10 Best AI Chatbots for In-House Legal Teams

FArtificial Intelligence (AI) chatbots exploded into our consciousness towards the end of 2022 with ChatGPT. They blew the decision-tree chatbots of yesteryear out of the water. Why? Because the experience of talking to a generative AI chatbot like ChatGPT can be indistinguishable from the experience of talking to a human.

Lawyers are starting to recognise the applicability of this technology to the work they’re doing every day. But there aren’t many examples of this technology being deployed into production in real legal use cases. At least not yet…

So you might wonder, where is this incredible technology being deployed? Where can I deploy it? And will it really change the way I work forever?

We answer these questions by exploring the application of AI chatbots to legal use cases and looking at 10 emerging market leaders in the AI chatbot space.

What are AI chatbots?

Simply put, AI chatbots enable people to converse in natural human language with a database. This database might be general & non-specific, like ChatGPT. Or the database might be specialised & specific to the user, like Flank. So in the case of ChatGPT, you can essentially ‘talk’ to the internet (or a lot of it). And with Flank, you can talk to your documents. 

In both cases, the ability of the chatbot to hold a conversation like a human comes from the underlying AI technology, a large language model (LLM). And in the case of ChatGPT and Anthropic, the database is the LLM, meaning that when you use ChatGPT the LLM technology is providing the conversational ability and the data for its answers.

What are AI chatbots for legal?

AI chatbots built specifically for legal use cases leverage a curated dataset. In other words, these specialised tools don’t use the pre-existing knowledge of LLMs such as GPT-4 and Claude 2.0. Instead, they’re harnessing the power of these LLMs to query a dataset (for example, a set of policies or a contract) that has been curated by the user themselves.

What are the benefits of using AI chatbots?

No more waiting on legal. When an AI chatbot provides real-time support for high-volume legal and compliance questions, the whole business can breathe a sigh of relief. These legal queries are time-consuming, repetitive, and resource-binding. Automating these queries increases the operational speed of the organisation by removing friction from information access. First and foremost, this benefits the entire business as legal guidance tailor-made to the situation can be accessed by anyone in seconds. But also, the legal team has considerably less to wade through in their day-to-day work. Less noise for the legal team leaves them free to focus on more complex matters, like strategic impact and risk prevention. 

How to choose the AI chatbot that’s right for your organization?

The stakes are incredibly high within the in-house legal sector. There are specific, non-negotiable needs that every AI chatbot must meet: accuracy, steerability, safety, and security. 

Beyond these table-stakes, identifying your desired use cases is important because success will look different depending on what you want to automate.

Let’s look at the strengths and weaknesses, for in-house legal teams, of some of the leading legal AI solutions on the market right now. 

1. Flank

Backed by Google, Flank is the leading platform for providing real time support to the teams you serve every day.

With Flank, in-house teams train AI assistants on their knowledge and expertise, and then deploy these assistants directly into Slack, MS Teams, Chrome, Edge, email, and other communication channels.

The outcome? On-demand legal support for the entire organization – in dozens of languages. Use cases include repetitive queries, negotiation support, auto-completion of security forms, and review of third-party documents, among others.

As a purpose-built tool for in-house legal teams, Flank’s AI emphasises accuracy, security, auditability, and steerability. Admins have access to a governance platform to view, audit, and train the performance of the AI assistants in real-time.

The platform has been deployed by established in-house teams all over the world, including TravelPerk (Spain), DeepL (Germany), QA (UK), and Mural (USA).

Unlike most other legal AI tools, Flank doesn't just optimise for making you more productive. Instead, Flank automates requests entirely for the teams you serve, removing these tickets from your desk entirely.

2. OpenAI’s GPTs

GPTs are adaptable versions of OpenAI’s ChatGPT that can be tailored to specific use cases or tasks. 

They are not inherently legal-specific, but they can be tailored serve the demands of legal work. Enterprises can (without code) design internal-only GPTs for specific departments or proprietary datasets and publish them to their workspace. The admin console lets you choose how GPTs are shared. 

GPTs are a great way to experiment with AI chatbots. However, it's important to note they lack many features you would expect from an enterprise product. There's no overview of chats, there's no way to correct bad answers, and there have been multiple (very public) security flaws. Therefore, we wouldn't recommend using GPTs in production use cases.

GPTs still remain so high on our list, however, due to their ease of use and accessibility. If you haven't tried any AI yet, start here.

3. Juro AI

Juro specializes in contract lifecycle management, helping teams negotiate, approve, sign, store, and manage their contracts.

Juro’s AI assistant is embedded into the existing CLM and enables lawyers to draft, summarise and review contracts more efficiently. While the teams you serve might not immediately feel the benefit of Juro AI, it will certainly give your own workflows a boost.

