Taking Legal Tech To Market is the podcast where Legal Tech founders and revenue leaders break down the real go-to-market playbooks behind successful legal technology companies.
Each episode dives into how Legal Tech companies actually win, covering sales strategy, market positioning, GTM hiring, and the lessons learned while scaling.
Hosted by Paul Church, founder of Talent & Growth and specialist recruiter for Legal Tech go-to-market talent.
New episodes every week.
100 Clients and Zero Marketing Spend | Luke Versweyveld | Co-Founder & CEO: Virgil
Luke Versweyveld (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lversweyveld/?isSelfProfile=false) launched Virgil (https://tryvirgil.com)in August 2024 with a co-founder from Answer AI and a mandate from Eric Rees, author of Incorruptible, to build the legal and back office infrastructure that the governance framework needed to actually work in practice.
Two years in: a hundred clients, a wait list, zero marketing spend. The growth engine is entirely word of mouth, split roughly 50/50 between their own network and existing clients referring founders they went through incubators with.
In this episode Luke covers the full picture: why they chose a tech-enabled professional services firm over a SaaS product, how the squad model works and why it creates a moat that an arm's length law firm can't replicate, what the Atrium lesson taught them about building economics that work from day one without needing AI to save them, and the unreasonable hospitality playbook they're about to run to turn clients into advocates.
He also talks about the community play, a free cap table rolling out to all clients, hiring a head of hospitality, and why headcount is the wrong metric entirely.
If you're building a startup and thinking about legal and back office, or building a professional services business and wondering what the new model looks like, this is the most practical version of that story.
Timestamps:
00:00 — What Virgil is and who it serves
01:01 — How Luke met Eric Rees and what Incorruptible had to do with it
04:38 — Why they chose professional services over SaaS
06:36 — 100 clients, zero marketing, entirely word of mouth
10:56 — Why the wait list worked when Luke assumed it wouldn't
13:14 — The ICP moment when the need slaps founders in the face
16:21 — Unreasonable hospitality as a GTM strategy
20:00 — Making promos for clients for free as a referral flywheel
22:45 — Surprising clients by including things they expected to pay for
23:49 — The community play: Bookface for Virgil clients
25:56 — Why they didn't raise and what Atrium taught them
30:12 — Headcount is a vanity metric. We brag about how few people it takes.
🎙️ Taking LegalTech to Market is hosted by Paul Church, LegalTech recruiter, talent advisor, and one of the most listened-to voices in the space.
Subscribe for new episodes every week.
Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-first-ae-hire-fails-companies-paul-church-jrpme/
1 Oct 2026
Are You Sure You Can't Get Us In Any Earlier?
Luke Versweyveld (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lversweyveld/) didn't set out to hold off on marketing. Virgil (https://tryvirgil.com) just kept filling up through word of mouth before he ever needed it.
Two years in: a hundred clients, a wait list, and a growth model built entirely on the quality of what they deliver. Luke assumed wait lists couldn't be done in legal, if a law firm won't help you today, you find one that will. Virgil proved that wrong.
In this trailer: why they built a tech-enabled professional services firm instead of a SaaS product, what it means to feel like a single impossibly capable employee, and why very little happens in a client's company without Virgil's knowledge.
Full episode live tomorrow on Taking LegalTech To Market. 🎙️
25 Sept 2026
We Were Selling Efficiency. They Were Selling Hours. Something Had To Break | Matthew Basile | CEO: Naya Law
Matthew Basile (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewjbasile/) built Naya (http://www.nayasoftware.com) while billing two thousand hours a year as a senior associate at a large law firm. He licensed the platform back to his own employer, sold it to other firms, became a partner, and eventually ran into the wall that every LegalTech founder eventually hits when selling into a billable hour model: every hour you cut is revenue someone else in the building used to earn.
In this episode Matt covers the full picture: why selling to law firms was the wrong model and what made that clear, how a $40K fee to close a $2M mortgage loan forced him to throw out the model and run it like an ALSP, what happens when you promise a fixed fee and then lose money on a deal, why a 20-person team of well-equipped lawyers should be able to do the revenue of a 150-person firm, and why the AI native law firm conference in New York is exciting precisely because nothing is right or wrong yet.
Matt also talks about building MCP integrations with Claude, why AI agents sound better than they perform in complex deal space, why you still need a really good human in the loop, and what it feels like to ship something in a week that would have been technically impossible a year ago.
If you're building or selling in commercial real estate legal, interested in AI native law firms, or trying to understand what the transition from law firm to legal tech company actually looks like from the inside, this is the most honest version of that story.
Timestamps:
00:01 — What Naya does and who it's for
01:22 — Building Naya while billing 2,000 hours a year as a senior associate
02:04 — The tension between selling efficiency and billing hours
04:51 — Why selling into large law firms is harder than it looks
07:10 — Law firms as archipelagos: you've signed the firm, you've reached one partner
09:01 — The pivot: from law firm software to ALSP for mortgage lenders
11:23 -- $40K to close a $2M loan: why the big firm model didn't work
13:43 — Fixed fee deals, early losses, and what they taught him to automate
16:40 — AI first, tech first, but lawyers aren't going away in complex deal space
22:12 — LinkedIn content: why Matt started posting and what's working
25:50 — The channel mismatch: LegalTech audience vs mortgage lender buyers
28:25 — Why lawyers are scared to post and why that's an opportunity
33:48 — Can a 20-person team do the revenue of a 150-person firm?
35:01 — North Star: competing head to head with AM Law 150 for CRE finance deals
36:48 — Building MCP with Claude and what became possible last week that wasn't possible a year ago
🎙️ Taking LegalTech to Market is hosted by Paul Church, LegalTech recruiter, talent advisor, and one of the most listened-to voices in the space.
Subscribe for new episodes every week.
Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-gtm-brief-7499116024424873984/
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