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AI can already read a contract, flag a risky clause, and compare two versions faster than any associate on your team. What it can’t do is tell you which tool was built for legal work and which one bolted a chat window onto an existing product.
The pitches keep coming, and your staff may already be pasting drafts into ChatGPT.
Used well, AI for legal documents shifts more of the workday toward legal judgment and less toward the first pass. Used carelessly, it puts client documents into consumer tools whose data terms your firm hasn’t checked.
Below, each document task gets its own answer: the kind of tool built for it, what your attorneys still check, and what to ask a vendor before anyone uploads a client file.
What Is AI for Legal Documents?
AI for legal documents is software that uses large language models to draft, review, compare, summarize and answer questions about legal documents. Most legal AI tools run on general-purpose models with legal grounding layered on top: legal sources, templates or your firm’s own documents.
That grounding decides what a tool is good at. A research platform such as Lexis+ with Protégé or CoCounsel answers from legal sources, and a tool connected to your document management system (DMS) answers from your firm’s own files.
How AI Reads a Legal Document
A language model reads the text of a document and writes a response from it, which is how it drafts, summarizes or answers a question about what’s on the page. A tool that also searches your firm’s own files can bring the relevant documents into that answer, so it responds from your firm’s record instead of from general knowledge.
When AI on a firm’s documents disappoints, the usual reason is that the tool was never connected to where those documents live, such as SharePoint or a shared S: drive. The more of your firm’s own record a tool can reach, the more useful its answers get.
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What Can AI Do with Legal Documents?
AI can draft legal documents, review contracts, compare versions, summarize long filings, answer questions across a matter and support cite-checking, and each of those tasks has a kind of tool built for it and a step your attorneys still own.
AI for Drafting Legal Documents
AI writes first drafts of contracts, letters and non-routine documents, and the tools built for legal drafting are Harvey, Lexis+ with Protégé and, for contract work inside Microsoft Word, Gavel Exec.
Legal-specific drafting tools are the ones to evaluate for client work. General assistants such as ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic) and Gemini (Google) fit early drafts of non-client material:
The first hour of most drafts goes to scaffolding: the structure, the standard sections and the basic language every version of the document needs. That’s the part to hand to AI.
The output is a first draft, never the only draft where the stakes are high. Your attorney reviews it the way a manager reviews an employee’s work, line by line, before it goes to a client or a court.
Template-based drafting is a separate category: when your firm produces the same engagement letter or NDA from a form every time, legal document automation software does that job with rules and templates.
What the attorney still checks: every clause the draft relies on.
AI for Contract Review
AI contract review tools such as Gavel Exec (inside Word), CoCounsel and Harvey flag unusual clauses, missing provisions and inconsistent terms for an attorney to judge.
Gavel Exec runs inside Microsoft Word, so the review happens in the document your lawyer is already redlining. CoCounsel and Harvey run contract analysis as part of broader legal AI platforms, built for Westlaw firms and for large firms and legal departments.
The tool spots a clause that departs from the norm. Deciding whether your client should accept it stays with the attorney.
What the attorney still checks: whether each flagged term matters to this client and this deal.
AI for Comparing Document Versions
AI-assisted comparison shows what changed between two versions of a document, including small wording edits that shift meaning, and the attorney decides whether each change is acceptable.
Comparison matters most in negotiation, when the other side sends back a draft and you need to know exactly what moved. Teams that run a high volume of redlines use dedicated document comparison software built for that work.
What the attorney still checks: every change before it’s accepted.
AI for Summarizing Transcripts and Long Filings
AI condenses depositions, transcripts, long filings and discovery sets into summaries, and anything your firm relies on gets checked against the source because a summary leaves things out.
Long-document summaries are one of the two uses firms find first, alongside first drafts. Legal AI assistants such as CoCounsel handle deposition prep on client matters, while general assistants such as Claude suit long documents only when nothing in them is confidential.
Review at e-discovery scale is a different job, and specialist review platforms handle it.
What the attorney still checks: anything the firm relies on, against the source document.
AI for Asking Questions Across a Matter
AI built into your document management system answers questions across a matter’s documents, email and notes, and cites the files each answer came from.
Firms we talk to describe the same problem: finding specific documents is hard, and searching their current system takes too long. Asking a question goes a step past keyword document search, because you ask about what’s inside the documents instead of matching words in them.
This is the task we built LexWorkplace AI for. In LexWorkplace, Matter AI answers questions across one matter’s documents, email and notes, with a Sources panel showing the files it drew from. Firm-wide LexWorkplace AI asks across every matter and Firm Documents at once, answers with citations, and only sees what the user can access.
You can ask when a named party first knew a product was defective, or what happened in a case a document cites, and get an answer that points to the documents behind it without opening each file.
The answer comes from what your firm has already filed to its matters, which is why this task belongs inside the DMS instead of in a separate AI tool.
What the attorney still checks: the cited documents, before anyone relies on the answer.
AI for Cite-Checking
Cite-checking is a job for legal research platforms such as Lexis+ with Protégé and CoCounsel.
Checking a citation means checking it against legal research content, such as Westlaw behind CoCounsel and Shepard’s in Lexis+ with Protégé, and those platforms are built on it. LexWorkplace doesn’t do cite-checking or legal research. Its AI works on your firm’s own documents, email and notes.
