Why Hogan Lovells built a 100-person legal tech company: Sebastian Lach on what clients actually want from AI

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Sep 23, 2025

Sebastian Lach, a partner at Hogan Lovells and head of their legal tech subsidiary ELTEMATE, discusses his journey from white-collar crime to spearheading a 100-person tech team. He emphasizes the importance of specialized AI tools tailored for legal practices, rejecting the idea of one-size-fits-all solutions. Sebastian reveals how ELTEMATE was born from an internal survey and aims to deliver precise, efficient results. He also shares insights about the competitive landscape of legal technology and the essential skills future lawyers must adopt.

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ANECDOTE

Hogan Lovells Built A Separate Legal Tech Unit

Sebastian Lach started ELTEMATE with three people around a table in 2019 and scaled it to a 100-person team over six years.
He intentionally created a separate affiliate to allow risk-taking and rapid lawyer-engineer collaboration outside strict law firm processes.

ADVICE

Create A Risk-Tolerant Innovation Space

Separate the innovation team from core law firm governance to enable trial-and-error and faster decisions.
Let lawyers and engineers work together in a space that tolerates risk and iteration.

INSIGHT

Vertical Tools Outperform Generic AI

General-purpose AI will handle common tasks but vertical, domain-trained tools deliver the real efficiency gains.
Lawyers need tools that produce near-final results at the push of a button, not 60% drafts.

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Hogan Lovells might not be the first name that comes up in conversations about legal AI, but maybe it should. The firm quietly spun up ELTEMATE, a 100-person legal tech subsidiary, to build tools for clients that go beyond hype and deliver real efficiency gains. At the helm is Sebastian Lach, a Hogan Lovells partner who also leads ELTEMATE.

In this episode, Sebastian talks about how ELTEMATE started with just three people around a table in 2019 and has since scaled into a global team creating client-facing technology. Funded entirely in-house, it now builds everything from AI-driven investigation tools to domain-specific tools tailored to compliance and litigation.

We also dig into Sebastian’s views on legal AI more broadly. He’s sceptical about so-called “Swiss Army knife” platforms and argues that the real value lies in specialist, vertical tools trained on the right data and guided by lawyers who know what good looks like. “Lawyers don’t want 60% answers”, he argues. “They want a tool that gives them the right result at the push of a button.”

It’s a conversation about what happens when a Big Law firm takes tech seriously - balancing risk and innovation - and what clients are really asking for when they demand AI.

Chapters

00:01 Introduction

00:50 Sebastian’s Background

02:07 Transitioning from Law to Legal Tech

04:00 Exploring White Collar Crime Law

07:25 The Birth of ELTEMATE

10:34 Funding and Business Model of ELTEMATE

11:39 ELTEMATE's Growth and Structure

13:12 ELTEMATE's Product Suite and Strategy

18:23 The Importance of Domain-Specific Solutions

20:48 Data as a Core Differentiator

24:28 The Future of Legal Tech and Client Needs

28:30 The Vision for ELTEMATE

31:16 Lessons Learned in Legal Tech Innovation

34:48 Concerns About AI in Legal Practice

35:51 Skills for the Future Lawyer

38:02 The Future of the Billable Hour

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