Plugdin Interview: AI and Contracts: Interview with Richard Mabey, CEO of Juro

Amidst the value add work done by lawyers, legal teams spend billions of hours on tasks that don't add real value. For Richard Mabey, former M&A lawyer turned founder of Juro, this inefficiency became a mission.

After witnessing lawyers and clients alike spending huge amounts of time on routine document management, he built a platform that automates legal contracting with AI while keeping humans in control. Today, Juro is one of the Sunday Times 100 fastest-growing tech companies, redefining how legal work gets done.

We spoke to Richard about how Juro evolved, the adoption of AI in legal teams, the economics of automation, and what it takes to scale a high-impact AI software business.
 

Tell me Richard, how did Juro come about?

I started the company based on my experience as a lawyer working with contracts. I saw smart people, both on the client and lawyer side, spending most of their time shuffling Microsoft Word documents inefficiently while spending vast amounts on legal fees.

When I moved in-house, I learned more about the clients we now serve. In-house legal teams were processing high volumes of low-complexity documents – NDAs, sales contracts, employment contracts. For a law firm handling a few of these documents a month, inefficiency was a nuisance. For an in-house team handling thousands, it was a business-critical problem.
 

What was your vision setting out, and how did you translate that vision into a product?

Our company mission is to help the world agree faster. That's what we're trying to do: using AI to make sure contracts can be agreed more quickly.

In the early days, that meant building an end-to-end contract management platform so that, for example, people within a sales team could self-serve. They could fill out a form, generate a document, and move it through negotiation, signature, and so on.

Over the last few years we have been building an AI native product that solves those same tasks but on an LLM stack. The consequence of that is that over time, more of these contracts may be handled directly by business teams, not just lawyers.
 

How open are legal teams to using AI in their workflows?

Legal work is high stakes, so lawyers are rightly cautious. But over the last year adoption has exploded. According to our community surveys 90% of in house lawyers are using AI in their work. At the moment, corporate legal teams use Juro for three main reasons: to let simple contracts be self-served; to review and redline contracts with AI assistance; and to use our 'Intelligent Repository' to analyse and extract patterns.

Lawyers set up playbooks, guardrails, and rules. AI then makes suggestions, which lawyers review and approve. For example, you can upload an NDA into Slack, and our agents will review and redline it autonomously based on a lawyer's playbook. That's where we're really pushing the boundaries.
 

Is it a challenge balancing control and automation?

With the right constraints, playbooks, and learning loops in place, lawyers can remain firmly in control – the only question is who clicks the button. At the moment, that's the big debate in legal tech: autonomy versus control. As you'd expect, the industry has come down pretty heavily on the side of control for now.

But there's an economic reality here. Some of our customers have a hundred legal counsels working all day on redlining contracts – at a loaded cost of $200,000 - $300,000 a year each. Where does that go? We think that, as the technology improves, more and more of that work will be fully automated.
 

How do you monetise Juro today?

We have usage-based pricing. Clients pay based on the number of contracts per year – five hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, whatever it may be.

People immediately see the payback compared to paying for someone's time. The time-based billing model in legal isn’t ideal.
 

Who is the buyer for Juro in most organisations?

It's typically the General Counsel. Legal teams lead adoption, but it's always for the benefit of the business.

We don't work with law firms, we work with in-house legal teams. In-house legal teams are often seen as cost centres, not profit centres. Efficiency is therefore a clear mandate, usually from the CFO. We can say, 'We can help you shorten contracting cycles and free up 30% of your team’s time,' and that's an easy ROI story.
 

Who are you competing with in the market?

There are three main types of competition. The first is to do nothing. Many businesses start by handling contracts manually using Word and SharePoint. Their mindset is: 'We've always done it this way, and it's fine.' Second is emerging point solutions in legal AI – plugins that help review and redline contracts in Word. Third is legacy contract lifecycle management providers.

At Juro, we compete by being an end-to-end platform – taking a document from drafting, through collaboration, approvals, AI review, data extraction, renewal analysis, everything – in an AI-native way. That differentiates us from older CLM systems built on traditional SaaS. We've built from the ground up on an AI-native stack, which gives us a wedge in the market.
 