What the attorney still checks: the cited authority itself, before it goes into a filing.
AI Tools for Legal Documents Compared
The right AI tool for legal documents depends on the task you need done, so the table below compares nine legal-specific and general-purpose tools on what each is built for, its best task, pricing, free trial and where your data goes.
Legal-specific tools come first and general-purpose assistants second. Prices and trial terms change, so confirm them with each vendor before you buy.
Two columns settle most shortlists: best task and where your data goes. A tool built for a different task won’t fix your problem, and a tool whose data terms you can’t confirm shouldn’t see client documents.
LexWorkplace is the one tool in the table built around your firm’s own documents and email, and its card sets out what it does and where it stops.
Can You Use ChatGPT for Legal Documents?
You can use ChatGPT for early drafts of non-client material and plain-English explanations, but it has no grounding in your firm’s documents and can’t cite them, and the data terms on its Free and Plus plans make it the wrong place for client documents.
What ChatGPT Does Well
ChatGPT is useful for three kinds of work, as long as no client information goes into the prompt:
Each of those outputs is a starting point an attorney edits.
Where ChatGPT Falls Short on Client Documents
ChatGPT can review a legal document in the sense of reading it and commenting on it, but it has no grounding in your firm’s documents and gives no citations to them.
It answers from the text you paste in and its general training, so it can’t tell you how a clause compares with your firm’s past matters. Before anyone at your firm uses it on legal work, put three guardrails in place:
The same three guardrails apply to Claude, Gemini and every other general-purpose assistant.
What to Use Instead of ChatGPT
The legal versions of ChatGPT are legal-specific assistants such as CoCounsel, Harvey and Lexis+ with Protégé, and AI built into your document management system covers questions about your firm’s own files.
The comparison table shows which of them fits each task. LexWorkplace AI runs only when someone in your firm asks it a question, uses OpenAI through the OpenAI API rather than consumer ChatGPT, and never uses firm content to train AI models.
Is It Ethical to Use AI on Client Documents?
Yes, lawyers can use AI on client documents and use it to write legal documents, as long as their professional duties stay intact and the lawyer stays responsible for the output. ABA Formal Opinion 512 sets out which duties that involves for generative AI, and state bars add guidance of their own.
What ABA Formal Opinion 512 Requires
ABA Formal Opinion 512 says lawyers using generative AI must fully consider their ethical obligations, including competence, confidentiality, client communication and reasonable fees. The ABA issued it on July 29, 2024, and these are four of the duties it names:
The opinion frames these as duties the lawyer keeps, so choosing a tool doesn’t satisfy them on its own.
Can You Bill for AI-Assisted Work?
Formal Opinion 512’s own example says a lawyer may bill the time spent entering information and reviewing a generative AI draft, but in most circumstances not the time spent learning the tool. The attorney’s review of AI output is billable work, which is one more reason to build that review into every task above.
State Bars Issue Their Own AI Guidance
State bars issue their own guidance on AI, so your firm checks its own bar’s position alongside Formal Opinion 512. Your state’s rules of professional conduct are the ones that bind your attorneys.
The ethics rules set the duty, and what law firms can trust AI to do with client data depends on where each tool sends your documents.
How Do You Choose an AI Tool for Legal Documents?
Choose an AI tool for legal documents by starting from the task, then checking how it handles your documents, whether its answers cite their sources, whether it respects matter permissions, whether it works inside the DMS and Outlook you already use, and whether AI costs extra. Put the same six questions to every vendor in a demo.
Start from the task. Match the tool to the job before you compare features, because a contract review tool and a research platform solve different problems. Plan staff training before rollout, so everyone knows what the tool is for and what stays out of it.
Find out where your documents go. Ask where documents go when you ask a question, whether the vendor trains its models on them, and how long it keeps requests. LexWorkplace AI, for example, uses OpenAI through the OpenAI API and never uses firm content to train AI models, and OpenAI keeps request data for up to 30 days, for abuse monitoring only.
Expect answers that cite their sources. An answer that names the documents it came from can be checked against them. An answer without citations leaves your attorney repeating the search.
Check that matter permissions carry through. If a matter is restricted to part of your team, the AI should respect that restriction when it answers. LexWorkplace AI only sees what the user can access.
Use AI inside the systems you already work in. A tool that can’t reach your DMS and Outlook answers only from whatever someone pastes into it. An AI tool’s answers depend on its connection to where your documents live.
Ask whether AI is included or an add-on. Firms we talk to weigh total cost closely, and an AI add-on priced per user raises it. Document AI is included in every LexWorkplace plan, and Matter AI and LexWorkplace AI are available on every plan too.
Ask each vendor to prove its value in the demo, on documents like yours.
If a tool can’t show that during a trial on your own kind of work, keep looking.
Match the Tool to the Task, Then Check Where Client Data Goes
Start from the task, and the kind of tool follows: research platforms for research and cite-checking, Word-based tools for contract review, general assistants for non-client drafts. Then put the same questions to every vendor: where your documents go, whether they’re used for training, and whether answers cite their sources.
Whichever tool you pick, an attorney still reviews what it produces. If your task is asking questions across your own matters, documents and email, you can try LexWorkplace AI on sample data with a 7-day free trial.
WHAT’S NEXT
