Law has always been an information-intensive profession. Precedents, statutes, regulations, contracts—lawyers spend enormous amounts of time reading, researching, and writing. That’s exactly the kind of work AI handles extraordinarily well.

For years, the legal industry resisted technological change. Billable hours incentivized inefficiency. Risk aversion discouraged experimentation. And client expectations didn’t demand speed.

That’s changed. Corporate clients now expect their outside counsel to use AI for document review. In-house legal teams need to do more with flat budgets. And solo practitioners compete against firms with ten times their staff.

Whether you’re a BigLaw partner, a public defender, or a legal tech entrepreneur, these AI tools are reshaping how legal work gets done.

Legal Research Tools

Westlaw Precision with AI

Thomson Reuters has integrated generative AI throughout Westlaw, and the results are transformative. You can now ask legal questions in plain English and get researched answers with cited authorities in seconds.

But this isn’t just ChatGPT with legal training data. Westlaw’s AI understands legal citation formats, distinguishes between binding and persuasive authority, and tracks whether cases have been overruled or questioned. The hallucination problem that plagues general-purpose AI is dramatically reduced because answers are grounded in Westlaw’s verified database.

For research-heavy practices—appellate work, complex litigation, regulatory compliance—Westlaw Precision cuts research time by 60-80% while improving thoroughness.

Lexis+ AI

LexisNexis matched Thomson Reuters with Lexis+ AI, their generative AI assistant integrated throughout the Lexis research platform. The assistant can summarize cases, draft research memos, and answer complex legal questions with citations.

What sets Lexis+ apart is its integration with practical guidance content—forms, checklists, and practice notes written by practitioners. When you ask a question, you get not just case law but actionable guidance on how to handle similar matters.

Both Westlaw and Lexis+ are approaching feature parity. Your choice likely depends on which database your firm already subscribes to. But having neither isn’t an option in 2026.

CoCounsel by Casetext

Casetext was acquired by Thomson Reuters but continues operating independently, and CoCounsel remains one of the most impressive legal AI assistants available. It handles document review, deposition preparation, contract analysis, and legal research through a conversational interface.

Ask CoCounsel to find cases supporting a specific proposition, and it returns relevant authorities with explanations of why each supports your argument. Ask it to review a contract for problematic provisions, and it flags issues with explanations.

CoCounsel excels at the kind of work junior associates traditionally handled: initial research, document review, case summarization. Firms using it report significant improvements in associate productivity and consistency.

Contract Analysis Tools

Kira Systems

Kira leads the market in AI-powered contract analysis. The platform can extract and analyze clauses from thousands of contracts simultaneously, making it indispensable for M&A due diligence, lease abstraction, and contract portfolio review.

What makes Kira powerful is its pre-trained intelligence about contract provisions. It understands change of control clauses, indemnification provisions, IP assignments, and hundreds of other clause types without custom training. You can also train it on custom provisions specific to your matters.

Corporate law firms and in-house legal teams use Kira to reduce due diligence timelines from weeks to days. The accuracy exceeds what manual review achieves at a fraction of the cost.

Ironclad AI

Ironclad started as contract lifecycle management software and has evolved into a comprehensive AI contracting platform. Beyond storage and workflow, Ironclad’s AI can review incoming contracts against your playbook, suggest redlines, and extract key terms automatically.

The platform excels in high-volume contracting environments: sales agreements, vendor contracts, NDAs. Legal teams using Ironclad handle three to four times more contract volume without adding headcount.

Ironclad’s recent AI Assist feature takes this further. It can draft entire contract sections based on deal parameters, generate negotiation talking points, and predict which provisions are likely to be contested.

Evisort

Evisort focuses specifically on AI-native contract intelligence. The platform ingests your entire contract portfolio, extracts key terms and obligations, and provides a searchable database of your commitments.

This matters for compliance and risk management. When regulations change, Evisort can identify affected contracts instantly. When renewal dates approach, it alerts you automatically. When you need to know your standard payment terms across vendors, you can query rather than dig.

In-house legal teams managing thousands of contracts find Evisort invaluable for the visibility it provides.

Document Drafting Tools

Harvey

Harvey has emerged as the leading generative AI platform purpose-built for legal work. Backed by major law firms and built on enterprise-grade infrastructure, Harvey handles drafting, research, and analysis while maintaining the security and confidentiality legal work demands.

The platform can draft briefs from outlines, generate contract language from specifications, and produce memoranda that require minimal editing. It understands legal style conventions, citation formats, and the precision required in legal writing.

Harvey’s adoption by AmLaw 100 firms validates its capabilities. It’s also becoming popular with corporate legal departments that want the same tools their outside counsel uses.

