founders corporate financing
Understanding Shareholder Agreements: A Guide for Founders
Learn the key terms and clauses every founder should understand before signing a shareholder agreement.
Interview with Sjors Dobbelaar, lawyer and founder
After nearly ten years, Legalloyd is entering a new phase. The platform will continue under the name Legalflow. The law firm will remain Legalloyd. We spoke with founder and lawyer Sjors Dobbelaar about the reasoning, the vision, and what this means for clients.
The reasoning
In 2024, you spoke about ‘a solid foundation for growth.’ Now Legalloyd is splitting up. What’s the reasoning?
“The reasoning is actually quite simple: we noticed that we serve three types of clients who each need something different.
On one hand, you have entrepreneurs who come purely for the platform. Often smaller companies that occasionally need a good contract — an employment agreement, terms and conditions, a privacy policy — but have no need for a lawyer. For them, it’s confusing that there’s also a law firm behind it. They wonder: isn’t this just a trick to lure me in?
On the other hand, we have clients who come only for complex matters: major acquisitions, financing rounds, dispute resolution. They barely use the platform.
And then there’s a small group right in the middle — they use both. But for those two flanks, there was too much role confusion. We heard this from clients too. So the split is essentially a response to that feedback.”
The split explained
Legalflow becomes the platform, Legalloyd remains the law firm. Can you explain how the two relate to each other?
“Structurally, nothing actually changes. The platform and the law firm were always two separate organizations. They had to be: a law firm must comply with strict rules from the Dutch Bar Act and the Bar Association. That’s why the platform was already in a separate company.
However, we positioned it as one name because it’s the same owners, the same people, in the same office. That’s still the case. Nothing is being transferred, nothing is being split off. Are you a platform client? Then you remain one with the same company. The only thing that changes is the name: the platform continues as Legalflow, the law firm remains Legalloyd.
The big advantage is focus. The development team can now focus exclusively on developing the platform. And the lawyers can focus entirely on the law firm. But we still share the same office.”
The hybrid model
You previously called the ‘hybrid model’ unique. Does that continue after the split?
“The hybrid model essentially continues. The legal team co-founded the platform and feels strongly connected to it. They’re responsible for large parts of the legal quality, and that won’t change quickly.
But there are major changes in the pipeline — including international expansion. The goal is for the platform to eventually not only depend on Legalloyd’s lawyers but also offer high-quality legal products in other ways.
By the way, clients were always free to work with their own lawyer. We have clients from all over the Netherlands. It doesn’t make sense to always have to come to Amsterdam for advice.
So yes, the two parts will truly operate independently. But especially in the first year, there will still be a lot of cross-pollination.”
Sjors’s role
What will be your role in both organizations?
“I remain strongly involved in both organizations. In recent years, I always divided my time between platform development and managing the legal team. That continues, although the specifics are shifting.
At Legalloyd, we want to grow the law firm. We’re continuously looking for good people. That’s still where most of my time goes — about 60%.
At Legalflow, there’s now room for the developer team to participate in the company. The day-to-day management is now effectively with the team itself. My role there is mainly product development and quality assurance — making sure the legal products remain good. That’s about 40% of my time.”
Vision on legal tech
You said earlier: ‘The future is law, design, and tech.’ How does this split fit into that vision?
“That vision is actually unchanged. One of the fundamental problems with legal services is that the law only becomes more complex. The challenge of standardizing that and making it accessible to broad groups of clients has only grown.
You need different disciplines for that. You can’t make a good legal product with lawyers alone. You also need design — and design is more than a picture, it’s about information architecture. And you need technology: it must be stable, reliable, with predictable outcomes.
The split makes that easier. The development team gets more autonomy over the platform’s direction. In the combination with the law firm, interests were sometimes hard to reconcile. A law firm naturally has a low risk profile — everything a lawyer says is weighed on a golden scale. That doesn’t always benefit product development.
Additionally, there are larger parties interested in the platform but who don’t necessarily need a law firm linked to it. The split ensures both organizations can grow faster.”