The chatbot cannot be deployed independently from Juro’s CLM, but if you're an existing Juro customer, it's a powerful add-on. And if you're in the market for a CLM, Juro has certainly made their offering more attractive with this seamless integration of new AI technology. 

4. Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot combines the capabilities of AI with Microsoft's suite of productivity tools, offering several benefits for in-house teams.

Copilot can draft documents, organize files, review documents, and automate email responses and scheduling, all within your existing 365 suite. Microsoft claims this automation will boost productivity and enable lawyers to concentrate on more intricate legal work, but reviews are mixed from those teams that have actually adopted copilot.

For now, copilot is broad and shallow. If you're looking for a broad range of small efficiency gains, copilot is probably a great fit. However, as the tool is not tailored for legal use cases, the AI might fall short when the complexity increases.

5. Harvey AI

You've probably already heard about Harvey AI due to their partnership with OpenAI. The company have raised over 100M USD to date, and this growth looks set to continue with multinational law firm Allen & Overy and leading professional services firm PwC both strategically adopting the product

Not a great deal is known about Harvey's features, but we do know Harvey recently rolled out an AI negotiation tool, ContractMatrix, in partnership with Allen & Overy. (Expect more of these kinds of tools to be rolled out, as big law attempts to defend against this sudden disruption.)

What we do know is Harvey offers support with contract drafting, contract review (and comparison), and with some basic legal queries.

Clearly, Harvey is focussed on delivering enterprise grade AI, suitable for big law, professional services, and gigantic enterprise. For now, they seem to be leading the pack here.

6. Casetext's CoCounsel

CoCounsel, Casetext’s flagship offering, is a legal AI product for law firms, litigators, and attorneys. 

It can conduct legal research, prepare for depositions, summarize legal documents, and review them for compliance. While CoCounsel isn't tailored for inhouse legal work, it can be a powerful asset for external counsel.

Casetext was recently acquired by Thomson Reuters for $650 million, and CoCounsel will soon be integrated with multiple TR legal products. Watch this space!

7. Spellbook

Spellbook sits within MS Word as a powerful contract drafting copilot. The bot will suggest the best wording for particular provisions, and will rewrite sections in clearer language, if required. Spellbook also offers automatic redlining during review.

As one of the first generative AI tools to build an MS Word plugin, Spellbook have a wealth of experience in developing a seamless AI experience for MS Word users.

Spellbook is designed for lawyers rather than business teams, and claims to speed up contracting by 10x. Based upon the strong (and growing) list of customers, this claim is probably accurate.

8. Josef Q

If you’re already a customer of Josef, you should certainly check out their new product, Josef Q. It might not be the most advanced AI platform, but combined with the existing no code features from Josef, Josef Q can be a powerful tool.

Josef Q enables in-house teams to transform their organization’s policies and regulations into digital Q&A tools (similar to Bryter's "policy AI"). Josef Q essentially replaces FAQ docs, and that has to be a good thing!

Too often, policies and other internal documentation sits on a shelf (or in a GDrive) unread and unloved. Josef Q democratises access to these files, enabling team members to ask questions to a chatbot interface and receive an answer based on this internal documentation.

We've also received reports that Josef Q is being used by law firms and professional services firms to make their knowledge more accessible to their clients. This sounds like an exciting additional use case.

9. LegalOn Assistant

LegalOn's assistant is specifically designed for legal teams, enabling them to ask any question about their contracts.

Leveraging the power of GPT-4, the LegalOn assistant allows users to inquire about any aspect of a contract, including defined terms, addendums, and exhibits, as well as to draft clauses and create summaries.

The LegalOn assistant is primarily focused on contract review and emphasizes security. If you spend a lot of your time reading through contracts and you'd like some AI support, this might be the AI chatbot for you.

10. MyAskAI

MyAskAI started life as a general purpose chatbot, and you can certainly still use it this way. Recently, however, MyAskAI have shifted their focus towards customer support use cases.

MyAskAI enables users to create AI assistants that can answer questions about their company's documentation, reports, manuals, and other uploaded content. These assistants can be deployed direct to customers as customer support agents or they can be used for internal queries.

My AskAI comes with a suite of integrations, including email, and has cool customer support features like 'human handover' if the user wants to talk to a real person. MyAskAI is a leaner, more affordable alternative to tools like Intercom and Ultimate.ai.

AI assistants built with MyAskAI can be embedded into websites or integrated with existing apps and services, like Zendesk.

Pricing is flexible, ranging from free (for the curious) to $666/month (for unlimited access).

Any unanswered questions?

If you want to hear first-hand from legal teams using AI chatbots right now, we have a testimonial from Andy Cooke at TravelPerk and a blog page with interviews and more content:
1. Andy Cooke - TravelPerk
2. Flank blog

Alternatively, you can reach out to us at: info@legalos.io