Theo Ai is a company that is creating the world’s most accurate legal prediction engine to forecast the outcome of legal disputes. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Theo Ai Legal Product Lead Sarah Johansson to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Sarah Johansson’s Background
What is Sarah Johansson’s background? Johansson said:
“I attended Queen Mary University of London and later Georgetown Law as a merit scholar, obtaining my LL.B. and LL.M. respectively. Whilst in law school I was highly focused on the impact of law on technology, from regulating state-based cyber warfare to data protection. It was through my work in litigation at Rosling King LLP that I realized how much I wanted to use technology to impact the law. I hated the workflows and struggled to understand why we couldn’t automate much larger pieces of daily practice. And it is this that led me to leading product at Theo Ai – identifying and building solutions that uniquely benefit the entire case lifecycle.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Johansson shared:
“At Theo Ai, I turn the needs of our litigation clients into tailored engineering solutions that meet the impact they’re looking for. I often travel across the U.S., meeting customers and understanding how we can continue to push the boundaries of what lawyers can get from technology. This also means a lot of time spent with our engineering team, figuring out how our back-end and proprietary models can interpret legal documentation and reasoning to bring to light those important answers or issues contained in the text.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Johansson reflected:
“Beyond simply sharing a lot of laughs, disagreements, and encouragement whenever we see each other in person, I hold very dear the memory of when I joined the team in person for the first time. I was the new person in the room but the team welcomed me with open arms, sunk their teeth into the legal issue of the day, and followed my uninformed suggestion for lunch. Luckily, since many of us turned out to be major foodies, the ramen restaurant I suggested was a hit, and the team and I got a chance to really get to know each other. That day showed me that I had joined an incredibly curious, warm, and highly intelligent team.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Johansson explained:
“Theo Ai offers a predictive legal analytics tool that helps legal professionals assess the likely outcomes of disputes. Its core product uses proprietary AI to forecast win probabilities, potential monetary recoveries, and key arguments based on case facts. Features include outcome prediction, recovery estimation, argument strength analysis, and pattern recognition from similar cases. The platform also provides input quality scoring and collaborative tools, enabling users to refine their case strategy with data-driven insights.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Johansson and the team faced in building the company? Johansson acknowledged:
“One major challenge we are facing is that when users hear AI, they anticipate some type of ChatGPT-like interface. There remains a need for lawyers to start imagining more of what AI can do for them, and demanding higher levels of innovation from the products they purchase. We are hoping to do some of that, both by building a product that is more intuitive and helpful to the legal user, and providing AI solutions that are not simply chat interfaces. Part of this journey is not just challenging from a product development perspective, but also from a user education perspective. However, I think we have been doing a phenomenal job of bringing new knowledge and data to familiar interfaces such as email, helping the legal user to interact and benefit from AI without needing to learn new habits.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since its launch? Johansson noted:
“We began doing what a lot of legal tech has done – building a platform that requires the lawyer to learn a new system, manually ingest a wealth of documents, and learn to frame their thinking to existing outputs. We have since shifted completely, building an innovative solution that truly meets lawyers where they currently work, to simply add on a layer of clarity in the cases they are working on. Part of achieving this has involved breaking our systems apart and rebuilding them using the most suitable LLM per task and ensuring our flows resonate with the types of questions a lawyer asks of a case at every stage of the case lifecycle.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Johansson cited:
“For me personally, having Robert Martorana, and later Jay Mandal, join the team with a wealth of legal experience was a key step in shifting the company from a company that simply built incredible technology, to being a company that was being built by legal professionals to really suit the profession. Other incredible milestones have included both of our funding rounds.”
Funding
When asking Johansson about the company’s funding, she revealed:
“We have raised a total of $6.4 million to date, with our latest seed funding round in May 2025 of $4.2 million.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Johansson emphasized:
“Like I mentioned above, we do things differently here at Theo in terms of how we make our supercharged predictions available to our users. However, I think we also do an incredible job at answering the questions that many others are too afraid to ask. We know that those cases that go to trial will require a particular approach to document review and collation. We can help with those cases. However, we also know that a lot of cases do not go to trial but cause a number of headaches regardless. We can help mitigate those as well. Working at Theo means thinking big-picture about empowering attorneys to do the hardest parts of their job with help they haven’t had access to before.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Johansson concluded:
“I really really love my job and I’m excited to represent young legal minds who love the law and legal problem-solving, and who want to build things that make practice better and more future-proof.”
