Legal technology has undergone a massive transformation, with artificial intelligence (AI) playing a pivotal role in reshaping how lawyers, legal professionals, and corporate counsel manage their work.
Gone are the days when legal technology was limited to basic document storage and e‑discovery tools. Today, AI tools are streamlining routine and complex legal work, including contract management, research, document analysis, and compliance processes. These AI tools help law firms and in-house teams optimise workflows, reduce manual processes, and serve more clients efficiently.
This article explores how legal AI tools are redefining industry practice, its key applications, ethical implications, and what the future holds for AI tools.
It’s software, AI tools, and digital platforms that help lawyers and legal professionals perform tasks with greater speed, accuracy, and efficiency.
For decades, these tools included:
However, in the last five years, generative AI, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning have completely transformed how the industry operates.
Investment in AI technology has skyrocketed. In 2018, LawGeex estimated that legal tech startups received $233 million in funding. By 2019, that number had surged to $1 billion, and it has only grown since.
This explosion in funding has led to the development of AI-powered tools that go far beyond simple document management. Today, legal AI can:
As a result, artificial intelligence has become essential for legal professionals looking to optimise services and increase efficiency.
AI is transforming work by automating tasks, improving efficiency, and enhancing decision-making. Below are key AI technologies shaping the legal profession.
AI refers to systems that perform tasks requiring human intelligence, such as analysing documents, automating workflows, and identifying risks. It helps legal professionals streamline operations and improve accuracy.
Generative AI creates new content based on existing data. In legal work, it assists with contract drafting, summarising case law, and generating legal memos, reducing the time spent on routine tasks.
LLMs process and generate text using vast amounts of legal data. They enhance contract review, legal research, and compliance monitoring by quickly identifying relevant information across jurisdictions.
NLP enables AI to interpret and analyse legal language. It extracts key clauses from contracts, categorises documents, and identifies regulatory changes, improving document review and compliance tracking.
ML models learn from legal data to recognise patterns and make predictions. They optimise contract risk assessment, automate compliance monitoring, and improve litigation strategy.
RL allows AI systems to improve performance over time. In legal AI, it enhances research accuracy, refines contract analysis, and optimises AI-powered assistants based on user feedback.
AI is applied in contract management, legal research, litigation, compliance, and legal operations. It reduces manual effort, increases efficiency, and improves accuracy across legal functions.
AI-powered tools help legal professionals automate processes, enhance research, and manage compliance more effectively. As AI advances, its role in legal work will continue to grow.
Legal AI is making a major impact on nearly every area of the legal profession. Here’s how AI is changing the game.
Conducting legal research is a time-consuming process that requires law firms’ attorneys, legal professionals, and law students to manually review cases, statutes, and documents.
Now, with AI tools, teams can:
Which in turn brings benefits such as:
Contract review is one of the most tedious and error-prone legal tasks. Lawyers must manually review contracts, identify missing content, and flag risks.
With AI tools, law firms and legal professionals work more efficiently by:
Benefits of AI tools for contract management include:
Legal transformation with AI tools is reducing organisations’ reliance on law firms for routine contract analysis, allowing law firms and corporate counsel teams to handle tasks internally.
Plexus has introduced Contract Review, designed to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of legal contract assessments. This AI tool enables law firms and organisations to expedite legal reviews, highlight critical details, and mitigate risks by aligning contracts with pre-approved precedent documents.
Managing legal matters manually is inefficient and error-prone. Traditional workflows involve:
Generative AI tools for matter management platforms now automate these processes by:
This transformation allows lawyers to focus on strategic and complex tasks while generative AI handles the administrative workload.
Legal AI tools are also revolutionising regulatory compliance by analysing large data sets for patterns and insights.
Risk management using AI tools helps law firms and teams respond to potential challenges more effectively.
While AI offers immense benefits, it also raises serious ethical implications for law firms and other professionals using such tools.
Data privacy and security risks are always present. AI systems rely on sensitive data, which can raise security concerns if not managed properly.
AI bias and false information can persist because AI models learn from historical data, which may contain pre-existing biases. If not carefully monitored, AI can reinforce problematic precedents.
As such, human oversight is critical. AI tools should assist, not replace, legal professionals. Only humans can make ethical judgments in complex matters. Generative AI and large language models do
Despite these challenges, AI remains an indispensable tool for the modern legal profession — provided that lawyers maintain proper oversight.
AI is only getting smarter and more powerful. In the next five years, law firms and clients can expect:
By 2030 – if not earlier – AI will likely form the backbone of legal operations, enabling lawyers to serve more clients while improving efficiency and accuracy.
Legal AI is no longer a futuristic concept – it’s already here.
For law firms, in-house teams, and corporate attorneys, investing in AI tools is essential for:
As the industry faces increasing demands for faster, more accurate, and cost-effective legal services, Plexus AI is transforming how law firms, lawyers, legal professionals, and corporate teams handle their work using the Plexus platform.
Plexus AI features are designed to automate, streamline, and enhance critical legal processes, allowing teams to focus on high-value strategic work instead of being bogged down by manual and routine work. By leveraging large language models (LLMs), natural language processing (NLP), and AI-driven contract analysis, Plexus provides an end-to-end legal technology solution that integrates seamlessly with existing workflows.
Contract management is often a time-consuming and resource-intensive process, with law firms’ teams spending hours reviewing documentation, flagging missing clauses, and identifying risks. Plexus AI automates contract review by:
With Plexus AI, legal professionals can reduce contract review times from days to minutes, ensuring contracts are both legally sound and aligned with business priorities.
Reading and summarising documents is similarly a time and resource drain on teams, which increasingly becomes repetitive churn work as volumes swell. Plexus AI reduces the rigmarole of document summaries and helps:
Managing legal matters across an organisation requires strong oversight, collaboration, and tracking. Plexus AI streamlines matter management by augmenting legal intake and triage to ensure cases are assigned to the right lawyer. By digitising and optimising the matter management process, Plexus AI helps general counsel and in-house teams improve productivity and meet business expectations more effectively.
Legal drafting is another area where AI-powered tools provide significant benefits. Plexus AI’s contract automation capabilities allow teams to:
This AI-driven approach ensures that teams can draft, approve, and execute contracts faster, reducing bottlenecks and allowing lawyers to focus on complex legal strategy rather than administrative work.
Plexus AI is built specifically for legal professionals, ensuring that its features align with the unique needs of the legal industry. Unlike generic AI tools, Plexus AI:
By incorporating cutting-edge AI tools into legal operations, Plexus AI enables lawyers, in-house teams, and law firms to scale their impact, eliminate inefficiencies, and focus on high-value work.
Plexus AI features enhance tools that quickly and intelligently inform legal work and minimise risk, accelerating task execution. Empower your legal team to focus on strategic priorities while Plexus AI handles the heavy lifting.
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