Do you spend hours reviewing contracts, drafting legal agreements, or sifting through endless piles of documents?

AI tools can take on tasks involving document review, organization, and contract drafting, allowing you to focus on higher-value legal work. These legal AI tools automate repetitive document review and drafting tasks. AI tools like Spellbook can detect errors faster than human reviewers and quickly draft and redline contracts.

In this article, we explore five legal AI tools that can optimize your legal workflows and highlight features to consider when choosing the best AI tool for your firm.

What are Legal AI Tools? 

Legal AI tools are software solutions that use artificial intelligence to understand and interpret legal language. They review and extract relevant information from legal documents.

How Does a Legal AI Software Work?

Legal AI software leverages advanced technologies like Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to perform various tasks autonomously. NLP enables the software to identify key contract clauses and extract relevant information from legal texts, while ML predicts case outcomes based on historical data and trends.

AI tools assist legal professionals with tasks that traditionally require human expertise by understanding legal documents, recognizing patterns, and drawing actionable insights.

Top 5 Legal AI Tools for Lawyers

The following list highlights top legal AI software and how the tools can enhance your practice through automation features, document management, and revision systems. Key aspects focus on the quality of the tool’s assistance with contract reviews, writing suggestions, application to legal tasks, and other features.

Thomson Reuters - CaseText CoCounsel

Thomson Reuters has integrated CoCounsel with its product set since purchasing CaseText. This AI-powered solution can benefit large offices with many team members, extensive documentation, and complex workflows.

CoCounsel focuses on automating tasks rather than providing customized solutions. It performs in-depth contract analysis to identify bottlenecks. Attorneys may find it useful during case preparations due to its ability to quickly search relevant databases for case citations. Thomson Reuters recently introduced several new features for users, including:

• Inline Citations: Helps verify sources and check accuracy manually.
• Document Comparison: Offers side-by-side automated summaries and review options.
• Organized Dashboard: Keeps member chats organized in folders for easy navigation.
• Automatic Timeline Creation: Generates timelines for contracts and cases.

CoCounsel is an AI assistant that coordinates teamwork in busy offices. It can quickly generate common legal letters and emails tailored to specific tones for in-house correspondence and client communication.

Lex Machina

Lex Machina provides predictive analytics to help law firms, companies, and government agencies make data-driven decisions in litigation. Its database contains millions of court documents, offering insights into case outcomes, judicial behavior, and legal strategies. Key features of Lex Machina include:

• Litigation analytics, with insights on judges, law firms, and case outcomes.
• Tactical decision-making, helping to predict case outcomes based on historical data analysis.

Law firms use Lex Machina for competitive intelligence, case strategy, and client advisories, enabling legal professionals to anticipate outcomes more accurately and optimize their litigation approach.

Spellbook

Spellbook is a legal AI that assists transactional lawyers in drafting, reviewing, and analyzing contracts efficiently. For example, lawyers can customize and quickly retrieve frequently used legal clauses with Spellbook. This is just one of the many tasks Spellbook automates to save time. 

Because Spellbook works where lawyers do in Microsoft Word, it’s the top choice for lawyers seeking an easy solution to improve efficiency and experience instant benefits.

When you first use Spellbook, its integration with Word delivers a simple user interface on the right side of your document. You don’t need to switch to a different software environment. Everything is available with a click, in a simple drop-down task menu, or by interacting with a chatbot under the Assistant tab.

Spellbook is ideal for offices focused on transactional contracts and solo legal professionals, offering industry-specific core features such as:

• Comprehensive document review: Spellbook performs thorough checks to identify linguistic ambiguities, contextual errors, inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and legal issues. 
• Straightforward redlining assistance: It automates the contract review and redlining process. 
• Auto-generation of legal text: The software can automatically generate requested legal text including entire agreements, specific contract clauses, and amendments.
• Understanding complex legal nuances: Spellbook comprehends the intricacy of legal language and circumstances that extend beyond basic legal contexts.

Transactional lawyers value these features because of the time spent working on contracts. 

Spellbook leverages an extensive database of industry benchmarks to help you compare your contracts against established compliance standards and best practices. Allowing users to identify gaps or missing sections quickly and draft replacements.

With an affordable subscription and a free trial available, Spellbook offers excellent value for your money. Try the software and become familiar with its benefits before choosing a pricing plan.

LawGeex

LawGeex focuses on teamwork and contract management. The software automates the contract review and approval process, acting as an extension of your team to speed up deal closures.

