AI adoption in the legal sector has grown steadily over the past five or so years.
Tools now handle tasks that were previously manual and time-intensive, including contract review, legal research, due diligence and document drafting. Law firms and in-house legal teams are using these platforms to reduce review time, lower costs and improve consistency across high-volume work.
The technology varies by platform. Some use supervised machine learning trained on legal datasets. Others use large language models, including GPT-4 and proprietary models, to generate and analyse text. Most enterprise-grade tools now combine document review, natural language search and workflow automation in a single interface.
However, adoption is uneven across the profession. Large law firms and corporate legal departments have moved fastest, while smaller firms are using lower-cost tools focused on specific tasks, such as contract drafting or legal research.
These 10 platforms represent the most widely used AI tools available to legal teams.
10. Spellbook
Founded: 2020
Headquartered: Toronto, Canada
CEO: Scott Stevenson
Services: Contract drafting and review
Spellbook is a contract drafting and review tool built as a Microsoft Word add-in. It uses large language models, initially GPT-4, to suggest contract language, identify missing clauses and speed up first-draft generation.
The tool is aimed primarily at small and mid-sized law firms, supporting standard commercial contract types including NDAs, service agreements and employment contracts.
Its feature set is narrower than enterprise platforms, focused on a single workflow rather than end-to-end legal operations.
9. Everlaw
Founded: 2010
Headquarters: Oakland, California, US
CEO: AJ Shankar
Services: eDiscovery and litigation support
Everlaw is a cloud-based eDiscovery platform used by law firms, corporations and government agencies.
Its AI tools cover predictive coding, document classification and near-duplicate detection, enabling legal teams to process large document sets more efficiently than manual review allows.
The platform includes a Story Builder feature that helps attorneys organise documents into timelines and case narratives.
Everlaw is cloud-native, which simplifies deployment and scaling compared to on-premise alternatives. It serves litigation teams across civil, regulatory and criminal matters.
8. LawGeex
Founded: 2014
Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel
CEO: CEO Noory Bechor
Services: Contract review and approval automation
LawGeex automates the review of standard commercial contracts by comparing incoming documents against a company's defined legal policies.
It uses machine learning to flag clauses that deviate from approved standards and generates redlined versions for attorney review. The platform is designed for high-volume contract workflows, particularly NDAs, vendor agreements and procurement contracts.
The platform integrates with common enterprise tools, including Salesforce and DocuSign, with its primary users being corporate legal and procurement teams.
7. DoNotPay
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, US
CEO: Joshua Browder
Services: Consumer legal automation and chatbots
DoNotPay is a consumer-facing legal automation platform founded by Joshua Browder. It began as a tool for contesting parking fines and expanded to cover subscription cancellations, small claims filings, letter generation and other routine legal tasks.
The platform serves millions of users seeking accessible, low-cost alternatives to traditional legal assistance.
DoNotPay is an early and influential example of consumer legal automation, helping to demonstrate that software could meaningfully simplify everyday legal processes for the general public.
6. Kira Systems (Owned by Litera)
Founded: 2012
Headquarters: Toronto, Canada
CEO: Avaneesh Marwaha
Services: Contract analysis and due diligence
Kira Systems is a machine learning platform for contract analysis, used primarily by law firms and corporate legal teams conducting due diligence.
It identifies and extracts key provisions from contracts using supervised learning. A notable feature is its ability to let firms train custom models on their own clause libraries without requiring data science expertise.
Kira was acquired by Litera, a legal document technology company, in 2021. The acquisition expanded its distribution and added integrations with other Litera products.
5. Luminance
Founded: 2015
Headquarters: London, UK
CEO: Eleanor Lightbody
Services: AI-powered legal document review
Luminance was founded by a team with backgrounds in mathematics and computer science from the University of Cambridge.
Its core technology uses unsupervised machine learning, which means the system can detect patterns and anomalies across documents without relying on pre-defined clause libraries.
Luminance reports clients in more than 60 countries across law firms and corporate legal departments. In 2023, the company launched Luminance Autopilot, which automates routine contract negotiation end-to-end.
The platform is positioned for both transactional and regulatory compliance use cases.
4. Westlaw (Owned by Thomson Reuters)
Founded: 1975
Headquarters: Eagan, Minnesota, US
CEO: Steve Hasker
Services: Legal research, analytics and case law
Westlaw is a legal research platform owned by Thomson Reuters. It provides access to US case law, statutes, regulations, secondary sources and international legal content.
The platform has integrated AI features, including natural language search, citator tools via KeyCite and AI-assisted document drafting.
Following Thomson Reuters' acquisition of Casetext in 2023, the CoCounsel AI assistant was incorporated into the Westlaw product suite, allowing attorneys to run research memos, review documents and analyse contracts through a conversational interface.
3. LexisNexis
Founded: 1970
Headquarters: New York City, US
CEO: Mike Walsh
Services: Legal research, analytics & risk intelligence
LexisNexis is a legal research and analytics platform owned by RELX Group. It provides access to case law, legislation, news and regulatory content across multiple jurisdictions.
The Lexis+ AI product adds generative AI capabilities to the research workflow, enabling natural language queries and AI-generated responses with citations drawn from the LexisNexis database.
The company also offers legal analytics through Lex Machina, acquired in 2015, which provides data on litigation outcomes, judge tendencies and law firm performance.
2. CoCounsel by Casetext (owned by Thomson Reuters)
Founded: 2013
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, US
Head of Product, CoCounsel: Jake Heller
Services: AI legal research & drafting (CoCounsel)
Casetext was founded as a legal research platform before developing CoCounsel, an AI legal assistant built on GPT-4. CoCounsel supports a broad range of practical legal tasks, including research memos, document review, deposition preparation and contract analysis, all accessible through an intuitive conversational interface.
Prior to acquisition, Casetext had built a strong and diverse client base spanning law firms of varying sizes, demonstrating wide market appeal. In 2023, Thomson Reuters acquired Casetext for US$650m in one of the largest transactions in legal technology history, reflecting the significant value placed on AI-driven legal tools.
Following the acquisition, CoCounsel was integrated into the Westlaw platform, one of the most widely used legal research tools in the world. The integration substantially expanded CoCounsel's reach, making advanced AI assistance available to Westlaw's large subscriber base and marking a milestone in the mainstream adoption of AI within legal practice.
1. Harvey
Founded: 2022
Headquarters: San Francisco, California, US
CEO: Winston Weinberg
Services: Generative AI legal platform (enterprise)
Harvey is a generative AI platform built specifically for legal work, founded in 2022 by two former lawyers. It uses a customised version of OpenAI's models and is designed to handle a wide range of legal tasks including legal research, contract drafting, regulatory analysis and matter management, making it a versatile tool across practice areas.
One of Harvey's notable capabilities is its ability to ingest a firm's own documents and precedents, enabling it to produce outputs tailored to a firm's specific practices and style. This flexibility makes it particularly valuable for firms seeking to embed AI meaningfully into their existing workflows.
Harvey has secured agreements with several prominent law firms and professional services organisations, including Allen & Overy and PwC Legal, reflecting strong early adoption at the highest levels of the profession.
The platform also incorporates robust data privacy controls designed to meet law firm confidentiality requirements and does not train on client data by default, addressing a key concern for legal professionals.
Company portals
Harvey
Thomson Reuters
