‘Wide Open’ Legal Tech Market Draws In-House Leader to Sandstone

Former Docusign deputy general counsel Jessica Nguyen is joining the legal tech startup Sandstone as its chief strategy and legal officer.

Nguyen’s decision to join Sandstone reflects just how quickly the legal technology market is changing, as more startups enter the space. Technology is evolving rapidly, so many buyers are signing up for short-term deals to try out legal-specific AI tools competing to differentiate themselves from AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic. Sandstone, which markets software to connect legal teams to a broader businesses, launched publicly in January. The company is still in its seed stage, albeit with backing from one of legal tech’s most prominent investors, Sequoia Capital.

Nguyen will work on developing Sandstone’s software and bringing it to market. She had been at Docusign since it acquired contract tech maker Lexion, where she was chief legal officer, in 2024.

“The field is still wide open on the in-house side,” Nguyen said. “I think the market is also larger for the in-house side than the law firm side.”

More attorneys work at law firms than in-house, but corporate legal teams are growing faster than law firms. The population of in-house counsel increased 87% from 2008 to 2024, growing from 78,000 to 145,000 attorneys, according to the Association of Corporate Counsel. The number of firm attorneys only grew 23% over that period.

Other factors are also pushing in-house departments to adopt tech, Nguyen said.

“The in-house legal persona is a lot more incentivized to use tools like Sandstone or legal technology to drive efficiency and scale just because the business model is different,” she said.

Legal departments are frequently fighting for higher headcount and budget and seeking to do more work with the same amount or fewer resources, said Nguyen, who previously worked in-house at Microsoft. They’re also getting pressure from their boards and c-suites to use AI, she added.

Nguyen’s not the only one to believe that. Other startups like Eudia and GC AI are pitching the idea that artificial intelligence is a better fit for in-house teams than it is for law firms.

On the whole, however, Nguyen said many startups are struggling to differentiate themselves from each other or from enterprise subscriptions to ChatGPT or Claude. Companies like Sandstone can do that by providing an end-to-end user experience, she said.

“Very few brands have shown to be a clear winner for the in-house legal attorney or professional,” Nguyen said.