing Legora's standard AI agents, which come with their existing seat-based contracts, before deciding whether to move up tiers.

The shift goes beyond how Legora charges. If customers use an AI product far more heavily than expected, the company that makes it can owe its model providers more and more money without bringing in any additional revenue. For some startups, usage-based pricing may be less an experiment than a condition for survival.

Legora is not the first software company to drop the seat. Coding startups Cursor and Lovable have moved toward usage-based models that charge power users more. The model providers underneath many of these products, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have charged developers based on usage from the start.

Legora's biggest competitor, Harvey, is not ready to give up the seat. A Harvey spokesperson said the company plans to keep offering seat-based pricing because it gives customers "transparency and predictability," even as Harvey explores other ways to charge customers who want to pay for additional usage or value.

Whether the seat survives may come down to which kind of uncertainty customers would rather live with: paying for software they don't use, or not knowing exactly what it will cost when they do.