On AI
“The rapid developments in AI are of course very important. But our vision hasn’t changed much. The strength of our product offering remains that quality is high and guaranteed — in all circumstances. That’s very difficult to achieve if you let AI chatbots draft contracts.
At the same time, we already use AI daily to speed up administrative processes. And that too has accelerated with the split: the law firm has very different technology needs than the platform. Now both can find their own way.
Legalflow is now definitively a tech company — but still strongly rooted in solving legal tasks, with contract drafting as its focus. In recent years, the emphasis was on our own contract offerings. The technology has now advanced to where we can also program custom contracts for clients. Especially interesting for parties with high contract volumes who want to work error-free.”
New possibilities
What can Legalflow do now that it couldn’t before?
“The biggest advantage is that the platform can now enter partnerships and serve clients without the law firm having to play a role.
I can’t say too much about it yet, but we expect to expand internationally early next year. We’re really looking forward to that. And within the Netherlands, there are also conversations with larger parties interested in making good contract offerings broadly available — especially for smaller entrepreneurs.
That makes sense. Smaller companies often don’t have the budgets to handle legal matters at a high level, but they face more or less the same risks. By enabling these companies to create high-quality contracts, their risk profile decreases. And that flows through the entire chain. Whether you’re an insurer, supplier, or employee — you have more comfort and certainty about your position relative to such a company. Because you get a contract you immediately understand, with clear agreements, from a company that itself carries less risk.
And for the law firm, the split also offers new possibilities. Lawyers were always enthusiastic about the combination offering but also ran into limitations. Now a lawyer can assess for themselves: is this client best served by the platform, or is this a complex case where the lawyer needs to play an essential role — for example, in transactions or court proceedings.”
Looking ahead: new features
You’re announcing new features for 2026. Can you tell us something about that?
“After the split, we expect to significantly increase the pace of product innovations. The central theme remains the same: in collaboration with the law firm, we create high-quality documentation. This allows clients to compose contracts that are guaranteed hallucination-free and well-coordinated.
One of the major innovations is that you’ll compose contracts in completely different ways. The text-generating capabilities of AI can play a big role there. You can imagine, for example, adjusting a contract by voice. Or recording an interview with a new employee — discussing the offer — and having an employment agreement prepared directly based on that.
The variations are endless. But the most important principle remains: we maintain control over the legal content. AI is mainly deployed for explanation and improving the user experience — not for drafting the legal content itself.”
Legalloyd as a law firm
What does this mean for Legalloyd as a law firm?
“For the law firm, not much changes. The Legalloyd team mainly works for startups, scale-ups, and tech companies — on corporate law, employment law, commercial contracting, and privacy. That remains the same.
The advantage is that we can now focus more specifically on our own target group. And those are founders. We now say internally: we’re a founder-firm, we’re here for starters, entrepreneurs, and changemakers. Those aren’t just startup or tech founders, but also people with impact ventures or in the non-profit sector who want to bring about change. That gives the firm a sharper profile.
I don’t expect we’ll suddenly handle very different matters. We advise a lot on financing, guide founders through selling a company, advise on joint ventures, and assist companies with their legal housekeeping.
And that last thing — legal housekeeping — brings me to a new development. We’re developing technology within the law firm to respond even more closely to client needs. Using AI tooling, but mainly focused on streamlining information exchange between client and lawyer. This creates an AI-native approach to common client questions.
The ambitions are big. We’re working on an inclusive organizational structure where legal professionals do what they love most: advising clients or litigating for them. And at the same time, an entrepreneurial, modern way of working — where substantive quality always comes first. Our website explains in detail what our vision is and what it means to work at a firm like ours.”
“You can’t make a good legal product with lawyers alone. You also need design and technology.”
“The strength of our offering remains that quality is high and guaranteed. That’s difficult if you let AI chatbots draft contracts.”
“We’re a founder-firm: we’re here for starters, entrepreneurs, and changemakers.”
Want to know more about Legalflow? Visit legalflow.ai
Want to know more about working at Legalloyd? Visit our careers page