Wim Dejonghe, the former global senior partner of Allen & Overy, has thrown his financial and strategic weight behind Falcon, a newly launched new model law firm, becoming a non-executive co-founder and investor in the Brussels-based venture.

Falcon has raised around €1.5m in seed funding. Its founding team combines the founders of Belgian HR-tech scaleup Mbrella — Amaury Gérard, Quinten Vandermeulen and David Nguyen — with former Freshfields lawyer Rémy Bonnaffé. Dejonghe, who led Allen & Overy into its merger with New York's Shearman & Sterling before the combined firm became A&O Shearman, has now placed a personal bet on a very different kind of legal business.

A 'Neo-Bank Moment' for Law

Dejonghe has framed his involvement in sweeping terms. "The traditional legal sector is due its neo-bank moment," he said, predicting that legal services will undergo the same rapid transformation that produced online banking in the financial sector.

In a statement on his decision, he elaborated on the economics driving the shift: "AI has changed how quickly legal work can be done, but the traditional model still rewards firms for the time that work takes. That tension is very difficult to solve from inside a billable-hour model."

He added: "Falcon has been built from scratch around faster delivery and flat-fee pricing, while keeping a qualified lawyer accountable for every piece of work. That's why I had to be involved."

What Falcon Will Do

Falcon will target the commercial contract segment for small and medium-sized businesses — a market the founders estimate at €49 billion a year across Europe. The firm promises "commercial legal support at a fraction of the cost and time of a traditional law firm."

The initial scope of work covers NDAs, data processing agreements, master service agreements, and customer and supplier contracts. The delivery model is deliberately conversational and fast: "Clients submit contracts through chat apps such as Slack or Microsoft Teams, with every review signed off by a qualified lawyer and returned the same day," the founders said.

The venture grew out of the founders' own frustrations at Mbrella. "As Mbrella scaled and began signing larger customers, commercial contracts became an increasing drain on their time, while outsourcing relatively straightforward work to traditional law firms could cost €3,000 – €4,000 and take days or weeks," they explained. "They set out to build a law firm that could use AI to cut the time and cost of routine legal work without taking the lawyer out of the process."

Why It Matters

For practitioners, Dejonghe's involvement marks a significant moment in the maturation of the new model law firm movement. When the lawyer who orchestrated one of the most strategically consequential Magic Circle mergers in recent memory concludes that the billable hour cannot absorb the efficiency gains AI now delivers, the signal to the wider market is hard to ignore.

The commercial logic behind Falcon poses a direct question to traditional firms serving the SME contract market. If routine commercial work can be turned around same-day at flat fees — with qualified lawyer sign-off — while traditional outsourcing of the same work costs €3,000 to €4,000 and takes days or weeks, in-house teams and growing businesses have a credible alternative. Firms competing in this segment may face pressure to justify their pricing structures or develop comparable delivery models.

The design choices also matter. Falcon keeps a qualified lawyer accountable for every piece of work, positioning itself as an augmentation of legal judgment rather than a replacement for it. That structure may help the firm navigate professional regulation and client trust barriers that have slowed earlier attempts at legal process disruption.

A Growing Trend

Falcon is the latest in a series of new model law firms that have launched in recent months, most of them targeting commercial contracts with a combination of AI, flat fees and rapid turnaround. What distinguishes this launch is the caliber of the backing. Dejonghe's move from leading a Magic Circle institution to co-founding a flat-fee startup captures the direction of travel in the market.

The pattern echoes the early days of fintech: established insiders, having run the incumbent institutions, conclude that the underlying economics of the industry have changed faster than the incumbents can adapt — and build new vehicles from scratch instead. Whether Falcon's €1.5m start and four-person founding team can capture a meaningful share of the estimated €49 billion European SME legal market remains to be seen. But the involvement of a figure of Dejonghe's standing suggests the new model firm movement has moved from curiosity to credible market force.