Legal Nodes

Legal Nodes operates a platform that provides businesses with what it describes as a delegated legal department, covering incorporation and corporate structuring, contracts, compliance (including MiCA, DORA and GDPR), IP protection, bank account opening, KYB/sanctions screening and vendor onboarding checks. Work is delivered by a network of external legal, tax and privacy specialists across more than 15 jurisdictions, including the Cayman Islands, Estonia, Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Malta, Singapore, Switzerland, the UAE and the UK.

A central element of the model is the Virtual Legal Officer (VLO), a role that structures a client's requests into tasks in a dashboard, matches each task to a suitable expert, quality-checks deliverables, tracks progress and budgets, and communicates with the client. Clients submit a task, receive an estimate, top up a balance and then receive and track results. The company also publishes legal guidance content on topics such as EU MiCA, CASP licensing and DeFi front-end regulation, and offers prepared legal setups and org-chart blueprints for common scenarios such as fundraising, product launch, market entry, token issuance and DAO launch.

According to a third-party profile, Legal Nodes Ltd is based in London and its offerings include DAO legal wrappers, crypto business legal support, startup legal structuring, outsourced data protection officer and GDPR services, and UK representative services.

Founding story

Legal Nodes was founded in 2018 in Ukraine by Margarita (Margo) Sivakova, Nestor Dubnevych and Max Maliuk, with the stated aim of making legal services more transparent, cost-efficient and accessible for internationally distributed founders running cross-border businesses. After a period of development, testing and fundraising, the team built a platform delivering cross-border legal services coordinated by a Virtual Legal Officer.

Business model

Legal Nodes sells legal work on a pay-per-task basis rather than through billable hours or retainers: clients submit a task, receive a fixed-fee estimate, fund a balance and receive deliverables. Delivery is coordinated by an in-house Virtual Legal Officer and executed by a network of external, locally based legal, tax and licensing specialists. The company launched in October 2019 as a general legal marketplace offering fixed-fee legal task subscriptions.

Revenue comes from fees charged for discrete legal tasks priced up front (fixed-fee proposals), positioned as an alternative to hourly billing and annual retainers; the company states clients save 60-80% versus hourly retainers or in-house counsel.

Traction

The company reports 200+ startups helped, 2,800+ cross-border legal tasks solved, 15+ jurisdictions covered and 400+ companies using its legal and compliance support. It states a team of 25+ people, mostly based in Ukraine.

Latest developments

The company markets a delegated legal department covering incorporation, contracts, MiCA/DORA/GDPR compliance and vendor checks, states that 400+ businesses use its services, and publishes recent guidance on EU MiCA, obtaining a MiCA CASP licence in Lithuania and broker-dealer registration questions for crypto front ends. Its expert roster includes specialists in real-world asset tokenization, DORA, MiCA and data protection.