To get started, you must input your law firm’s unique perspectives, preferences, and policies. Once set up, LawGeex can scan contracts to ensure accuracy, clarity, and alignment with your best interests. It can handle various types of contracts and documents, including:

• Routine agreements, such as service contracts and bills of sale
• High-volume contracts
• Low-complexity agreements

Harvey AI

Harvey optimizes workflows to improve efficiency in legal firms through its AI-powered features. It is particularly useful for tasks like drafting, summarizing, and reviewing large volumes of documents.

Harvey’s automated summarization feature can quickly analyze thousands of legal documents and provide summaries in minutes, saving hours of manual review. Additionally, Harvey simplifies the legal research process by thoroughly analyzing relevant law databases to provide pertinent case citations from sources like:

• US Case Law
• EDGAR
• A custom Tax AI Assistant
• The European Legislation Identifier (EUR-Lex)

Overall, Harvey is excellent for litigators as it offers insights into legal precedents and helps tailor case strategies. There is still little public information about Harvey; however, the company is generally focused on enterprise legal teams. 

How to Choose the Right AI Software for Law Firms

Invest in software that aligns with your business objectives and meets your firm’s needs. For instance, busy law offices with numerous documents awaiting redlining should invest in AI tools that help legal professionals review documents faster and more accurately. A reliable AI tool for lawyers focused on document review and management can save time and resources when handling existing contracts and drafting new ones.

Functionality and Features

Most law firms will benefit from software with the following features:

• Integration with Word: Let lawyers work in the familiar Microsoft Word environment, empowered by AI.
• Automatic legal document drafting: Quality legal AI tools like Spellbook can generate new content from scratch based on your input or their analysis of existing documents.
• Automatic reviews and redlines: AI can provide valid suggestions for improving document language and quality, including accuracy, compliance, consistency, and other contract aspects.
• Customization: The ability to incorporate customized playbooks and templates is a bonus.
• Multi-document support: Effective legal AI tools can handle various types of documents, scanning them for compliance and detecting discrepancies in policy, terms, language, and tone to ensure consistency.

User Interface and Usability

In legal practice, user-friendly AI software is essential to save valuable time navigating and managing multiple documents. Spellbook recognizes your focus is on legal work, not trying to find features in complex software tools. Spellbook’s interface stands out with:

• Smooth integration with Microsoft Word: Unlike other tools that require switching between different platforms, Spellbook operates directly in Microsoft Word. You draft, review, and redline contracts in the same window. You don’t have to bounce between tabs or software—everything you need is on the same screen as the contract.
• Intuitive navigation: Spellbook’s interface is designed for legal professionals, offering simple, clearly labeled options for contract review, clause generation, and summaries. Easily move between contract versions and legal tasks without unnecessary clicks.
• Fast and highly responsive: Legal professionals cannot afford delays in their workflow. Spellbook’s responsive design ensures fast access to AI-powered suggestions, redlines, and comparisons to industry standards, helping you stay on track with your deadlines.
• Quick access to clause libraries and past documents: Saving time is a priority. With Spellbook, commonly used clauses and previously reviewed documents are just a shortcut away. Quickly pull in standard language and legal precedents when needed.

Accuracy and Reliability

AI tools offer significant value by predicting outcomes and modernizing workflows. However, accuracy remains crucial. Precision is essential for transforming AI into a reliable and powerful tool for lawyers, especially in contract drafting and review. Spellbook excels in this area by providing dependable insights tailored to the legal sector.

Liabilities all AI tools in legal applications currently share include:

• Incorrect predictions from irrelevant or incomplete data: Generic AI tools may depend on incomplete or irrelevant data sources, leading to inaccurate legal interpretations. Spellbook addresses this issue by focusing on transactional law, delivering the most relevant results for drafting, reviewing, and redlining contracts.
• Hallucinated case citations: Some general-purpose AIs may fill in gaps with false information to make responses more convincing. Specialized legal AI tools like Spellbook avoid this pitfall by concentrating on contract review and drafting processes, where the primary tasks revolve around structured documents and legal language, not case law.

Compliance and Security

Customer data management (CDM) in AI software operates under the same legal framework as other software solutions. Digital tools must adhere to client confidentiality, privacy, and data management standards.

