AI providers that once sold raw models to everyone are now entering legal work directly, building tools aimed at law firms and courting firms as partners. Across two months Anthropic released a legal version of Claude and OpenAI stood up a dedicated legal team, while Microsoft keeps pushing its assistant into the software firms already run. For a smaller firm this shifts the question from which tool to buy towards whose side to be on, and that is a harder question to answer well.
What has changed
Until recently the legal AI market sat with specialist vendors. A firm bought Harvey, CoCounsel from Thomson Reuters or Lexis and Nexis with its research assistant, all of them tools built on top of models from the large providers. Now those providers are stepping down into the same market with their own legal products, and the specialists are answering back. Reporting through the summer describes a run of arrangements in which firms take early or exclusive access to a provider's technology in return for a closer relationship. The build or buy choice that firms have weighed for years has grown a third option, which is to partner.
Why a partnership looks attractive
The appeal is real. Building your own system on a foundation model is slow, costly and full of regulatory traps, and few firms below the largest have the appetite for it. A partnership gives you access to capable technology without that burden, often with support, training and a roadmap you can plan around. For a firm that wants to move and has no wish to become a software business, tying in to one provider reads like the sensible path. The pull is strongest for a firm under pressure to show clients that it keeps pace with the market. We set out the wider selection question in how to choose legal AI tools, and the same discipline applies when the seller is the model maker rather than a specialist.
What you give up
The cost sits on the other side of the ledger. A close tie to one provider narrows your options later. Prices change, models are altered or withdrawn, and terms tend to move in the provider's favour once your files and your working habits live inside their system. We saw during the year how fast a leading model can be pulled from service, and a firm with everything in one place feels that harder than a firm that spread its work. Confidentiality runs through the choice as well, because the provider you partner with is the party your client data passes to. An exclusive arrangement can also shut you out of a rival tool that turns out to suit a particular kind of matter better, which is the case for keeping a more than one model habit alive. None of this argues against partnering, only against doing it blind.
What a smaller firm should do
Treat the offer as you would any supplier relationship, on its merits and with your eyes open. Read the contract terms on data, pricing and exit before the demonstration wins you over. Keep at least one alternative in mind so you never negotiate from a position of having nowhere else to go. Match the tool to the work your firm does day to day rather than to the size of the name behind it, and keep the human checks your duties require in place whichever provider sits underneath. The companies moving into legal are not doing your firm a favour, they are competing for a market, and a firm that stays deliberate holds the stronger hand.
OpenAI's step into the sector, following Anthropic and Microsoft, is set out in the trade coverage of its new legal vertical.
If a provider has put an offer in front of you and you want an independent read before you sign, that is the work we do, weighing tools against your matters with no stake in which one you pick: see how we help.