Beyond Hype: Picking the Right AI for Your Practice 

You’re likely inundated with emails from AI vendors claiming they can transform your legal practice. Almost every service provider you work with now has some form of AI offering:

• Legal research vendors like Lexis, Westlaw, and SCC provide research assistants.

• DMS providers such as iManage, NetDocuments, and Filevine offer AI-powered document support.

• Practice management tools like Clio and PracticePanther feature task management AI bots.

• Dedicated AI tools like Lucio, Harvey, and Legora provide broad AI platforms for law. For niche practices, there are also tools like Supio and EvenUp.

It’s incredibly difficult for anyone to wade through all of this and select the right provider. Decision fatigue aside, trial costs can escalate quickly – especially for boutique practices, where per-seat pricing can become unmanageable.

Having worked with law firms of all sizes over the past 3 years (and having run numerous AI pilots), we understand just how challenging it can be for a firm to make the right choice.

Understanding your needs

Contrary to what some vendors claim, there is no one-size-fits-all solution in legal AI. As a founder, I’d love to say that Lucio is always the right tool for every lawyer – but the truth is, it isn’t. Choosing the right tool (or combination of tools) is critical and requires careful consideration.

The biggest reason AI pilots falter at law firms is the lack of clearly defined objectives. Before exploring AI solutions, make sure you can answer these three questions:

1. Who should benefit the most from AI?

2. What are the biggest pain points I want to solve with AI?

3. How much am I willing to invest?

Who should benefit the most from AI?

Associates, mid-levels, and partners often do very different kinds of work. An AI tool that’s invaluable for a partner might be completely irrelevant for an associate. For example, a mid-level or partner who spends most of their time reviewing and redlining documents might benefit greatly from a Word plugin. Meanwhile, an associate focused on legal research, deposition summaries, or chronologies would gain much more from a general-purpose legal assistant.

Recognizing these distinctions not only makes it easier to choose the right AI tools, but also helps reduce costs – ensuring you’re not paying for seats that won’t actually be used.

What are the biggest pain points I want to solve with AI?

The answer to this question depends heavily on the nature of your practice, the target user profile, and your specific organizational setup. Even among firms within the same niche, the ideal AI tool might vary.

Suppose you’re running a personal-injury practice:

• If you want an end-to-end solution that handles client intake, document management, demand notice drafts, and medical chronologies, you might consider Eve.
  
  
  

• If your focus is solely on generating demand letters efficiently, EvenUp could be a better fit.
  
  
  

• And if you’re looking for a broader solution that supports deposition summaries, fact discovery, drafting, and research – all within one system – you might choose Lucio.

Here are a few more examples:

• If your firm handles a high volume of transactional work where speed and precision are critical, look for providers that specialize in bulk document analysis and data extraction.
  
  
  

• If your team spends significant time on drafting or template modification, prioritize tools that integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Word.
  
  
  

• If your practice is research-heavy and requires authoritative citations to court materials, legislation, and other official sources, your best bet is Lexis or Westlaw.
  
  
  

• If your research relies on alternative data sources – such as internal materials, SEC filings, or public web data – you can use ChatGPT’s (or Lucio’s) deep research.
  
  
  

• If you’re looking to streamline client intake and set up a structured knowledge base, tools like Clio, iManage, or NetDocs are ideal.
  
  
  

• And if you have specific workflows to automate or datasets to curate, choose a vendor that can build and manage custom agents or data scraping for you.
  
  
  

Therefore, before diving in, take a step back to identify where AI can add the most value in your firm. Clearly defining your objectives and user profiles from the outset already puts you a step ahead.

How much am I willing to invest?

This may seem like the simplest question to answer, but it’s often complicated by several factors:

• Some larger vendors impose minimum seat sizes or contract durations that significantly increase costs.

• Others may bundle AI services with existing products you already pay for, leaving you with little flexibility.

Besides the financial investment, different tools also require different levels of time and effort investments. For instance,

• End-to-end solutions require lawyers to learn completely new tools and workflows. 

• Point solutions get you up and running quickly, but might add extra complexity in management later on.

When evaluating dedicated AI tools, consider whether you’re paying for a brand name or for tangible outcomes. The best way to cut through the chaff is to run a pilot and evaluate actual use cases.

If you’re just getting started, you might prefer to use the AI features built into your existing practice management or DMS platform. While their capabilities often lag behind dedicated platforms, they are much more affordable and give you a quick way to obtain a high-level understanding of AI’s potential before you invest in a specialized legal AI solution.

Security and Confidentiality

Security and confidentiality are non-negotiable, but they rarely differentiate one provider from another. In other words, they’re table stakes, but not what determines the winner.

As a rule of thumb, ensure that your vendors meet the following baseline requirements:

• ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II certifications

• Contractual guarantees that your data will not be used for model training

• Contractual assurances that third-party vendors will not train on your data

• Administrative controls such as role-based access (RBAC) and permission restrictions

For larger law firms, it may also be worth exploring on-premise or private-cloud deployments to ensure your data remains fully within your control, depending on your existing client agreements.

What Next?

Once you’ve shortlisted your vendors, we recommend running a limited pilot to see how well your firm adapts to the tool. Change management is often the biggest challenge in AI adoption for law firms. For a detailed guide on running an AI pilot, check out [this blog].

Keep in mind that AI adoption is a long-term journey requiring buy-in from all stakeholders. Overnight results are rare, so it’s important to engage a vendor who can be a long-term partner – someone who monitors adoption, recommends adjustments to licenses (even if downward adjustments!), and helps identify key bottlenecks.

With the right partner and the right tool, you can confidently set your firm up for success in AI adoption, using it to gain a real competitive edge.

If you’d like to learn more about choosing the right vendor, contact our team, and let’s discuss how you can accelerate your AI journey.