Leon Johnson, most recently a partner at Goodwin in San Francisco and previously a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, is joining Omnilex, an AI-native law firm out of Zurich. He will be Managing Partner there and lead its US business – see AL Interview below where he explains why he’s gone all-in with the new model philosophy.
At Kirkland he helped build the Salt Lake City office to more than 100 lawyers and handled transactional work at Goodwin. However, he told Artificial Lawyer he just no longer believes the traditional Big Law pyramid model has a long-term future. Instead, Johnson said he wants to help develop a new approach, with the ‘new model’ as AL calls it, as the guiding blueprint for what he wants to build in America – and perhaps in the future in other markets, such as the UK.
Plus, it’s definitely worth mentioning that the late, great Clayton Christensen, who wrote the seminal work ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’, was a mentor of Johnson’s. He told this site that those theories have informed his view of the current legal market and how it must change. And AL would totally concur that Christensen’s views connect very nicely to the legal market – in fact, this site has written a couple of pieces in the past about this. I.e. Big Law is itself an innovation and was ‘created’, ‘innovated’ into existence in the 1970s and 1980s. It has been an incredible invention and has been very, very successful. But, as with all innovations – it eventually hits Christensen’s dilemma.
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Before the interview, which covers what work Omnilex will do in the US, who it will compete with, and how far up the complexity curve they can go, here’s some info on the mothership.
Omnilex started out in Switzerland with the idea of operating as a legal tech company – just like many others. But, the decision was taken that selling software only gets you so far. Or, one might say this is all about ‘being the change you want to see in the world’. So, they moved into legal services, while keeping the AI tech they’d developed.
As they explained: they are an ‘AI-native law firm built on its own AI platform. Omnilex’s lawyers work with AI agents that know each client’s contracts, deals and past matters, so the firm can raise problems and opportunities before the client asks. In-house legal teams also use the same platform directly for research and drafting.’
The Co-founders include Marco Henri (CEO), Ismael Seck (COO), and Etienne Salimbeni (CTO), and they raised a $4.5m seed round in November 2025, led by Founderful, with Plug and Play, Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company and Angel Invest.
At present they are about 20 people and serve approximately 100 legal teams, including Bayer, Randstad, Deloitte, Swatch and BDO. The focus includes the financial and insurance industry, private equity and venture capital clients.
As to the US arm, this is structured as an MSO, and as Johnston explained, there is a small team there now, but that will grow.
Right, now the interview, for which there is an AI transcript below.
But, before the transcript, it’s got to be said that this is a big deal. Why? Because Johnson is not ‘retiring’ into this new role, and he’s not a junior lawyer either. This is a partner who has been at top law firms, doing major deals, who believes that the new model is the way forward and who has been inspired by the works of Clayton Christensen.
AL would recommend you have a listen to the interview, Johnson makes many excellent points worth considering.
Plus, this is yet another lawyer from a leading law firm joining, or creating, a new model AI-native law firm. How many more will we have got to by this time next year? Plenty, that’s for sure.
And more about Omnilex here.
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AI Transcript.
Richard Tromans here again, Artificial Lawyer TV doing another special interview. And once again, it is AI Native Law Firm time, or as we like to call it over here in Artificial Lawyer, the new model law firm or new mod. With us is Leon Johnson. Hey Leon.
Leon Johnson (00:00:28)
Hey Richard, how you doing?
Richard Tromans (00:00:30)
Very good, very good, very excited to be interviewing another senior lawyer who has decided to go all in with the AI native movement. In this case, we’re talking about Omnilex and you’ve probably seen that from the text around this video. So first of all, we’re just gonna get into what is Omnilex. Then we’re gonna talk about Leon’s move from his law firm. He was at Goodwin, very good firm. And then we’re gonna talk more broadly about the big picture. So first of all, let’s just do the basics.
What is OmniLex?
Leon Johnson (00:01:00)
Absolutely. So Omnilex was originally founded a couple years ago in Switzerland. It was a legal tech platform originally marketed to attorneys to provide them with a native AI platform to allow them to improve their ability to provide legal services. Over time, as that product developed, the founders of the company realized that really the best use of their product is to deliver services to customers rather than serve as a platform for lawyers themselves. And so I was able to get connected with these folks and we decided that it would it would make the most sense to deliver that product and those services within the United States. And so we are shifting and currently have established a
AI native law firm, which is the idea is to deliver legal services with artificial intelligence as the initial point of contact. It’s a different model than what current law firms that use AI services do. The model for us is the AI bots, the AI platform that we have developed, takes in your matter.
solves your matter and then escalates it to a lawyer for review. And obviously the lawyer is in charge of the matter from start to finish and reviews it and ensures that it’s accurate and signs off on it and then delivers it to the client.