Are you creating the market or is there already demand?

The last 12 months have been a real turning point. Previously, we were creating the market by educating people and building awareness. Now, the entire legal industry is talking about AI, and CFOs are mandating AI usage and teams are adopting it.

ChatGPT's rise accelerated this shift. We were early – already building the first wave of AI systems, developing copilots, and now agents. Most people now buy Juro for its AI capabilities, which has defined the last two years.
 

What does the organisation look like today, and how are your teams structured?

We're around 90 people – half in product, design, and engineering; half in go-to-market and G&A. Most are in the UK, with remote hubs in Europe and a Boston office.

Hiring outside the UK is about both cost and competence. Our team is international by design – my co-founder is Latvian, and we had remote elements from day one, which helped build a hybrid culture early.

The proof of this model is in the numbers. We've grown revenue by 600% since 2021 without adding headcount. Most competitors are much larger in terms of headcount (some have around 500 people) – we've chosen a different path.
 

How do you maintain culture with a hybrid team?

Discipline matters. So does low management overhead, few middle managers, high talent density, and hands-on leadership. From the start, we defined four operating principles: act fast, keep it simple, love your craft, and be more human.

These principles guide hiring and workflows. Flexibility is key – we judge people on results, not office attendance. If you hire the right people, give trust and autonomy, and measure outcomes, you create a virtuous cycle.
 

How do you ensure innovation stays front and centre?

AI has made it almost existential. Many SaaS companies with solid revenues are comfortable and risk averse. When GPT-3 came out, we faced the same question: look for small incremental improvements, or take big risks? Risk appetite matters, especially for founders.

It also depends on the people you hire. We look for resilience and adaptability. Innovation comes from individual contributors with bold ideas, not just professional managers. We want people who thrive in a deliberately innovative environments. They're the ones who drive real change.
 

How have you learned to manage and scale the company?

Mostly through trial and error, honestly. As a lawyer, career paths are rigid – law school, training, qualification. I did an MBA at INSEAD to manage risk, but I learned more from seeing things go wrong and iterating fast.

A strong exec team makes the biggest difference – people who are truly exceptional in their field As a founder, there are two archetypes: the wild visionary and the more analytical, structured type. I'm probably the latter, and that's been an advantage, especially at scale.
 

How do you approach governance and non-executive oversight?

Our board has three directors: one from our Series B investors, one from Series A and me. We also have two board observers. They're all VCs.

For now, I chair the board, but as we grow, bringing in an external chair and more formal non-exec roles will make sense.
 

Do you still enjoy running a growing, more structured company?

Yes. To achieve our goals will take at least another decade, which means evolving my management style as we scale. We've processed three million contracts so far – we have made an impact but it's a tiny fraction of global contracts. We aim for global scale.

Coaching and a strong board help, but having great people is most important. I try to give execs autonomy to run their functions. Founders fail when they compensate for weaker hires. Our team is solid, and that allows scaling effectively.
 

How do you define 'big' for Juro?

'Big' for us, is about impact. We literally measure our success by the number of contracts processed. There are billions globally, we've done three million. Getting into hundreds of millions translates to nine figures of ARR and beyond with our usage-based pricing.

Few European SaaS companies reach that level and exit successfully, so we know the path is challenging. At some point, US companies will show interest, but our goal is to build a globally competitive company from London. Risky? Yes. But that’s what we’re trying to do.
 

How can we help?

If you're an ambitious and growing technology or media business, BDO is here to help.

As a leading advisor to scale-ups in the UK, you will find a wealth of resources specifically designed to provide strategic and financial insights to support your business growth.

Every day our experienced team of advisors work alongside founders and management teams to tackle the barriers to growth as they scale their businesses. Whether you have your sights set on commercialising new products like Juro, optimising operations, accessing finance, global expansion or making your business investment ready, we can help you create value, build resilience, drive the right culture and manage risk, guiding you throughout to achieve your goals.

Get in touch with our team to discuss how we can support your next move.