Will Chen · 2026-04-29 · major
Mike — Open-Source, Self-Hostable Alternative to Harvey and Legora for Law Firms
AGPL legal-AI platform for law firms: chat-with-documents, verbatim citations, multi-step workflows, and contract drafting using your own Claude or Gemini API keys. 960 stars in two days.
Self-hostable open-source legal AI: chat with documents, cite verbatim, run multi-step workflows, draft contracts.
Key specs
| License | AGPL-3.0 |
|---|---|
| GitHub stars | 960 |
| Stack | Next.js + Express + Supabase |
What is it?
Mike is a full-stack legal AI platform built as an open-source alternative to commercial offerings like Harvey and Legora, both of which charge law firms five and six figures a year. It's a Next.js frontend on an Express backend with Supabase auth and S3-compatible storage.
How does it work?
Users bring their own model API keys — Claude or Gemini — and the platform handles document ingestion (PDF conversion via LibreOffice), retrieval, verbatim citation back to source pages, multi-step research workflows, and end-to-end contract drafting and editing. Because the whole stack is self-hostable, confidential client documents never leave the firm's infrastructure.
Why does it matter?
Legal AI has been gated behind expensive vendor seats and tight integrations with Thomson Reuters' case-law oligopoly. Mike doesn't solve the case-law access problem (HN's top comment correctly points out that's a Westlaw moat), but it gives small firms and in-house teams a credible drafting and document-analysis workspace without paying Harvey-tier prices or sending privileged matter to a third-party SaaS.
Who is it for?
small law firms, in-house counsel, legal-tech tinkerers
Try it
git clone https://github.com/willchen96/mike