Partnering with Sandstone: An AI-Native Platform for In-House Legal Teams
Sequoia by Bogomil Balkansky
Sequoia backed Sandstone, an AI legal tool for in-house teams. It’s another sign that legal work is turning into a prime AI target.
Based on reporting by Sequoia, by Bogomil Balkansky — read the original for the full story.
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Sequoia’s new Sandstone story is really a story about timing, and about Nick Fleisher having the kind of drive that makes people try to hire him or back him. The firm says it met Fleisher through its talent team, then through a cybersecurity CEO who immediately wanted to help close him. A month in New York and a few Negronis later, the pitch became a partnership.
Fleisher’s background matters here. At McKinsey, he reached engagement manager in 18 months by focusing on legal tech and, in his words, “hacking the system.” That specialization eventually became the basis for Sandstone, which he wanted to build rather than join someone else’s company. His co-founder, Jarryd Strydom, also came out of McKinsey and brings both legal and builder chops.
The company is aimed at a very specific pain point: in-house legal teams, especially mid-market ones that are understaffed, overloaded, and drowning in repetitive work. Sandstone is pitched as an AI-native workflow engine that learns from a company’s legal intelligence, executes work, and helps legal teams move from reactive support to something closer to business strategy. Sequoia’s partner says the idea felt familiar because she had considered starting a legal tech company in 2019 after seeing contract work done manually at VMware.
That’s the part that makes this more than another AI-funding note. The legal workflow is still full of spreadsheets, manual extraction, and humans doing expensive busywork. Sequoia says law is a natural fit for large language models because it is basically text in, text out. And once AI starts removing that kind of toil, the market stops looking niche very quickly.
Sequoia was already on that trail before Sandstone, having backed Harvey, Crosby, and Ironclad. With Sandstone, it’s doubling down on the same bet: that legal work is one of the cleanest places for AI to land, and that founders who know the pain from the inside can move fast enough to matter.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the kind of AI company that actually makes sense: boring, expensive work, clear buyer, obvious payoff. The hype crowd loves chatty demos; the real money is in replacing the parts of office life nobody wants to do twice. Legal teams have been waiting for this for years, and now the smart ones will move before the spreadsheets become a personality trait.
Read more about this at: Sequoia