Choosing tools.
Choosing tools for legal work means selecting, testing and contracting for AI without being led by the sales pitch. These pieces cover requirements, trials, pricing models and the contract terms that decide who carries the risk when a tool gets it wrong.
Back to all insights, or start with the complete guide to AI for law firms.
Articles
The Cyber Resilience Act and your suppliers
Software makers selling into Europe must report exploited faults within 24 hours. Your suppliers keep a clock in September they were not keeping in August.
Rogue AI agents and what to ask your supplier
The Hawley letter to OpenAI asks who is liable when AI goes rogue. Four questions to put to any supplier selling your firm an agentic tool.
GPT-6 Astra and what your firm should allow
OpenAI's new flagship is built to operate your software rather than answer questions. The decision it puts to a small firm is about access, not drafting.
Legal AI stops being a place you go and becomes a layer over the systems you already run.
When legal AI arrives in your cloud platform
Google put contract review and legal research inside the cloud tenancy you already pay for. Who in your firm decides what gets switched on.
When your legal AI vendor builds its own model
Thomson Reuters has trained a model of its own on Westlaw and Practical Law content. What to settle with a supplier that owns the model behind your tool.
What AI consumption pricing means for your firm
The subscription that let a fee earner use a tool freely is giving way to billing by use. What to ask your supplier before the renewal quote arrives.
The outage sat in neither your firm nor your supplier, and it still stopped your work.
When a supplier outage stops your client checks
LexisNexis pulled three Nexis products after trouble at a company most of its customers had never heard of. The gap it left is the one your firm should plan for.
Claude for Legal gets its first head, what it means
Anthropic has put a named head in charge of Claude for Legal. Your firm's due diligence questions finally have an address, so send them.
Legal AI consolidation and your law firm
Five acquisitions by one supplier in a single year. When a tool your firm relies on changes hands, the contract you signed decides how much that matters.
Legal AI spending, where the money went
LexisNexis's owner has published its half-year figures, and the market's AI money is flowing into subscriptions firms already hold. Check what your renewal quietly added.
Specialist legal AI or a general assistant
Microsoft's own legal team took on a specialist legal AI platform while keeping the general assistant it already ran. The reasoning applies to far smaller firms.
AI providers enter legal, what your firm weighs
The AI model makers now sell into legal work directly and firms are signing partnerships. What a smaller firm should weigh before it ties itself to one platform.
GPT-5.6 goes public, what your firm does now
OpenAI has released GPT-5.6 to everyone after weeks of government limits. The capability jump is real. Your firm's duty to check and protect is not.
When your AI disappears for nineteen days
A capable AI tool vanished for about nineteen days under export controls. For a firm that had built it into daily work, that is a continuity problem.
Fable 5 and Mythos 5, pulled and restored
Anthropic's most capable models were suspended for about nineteen days under US export controls, then restored. Here is what happened and why it matters.
Claude Sonnet 5, and what a cheaper, sharper model means for your firm
Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 5, close to its top model in capability at a lower price. Here is what that shift means for a law firm.
Choosing legal AI tools for the small firm
A buyer's guide for telling substance from hype before you sign anything.
The real cost and return of legal AI
Licences, training and the hours saved on research and drafting, worked through for a firm of two to twenty fee earners.
The contracts to read before you buy AI
The demonstration sells the tool. The contract decides whether it is safe for a law firm to use.
The list
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