Richard Tromans (00:02:46)
Gotcha. Yep. Yep. Yep. And it’s an MSO structure. It is. Gotcha. Which is, and anyone who’s been following this field recently will know what that is. Effectively for those of you who don’t, there’s a tech company or as a law firm, which is literally a regulated law firm. It’s not a weird, strange thing. It is literally a traditional law firm, but the two are connected through this licensing agreement, which enables them to do all kinds of things, including.
Richard Tromans (00:03:17)
you can put money into the tech part, which is a corporate. Of course, you can’t, unless you live in Arizona or Utah, you cannot stick money into law firms in the US. You can in the UK and I think in Australia, a couple of other places, but you can’t anywhere else. So let’s talk about the bit, which I’m sure many of the lawyers watching this will be fascinated by. Were you a partner at Goodwin?
Leon Johnson (00:03:42)
I was. I was.
Richard Tromans (00:03:43)
So a partner of Goodwin and a lot of people would be like, my God, you know, I’d get my left hand to be a partner in such a big firm. Why have you decided to leave?
Leon Johnson (00:03:57)
Yeah, it’s a it’s an interesting question. I have a lot of respect for all of my former partners at Goodwin and for Goodwin as a firm. It it’s an excellent firm, delivers a lot of value for its clients. However, as I continued to practice law and saw AI, the capabilities of AI and what it can bring to the table for clients in the future, I think it’s ⁓
I think it’s at odds with the current business model of big law firms and I know you and I were talking about innovators’ dilemma by Clayton Christensen. he was a mentor of mine when I studied at Harvard Law School. He was at Harvard Business School. I knew him, yes. Yeah. and so I I’ve always kept his theories in mind. Essentially the innovator’s dilemma is that.
Richard Tromans (00:04:42)
You knew him? wow. ⁓
Leon Johnson (00:04:54)
As new technologies get developed, incumbent firms are not as nimble at adopting those because their their their current business model is not at well suited to adopting those new technologies. And I think here within big law, you know, the business model is the billable hour, and the business model is a senior lawyer supervising.
several junior lawyers in in in a pyramid structure. Whereas the capabilities of AI native, number one, you don’t need to do the billable model. The client doesn’t really want billable hours. The client wants to buy outcomes. Whether that be a contract review or whether that be a venture financing or whether that be an MA transaction, what they’re buying is legal outcomes. And with an AI native structure,
You can provide legal outcomes at a at a set price. So there’s no surprises. Both parties are incentivized properly to get the deal done and deliver the finished product that the client wants. And so, you know, as I saw these AI native law firms and their capabilities and what they can bring to the forefront, I I just was very, very interested in pursuing this because I think it’s both better.
I I as a lawyer can deliver better services to my clients, and my clients can receive those services in in a much more client-friendly way.
Richard Tromans (00:06:26)
Yeah, no, totally, totally. And for those listening, if you haven’t read previous articles about new model law firms, AI native law firms, there are a whole, there’s an encyclopedia worth of them there. It’s incredible because they only really came to public consciousness about 18 months ago and it’s just gone. But let’s just quickly look at the types of work you’ll be doing. So it’s contracts.
kind commercial contract based, it? And also just worth mentioning, didn’t ask this, what was your main practice area when you were at Goodwood?
Leon Johnson (00:07:02)
Absolutely. So I was a I was a corporate lawyer at Goodwin. I did private equity MA, ordinary corporate MA, and also venture and growth equity financings. I also did some startup company representations as well. Here at Omnilex, we’re going to start from a position of strength. So obviously venture capital financings and startup company governance and commercial contracts are obvious places to start from as an A and native law firm.
On the venture financing side, you have essentially documents on in the US NVCA forms. The UK has comparable venture financing forms as well. Where if you think about if you think about the workflow from a client perspective in venture capital financing specifically, you negotiate a term sheet, you hand that term sheet to your law firm.
Richard Tromans (00:07:42)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Leon Johnson (00:07:56)
The law firm takes 24 to 48 hours to turn that term sheet into documents. It’s the original drafts are drafted by a junior associate, then it goes up maybe to a mid-level, and then the partner signs off. And then finally, after 48 hours or so, you you finally get the drafts themselves. Whereas and by the way, there’s several billable hours having taken place in that time period. ⁓
Whereas with an AI native law firm, you can deliver the term sheet to the law firm. Assuming you didn’t have the law firm do it, obviously we can do the term sheet itself as well. But you deliver the term sheet to the law firm and the documents are drafted in in two minutes. And then the senior lawyer obviously needs to review and sign off. Certainly under California ethics, ethics rules, that the lawyer is doing the legal work and the lawyer is is responsible for all the outcomes of that legal work.
