Reads · saved 2026-06-06
I Rebuilt Two Billion-Dollar Legal Apps in Two Weeks
A pointed demo of where the moat isn't: someone cloned the core of two heavily funded legal-AI products in two weeks and open-sourced it. The argument, that firms should own their application layer instead of renting it forever, is the uncomfortable question every vertical SaaS company is now facing. Provocative, and hard to dismiss.
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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: http://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.