Spellbook by Rally

Spellbook integrates directly into Microsoft Word to assist with contract drafting in real time. As you draft, Spellbook suggests language, identifies missing provisions, and flags potential issues.

The tool is particularly useful for transactional lawyers who spend their days in Word anyway. Rather than switching to a separate application, they get AI assistance embedded in their existing workflow.

Spellbook can also generate entire contract sections from prompts and customize language based on your firm’s precedent library. It’s like having a junior associate looking over your shoulder—if that associate had read every contract ever filed with the SEC.

E-Discovery and Document Review

Relativity aiR

Relativity dominates e-discovery, and their aiR suite brings AI to every stage of the process. From early case assessment to document review to production, AI reduces the time and cost of managing electronic evidence.

The platform’s active learning capabilities mean reviewers train the AI as they work. The more documents they code, the better aiR becomes at predicting relevance and privilege. This dramatically reduces the number of documents requiring human review.

Relativity aiR also handles near-duplicate identification, email threading, and communication pattern analysis—the technical aspects of e-discovery that used to require specialized vendors.

Logikcull

Logikcull makes e-discovery accessible to smaller firms and solo practitioners who can’t afford enterprise platforms. The cloud-based solution handles document ingestion, processing, review, and production at transparent per-gigabyte pricing.

Recent AI additions include smart filters that automatically categorize documents by type and topic, privileged content detection, and AI-assisted review prioritization. Logikcull makes it possible to handle discovery that would have been cost-prohibitive just a few years ago.

Practice Management AI

Clio AI

Clio is the leading practice management platform for small and mid-sized firms, and they’ve integrated AI throughout. The platform can draft client communications, summarize matter history, and generate billing entries from calendar events.

Clio’s AI assistant answers questions about your practice: What’s the status of the Jones matter? What documents have we received from opposing counsel? How many hours has this associate billed to client X this month? Instead of clicking through screens, lawyers ask questions and get answers.

Smokeball

Smokeball focuses specifically on small law firms, and their AI features reflect that focus. Automatic time capture ensures no billable activity goes unrecorded. Document automation handles the forms and templates small firms rely on. And performance analytics help firm owners understand profitability by matter type and attorney.

For solo practitioners and small partnerships, Smokeball’s AI features can substitute for support staff they can’t afford to hire.

Legal Writing Enhancement

BriefCatch

BriefCatch is the legal-specific alternative to Grammarly, created by legal writing expert Ross Guberman. The platform catches issues that general writing tools miss: legalese, redundant phrases, unclear antecedents, and passive voice that obscures agency.

Recent AI additions go beyond grammar to substantive suggestions. BriefCatch can recommend reorganizing paragraphs for persuasive impact, identify arguments that need additional support, and suggest where visual aids might strengthen your filing.

For litigators, BriefCatch is nearly as essential as the research tools. Better writing means more persuasive advocacy.

Compliance and Regulatory Tools

Compliance.ai

Regulatory compliance requires tracking constant changes across multiple agencies and jurisdictions. Compliance.ai uses AI to monitor regulatory developments, identify relevant changes, and assess their impact on your organization.

Financial services firms, healthcare organizations, and other heavily regulated industries use Compliance.ai to stay ahead of regulatory changes. The platform can map regulations to your policies and procedures, identifying gaps before examiners do.

Neota Logic

Neota Logic enables legal teams to build AI-powered compliance applications without coding. You can create automated intake systems, compliance checklists, risk assessments, and guidance documents that adapt based on user inputs.

For in-house legal teams drowning in internal requests, Neota Logic automates the routine guidance that consumes significant attorney time.

Getting Started with Legal AI

Implementing AI in legal practice requires careful consideration of ethical obligations:

Confidentiality matters. Only use AI tools that maintain attorney-client privilege and don’t use your data to train public models. Every tool mentioned here offers enterprise-grade security, but you should verify before uploading sensitive materials.

Competence requires supervision. AI tools make mistakes. You remain responsible for the accuracy of legal work product. Always review AI outputs, verify citations, and confirm legal conclusions through traditional research.

Billing transparency. As AI reduces time on tasks, billing practices need to adapt. Clients expect some efficiency gains to flow to them. Have honest conversations about how AI affects your billing.

Start with internal use cases. Draft AI-generated documents internally before using them for client work. This lets you calibrate quality expectations and build confidence in the technology.

The legal profession will look dramatically different in five years. Lawyers who embrace AI will handle more matters, serve clients better, and compete more effectively. Those who don’t will find themselves increasingly disadvantaged—in a profession where competitive advantage determines career trajectory.

The tools exist. The choice is yours.