so we make sure that we have processes in place to ensure that a lawyer reviews it. but you think about it from the client perspective, instead of a 48-hour turnaround, you’ve really got a couple hour turnaround with senior lawyer review, without several revisions, without the payment that comes from all of those revisions. And so that’s just a that’s a simple area of strength that that we’re going to start with and build on. ⁓
Richard Tromans (00:09:19)
Well, let’s dig into that a little bit. Because I wrote a piece on Monday about the adversarial incentive. Because I was trying to understand why big law firms, we weren’t seeing externally any real structural changes in the market. So they’re all using lots of AI. One of the conclusions I came to was that a lot of work they do is very adversarial, big litigation, or you’ve got very, very, very complex &A deals where
Even if it’s not a hostile takeover, you’ve got an enormous amount of risk and everyone’s like fighting over a point and any AI advantages just get swallowed up. And in fact, if they do really get felt, those AI advantages in some cases actually help to multiply the work because they dig up new opportunities. And it doesn’t matter because the clients don’t care, right? You you’ve got like Vanguard on one side and a giant corporate on the other and they’re just, right? On the other end of the spectrum,
new model AI native firms, a lot of work they do has relatively low adversarial sort of culture incentives, right? I mean, if you’ve got a startup and a VC fund, they’re not trying to fight each other, right? They’re all trying to get on. They want to get this off the ground. Is now and I think that’s fantastic and it makes absolute perfect sense. And I think that’s why we’re seeing so many of the new model law firms.
arriving in this part of the market. And also there’s a cultural similarity. Hey, you’re a startup, I’m a startup. You use AI, we use AI. Hey, we’re all part of the same tribe, right? However, this is the $1 trillion question going forward. Do new model law firms, AI native firms ever get beyond that? And there’s nothing wrong, if you don’t, there’s nothing wrong in being the biggest startup law firm in the world and you can make a lot of money and be very successful. That’s cool. But can you ever get beyond that?
Leon Johnson (00:11:05)
Yes.
Leon Johnson (00:11:13)
Thank you.
You can you can and the reason why you haven’t seen the new model law firms get to the the big ticket MA lit litigations may be a different topic, but big ticket MA is essentially a an exercise in managing armies of specialists, right? So ⁓
Richard Tromans (00:11:35)
Yeah, exactly from employment to antitrust to IP to you know, maybe you need an army of people.
Leon Johnson (00:11:44)
Correct, correct. And it and if if you think about how do you keep a how do you keep an antitrust specialist busy and engaged, that specialist needs, you know, 20 to 30 MA matters going on at any given time. And and so you can’t really the the challenge for A and native law firms to get into large ticket MA is is exactly that. It’s a chicken and egg problem. How do how do we
hire sufficient specialists to assist us in this MA while not actually having the MA pipeline to keep these folks busy. And that’s going to be that that’s going to be something that that will be addressed and will be taken care of. But in in our roadmap, that’s that’s that’s years down the road.
Richard Tromans (00:12:22)
Yeah, I know.
Richard Tromans (00:12:32)
So you’re saying it’s fundamentally a recruitment challenge as opposed to a structural challenge. wouldn’t, mean, guys, I don’t get too far off a subject, but just to end this point, just one other question is, isn’t there a scenario where basically you’re on fixed fees, you’re using the AI to triage, to get you to a first draft as fast as you can, you’re using lots of playbooks, lots of embedded data and so forth and workloads and so forth.
That is extremely amenable to commercial contracts. In fact, they’re perfect for each other. It’s absolute. mean, you know, the party who receives the contract at the end of the process is very unlikely to throw it back in your face. You know, so that’s cool. As you go up the risk curve, as you go up the complexity curve, there is more more pushback. And that tends to mean that a fixed fee is incredibly difficult to operate.
because, so you say, hey, it’s $500. And they go, okay, but can you do it again? And, and what about this? And, can you do that again? And, you missed a bit. And you know what? We just spoke to the other side of it, I’m happy. Can you do it again and again? And you’re like, that’s like $500. Like, now he’s like $15,000. Like. ⁓
Leon Johnson (00:13:49)
Well, well, obviously that the the the fixed fee is going to have to scale with the complexity of the matter. And that’s going to be that’s going to be more art than science over time. But I but I do I I I do think having done a lot of big ticket MA in my career, it it is it is not necessarily an exercise of of battling with forms or or constant negotiation back and forth. There certainly is that.
Richard Tromans (00:13:54)
Yeah. ⁓
Leon Johnson (00:14:18)
But but I would say, you know, 75% of the deal is project management. It’s ensuring that the right contracts get handled. It’s ensuring that, you know, that the cap table is addressed properly. You’re you’re fielding emails from various stakeholders that that are that are routine but need to be done. And that 75% of the process can can right now be handled by AI. ⁓
You’re always going to need a human in the loop. There’s there’s a lot of art to MA specifically. And so you will need a human in the loop to to to properly decide what to push on, what to give. There’s always some back and forth with MA. But I I do think eventually the new mod firms are are going to get into it. But but again, that’s a few years down the line on roadmap. ⁓
Richard Tromans (00:15:12)
Yeah, that’s down the line. Yeah. And also, I guess it’s partially dependent as well on the AI getting better, particularly the agentic bit. I mean, if you look at like the Harvey agentic, you know, bench, you know, the, you know, when they test out various models, you know, the scores are incredibly low.