When evaluating your legal AI software, look for the following data security measures:

• Encryption: Protect data by converting it into a secure format.
• Advanced user authorization and authentication: Ensure only authorized users can access sensitive information.
• Security audits: Regular checks to identify vulnerabilities and ensure compliance.
• Data intrusion detection: Monitor for unauthorized access attempts.
• Sensitive information protection: Safeguard confidential data from breaches.
• Emergency response plan: Include backup and recovery options to restore data in case of an incident.

Scalability

When selecting legal AI software, ensure it can scale with your law firm's current size and future growth. Here’s how to assess whether AI tools meet your scalability needs:

• Research firm size compatibility: Determine the most appropriate firm size for the software. For instance, Spellbook suits solos, small, and mid-sized legal teams and can grow alongside your business.
• Support for multi-user environments: Ensure the AI software allows multiple users to work simultaneously on drafting and reviewing legal documents.
• Cloud-based and scalable storage: Cloud infrastructure ensures that as your firm's workload increases, so does the AI tool’s data storage capacity. This allows you to manage growing volumes of documents and legal data without compromising performance.

Cost Effectiveness

Many AI solutions require a significant upfront investment without first providing long-term value. To decide whether to invest in AI for your firm, consider these factors:

• Subscription fees: Compare basic and premium plans, as well as monthly or yearly subscriptions, to find the best value for your money.
• Maintenance and support: Look for affordable, reliable support and low maintenance costs.
• Return on investment (ROI): For example, Spellbook significantly reduces the time spent on contract drafting and reviewing, providing a clear ROI.

Reviews and Reputation

Lastly, consult colleagues in similar practice areas for their opinions on software. Unbiased reviews provide valuable insights into the features and overall customer satisfaction of the AI software you are considering. Find credible reviews and recommendations on:

• Quora and Reddit: Users on these social media platforms often discuss various software options.
• Trustpilot: This site offers user reviews and ratings for many products.
• LinkedIn Posts: Professionals frequently share their experiences and recommendations on LinkedIn.
• YouTube Video Reviews: Many users create video reviews that highlight the pros and cons of software.

How Much Do AI Tools Cost for Lawyers?

AI pricing can be complex. Not all companies disclose their pricing plans before you sign up for a trial or explain what you get for your money. 

Prices can vary widely, typically starting from around $200 per month. As the legal AI market grows, users will have many options, and budget isn’t always the best determinant factor. Some specialized tools can charge up to $2,000 monthly for premium plans and team subscriptions.

For solo practitioners and smaller firms focused on transactional law, platforms like Spellbook offer more affordable options while providing powerful features for contract drafting and redlining. With lower prices, these AI tools are accessible to a wide range of users.

When comparing the costs of integrating AI into your legal workflow, research payment options and the differences between annual and monthly subscriptions. Most tools, including Spellbook, offer significant discounts for yearly subscriptions.

Factors that influence the pricing include:

• Available pricing models: Companies may offer various subscription structures.
• Market demand: Pricing can fluctuate based on demand for specific features.
• Number and complexity of features: More features often lead to higher costs.
• Potential integration with other software: Tools that integrate with existing systems may have different pricing.

When setting a budget for your firm’s AI legal technology, consider what you get for your money. Some AI companies offer various product subscriptions that cover individual tasks and charge extra for upgrades and integrations. For example, a basic plan might only include initial contract reviews. If you want legal document drafting features, you may need to purchase additional products and integrate them into your existing workflow.

Key Takeaways

You don’t need to grasp the technical details of AI to recognize its value for your law firm, particularly when an AI tool trains on legal content and prioritizes accuracy. 

Spellbook automates daily tasks like document management, contract reviews, and clause extraction, freeing you and your team from time-consuming work. AI tools like Spellbook let you focus more on problem-solving and legal tasks that add greater value. Ultimately, this leads to significant time and cost savings and higher success rates.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Legal AI Tools Enhance Client-Lawyer Interactions?

Yes. Legal AI tools enable lawyers to update clients about their cases in minutes with features like AI document reviews, drafts, and summaries. By automating these tasks, lawyers also gain more time to build client relationships and provide personalized service.

How Effective Are AI Tools in Managing Large Volumes of Legal Data?

AI software can classify and categorize legal information for easy access, regardless of data volume. It quickly extracts data to automate various tasks, including redlining, summarization, and drafting.

Are Legal AI Software Reliable for Court Case Predictions?

The reliability of AI legal software in predicting court case outcomes depends on its database and the complexity of the factors analyzed. The more factors the software considers—such as a judge’s behavior in similar past cases—the more accurate the predictions will be. However, AI cannot make reliable predictions based on incorrect or missing data.