What's going on

The way people actually find a lawyer has quietly changed. Someone gives you a name, stressed, in a moment that's rarely a good one, and the first thing you do is Google it. You're not comparing ten lawyers like you'd compare hotels. You're looking for one reason to trust the name you already have.

I'm going to walk through the biggest mistake we made growing this company past our first market. It took us far too long to see it clearly, and it's worth writing down properly instead of leaving it as a lesson only the team knows about.

For the past few months, I've been splitting my time between Oslo and Singapore. Now I can finally talk about why.

I used Atlas for about five months. Not as a curiosity I opened once to test, as my actual browser for a good chunk of that time. So when OpenAI announced it was shutting Atlas down by August 9, 2026, less than a year after launch, I was genuinely a bit sad about it.

For six years we sold The Lawyer Guide for way less than it was worth. Some of the biggest lessons I've learned running The Lawyer Guide have nothing to do with product, AI, or expanding into new countries. They come from something a lot more boring: pricing.

I've spent most of my career on the designer's side. As an employee, then as a freelancer, then running my own studio. I know what it feels like to be the person applying, waiting, and hoping someone on the other end actually reads past the first three seconds of a portfolio. Now I'm stepping onto the other side of the table.

Most people don’t look for a lawyer out of curiosity. They do it because they have to. Because they are facing a problem, defending themselves, protecting their family, their work, or their future. That moment usually comes with stress and anxiety already baked in.

By François Savard and Erling Løken Andersen, founders of The Lawyer Guide, about Meta scrapping data for their own training.