But it’s because the bar is so incredibly high. The bar is like literally has an agent performed a piece of work in the same way that a senior lawyer would. I they set it incredibly high and it’s going up incrementally every few months by a couple of percent. So yeah, mean, probably in about five or more years, it’ll be good enough to really just, I mean, not just like, review an NDA for me, but handle a more complex project. But let’s move on. So you’re based in California, OmniLex, the original bit is based out in Switzerland. The law firm is gonna be in the US. How many lawyers do you have today and how many lawyers will you get to the next couple of years, do reckon?
Leon Johnson (00:16:08)
That’s right.
Leon Johnson (00:16:14)
well today we have three lawyers currently and we will we will we don’t have a a set number in mind in in the next few years but certainly we do expand we do expect to grow rapidly. we we’re confident that the model that we have in place is something that that clients will love. it’s essentially delivering better service for a lower price. ⁓
Richard Tromans (00:16:43)
Yep. Totally.
Leon Johnson (00:16:43)
And that’s that’s just something that it’s a no-brainer for clients to adopt and again, as we as we build from strength, starting with the venture financings, the startup work, the commercial contracts, then we can expand from there into other obvious there’s other obvious areas of the law that that we’d like to expand to as well. but it it’s
We we don’t have a set number of lawyers in mind. We’ll s we’ll scale as the business scales.
Richard Tromans (00:17:15)
Yeah, yeah, no, totally. It’s one of the things that interests me is the in some ways, you know, you’re competing with the bottom end of let’s say Wilson and Cooley and Gunderson, you know, they’re, you know, the smaller end of the clients they’re working for because they do that work in the hope that they will some of those will become an ex Google and they’ll have these gigantic clients later on, you know. ⁓
But obviously you’re going to scoop up a lot of that. But then the question is, is it who are you competing with? I mean, you’re competing in many ways with more of the other AI native law firms, you could say. You could say you’re up against Soxton, you’re up against, well, Crosby to some degree and others, know, Moritz, et cetera. I mean, in a funny way, it’s like there are so many new model law firms that you’ve created your own market and that you’re actually competing, even though you’re all buddies to some degree, because you’re all part of this new movement.
you’re actually kind of competitors.
Leon Johnson (00:18:11)
Well, it’s that’s an interesting aspect because I I’ve spoken to a couple of different founders of AI native law firms as you know, as I was doing my own diligence on this opportunity. I agree that that we’re competing, but it’s almost it it’s almost like when another firm wins, we all win. Because what the main what the main detraction from an AI native law firm right now.
Richard Tromans (00:18:34)
Yeah.
Leon Johnson (00:18:41)
is is reputation and certainty. I explain it to people this way. You know, I I used to work at Kirkland doing doing large private equity deals. Obviously used to work at Goodwin both both as a partner. Nobody in private equity gets fired by hiring Kirkland to handle a matter. Nobody gets fired by hiring Goodwin, right? Now you might get fired by ⁓
Handing a extremely important matter to an AI native law firm that that messes the matter up, you know, that doesn’t do it properly. And so we have this current issue with reputation and with client comfort and familiarity. However, over time, as each AI native law firm delivers excellent service to their clients in a way that is better than legacy big law firms, you will no longer
have that reputational advantage that’s currently enjoyed. So yes, in in in certain ways we are competitors, but you know, a rising tide within AI native law firms is going to raise all boats. And so we we view them as an ecosystem that as the ecosystem grows, we all benefit from it.
Richard Tromans (00:19:57)
Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, absolutely. it’s I mean, law, law is a reputation business more than almost any other, you know, it really, really, is. Fantastic, fantastic. Well, look, I’m sure we’re to be hearing a lot more about Omnilex in the future. Just one last question. you, once you get up and running in the US, do you reckon you’ll be operating in the UK as well?
Leon Johnson (00:20:21)
it’s it’s certainly within our roadmap as well, yes. So you’ll will be seeing us there at some.
Richard Tromans (00:20:28)
All right, fantastic, fantastic. And hope to see you Legal Innovators New York, which is on the 17th and 18th of November in about a month’s time. That’s all we have time for, but thanks, Leon. It’s been fantastic.
Leon Johnson (00:20:38)
Yeah. ⁓
Leon Johnson (00:20:43)
Thank you, Richard. It was great chatting with you. Appreciate it.
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