How Legora’s New CMO from Atlassian Plans to Crack the Code on Selling AI to Skeptical Lawyers

When you’re a B2B SaaS company trying to sell AI to lawyers, you’re not just pitching a product. You’re walking into a courtroom full of people who get paid to find the flaw in every argument. They’re cautious, time-strapped, and trained to assume the worst. That’s the exact audience Swedish legal tech startup Legora just bet it could win over—by hiring a marketing leader from one of the most iconic developer tools companies in the world.

Legora, the Stockholm-based software startup building AI-powered tools for lawyers, just named Zeynep Inanoglu Ozdemir as its first-ever chief marketing officer. She joins from Atlassian, where she led a 450-person marketing team responsible for brands like Jira and Trello. Her mission? Turn Legora into a household name in legal tech—and do it while competing head-to-head with Silicon Valley rival Harvey, which carries an $11 billion valuation.

This hire isn’t just a personnel change. It’s a signal. Legora is maturing fast, and it’s betting that the same playbook used to sell complex software to developers will work for selling AI tools to lawyers. Here’s why that bet might actually pay off—and what every B2B SaaS leader can learn from it.

The Challenge: Selling AI to the Most Skeptical Audience on Earth

Let’s be honest. Lawyers are not an easy crowd for an AI pitch. They’re careful. They’re busy. And their entire professional existence is built around finding the hole in every argument. If you’re selling AI, you’re asking them to trust a black box with work that could cost a client millions if it goes wrong.

That’s the reality Legora faces as it goes toe-to-toe with Harvey, a much larger rival backed by some of the same investors. Harvey was last valued at $11 billion. Legora, despite raising over $850 million and reaching a $5.6 billion valuation, is still the underdog in mindshare.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Legora has quietly been winning over elite law firms like Cleary Gottlieb and HSF Kramer. It’s grown from 40 employees to 400 in just the past year. And now, with a CMO who’s spent years convincing developers—another famously skeptical audience—to adopt new tools, Legora is starting to look like it might have a real shot at breaking through.

Why Atlassian’s Playbook Could Work in Legal Tech

Inanoglu Ozdemir didn’t just manage a big marketing team at Atlassian. She lived through one of the most challenging transitions in enterprise software: getting developers to adopt tools that change how they work. Think about it. Developers don’t like being told what to use. They want to see the code. They want to understand the logic. They want to know who’s responsible if something breaks.

Sound familiar?

It should. Because that’s exactly how lawyers think about their tools. They want transparency. They want accountability. And they want to understand the reasoning behind every output.

During her first days at Legora, Inanoglu Ozdemir did something smart. She reached out to every lawyer she’d worked with in the past. Their message? The legal industry is changing, and Legora has a real chance to shape its future. That’s not just a feel-good moment. It’s a data point. If lawyers themselves tell you the market is ready for change, you listen.

The Real Opportunity: AI Agents in Professional Services

One detail from Inanoglu Ozdemir’s arrival at Legora stands out. She became obsessed, she said, with the idea that AI agents—software that can carry out multistep tasks with minimal human direction—would transform professional services.

Think about what that means for legal work. A lawyer today spends hours drafting contracts, researching case law, and reviewing documents. Those tasks are perfect for AI agents. But the leap from “helpful tool” to “trusted assistant” is enormous. And that’s exactly the gap Legora needs to bridge.

For B2B SaaS companies, this is the most important lesson in the story. Your product doesn’t just need to work. It needs to fit into a workflow that users trust. Lawyers won’t adopt AI just because it’s fast. They’ll adopt it when they understand how it works, when they can test it, and when they see that it doesn’t make mistakes that cost them credibility.

What This Means for Legora’s GTM Strategy

This hire is a clear signal that Legora is moving beyond product-led growth and into brand-led growth. The company is chasing a multibillion-dollar opportunity in legal software, covering everything from contract drafting to legal research. But to win that market, it needs more than a great product. It needs a narrative that resonates with a skeptical audience.

Inanoglu Ozdemir’s background suggests a few tactical shifts we can expect:

• Community-driven marketing: Atlassian built its brand by empowering user communities. Expect Legora to invest heavily in lawyer-led events, peer networks, and certification programs.
• Content that educates, not sells: Lawyers need to understand AI before they trust it. Legora will likely double down on thought leadership, case studies, and transparent explanations of how its models work.
• Account-based marketing on steroids: Winning firms like Cleary Gottlieb isn’t accidental. Legora will probably scale its ABM approach to target top-100 law firms globally.
• Product-led retention: Inanoglu Ozdemir knows that in developer tools, the product is the marketing. Expect Legora to invest in onboarding, support, and user experience to reduce churn before it becomes a problem.

The Risk and Reward of a Startup CMO Role

Let’s not pretend this is an easy transition. Inanoglu Ozdemir went from managing a 450-person team at a public company to running marketing at a startup that just hit 400 employees total. She’s trading the structure of Atlassian for the chaos—and opportunity—of a hypergrowth company.

But here’s why it might work. She’s not just taking a job. She’s betting on a thesis: That AI agents will reshape professional services faster than most people expect. And she’s betting that Legora, with its Swedish roots, scrappy culture, and growing customer list, is positioned to lead that change.

The context matters, too. Atlassian is reshaping itself around AI, a push that has included layoffs and a string of executive departures. Inanoglu Ozdemir’s move could be seen as a vote of confidence in Legora’s vision—or as a sign that even seasoned leaders see more upside in a focused startup than in a public company undergoing transformation.

What B2B SaaS Leaders Should Learn from This Hire

If you’re building a B2B SaaS company targeting a skeptical buyer, here are three takeaways you can use today:

1. Hire leaders who’ve won over hard audiences

Don’t look for someone who’s “done this before” in your exact industry. Look for someone who’s convinced a different skeptical group to change their behavior. The playbook for selling to developers is surprisingly similar to selling to lawyers: transparency, community, and proof.

2. Invest in brand before you think you need it

Legora is growing fast—400 employees in one year—and it’s already thinking about brand. Too many startups wait until they have product-market fit to start building a narrative. By then, your competitors have already defined the category. Legora is learning from Harvey’s playbook and investing early.

3. Don’t underestimate the power of “why”

Lawyers (and developers, and finance teams, and engineers) don’t just want to know what your product does. They want to know why it exists, how it thinks, and what it gets wrong. Build that transparency into your marketing from day one.

The Bottom Line

Legora’s hire of Zeynep Inanoglu Ozdemir is more than a single executive move. It’s a bet that the skills that worked in developer tools will work in legal tech. It’s a bet that AI agents are going to reshape professional services sooner rather than later. And it’s a bet that a Swedish startup can take on a Silicon Valley giant and win.

The lawyers are watching. The arguments are being prepared. And now, Legora has a marketer who knows exactly how to make the case.

For B2B SaaS founders and revenue leaders, the lesson is clear: Don’t let your audience’s skepticism scare you. Let it guide you. Build marketing that respects their intelligence, explains your logic, and earns their trust one use case at a time.

Because if Legora can win over lawyers, your customers aren’t that tough.