Almost every small firm now uses AI somewhere. Very few have made it part of how the firm works.
Clio's 2025 Legal Trends report for solo and small firms found that 72 percent of solo lawyers and 67 percent of small-firm lawyers use AI in some capacity. Only 8 percent of solos and 4 percent of small firms have adopted it widely. Among solos, the most common choice is a general product like ChatGPT, at 57 percent.
So access is not the problem. Fit is. Most lists of AI tools for lawyers rank products as if they compete with each other. Mostly they don't. They do different jobs.
A disclosure before the list. I run one of the companies on it. I have described every other product in the terms its maker uses, and linked each one so you can check.
Start with the job, not the tool
A solo family lawyer has no use for an ediscovery platform built for multi-party litigation. A litigation group has little use for a product built around demand letters.
Name the job first. Then the list gets short quickly.
Which AI tools do lawyers use, by job?
Legal research and drafting on authority
CoCounsel Legal, from Thomson Reuters. It presents itself as AI that reasons from Westlaw content, covering research, analysis and drafting.
Lexis+ with Protégé, from LexisNexis. It was called Lexis+ AI until February 2026. It pairs an AI assistant with LexisNexis content and Shepard's citation checking.
Transactional and large-firm work
Harvey. It describes its product as legal AI for leading law firms and corporate legal teams, covering contract analysis, due diligence, compliance and litigation.
Evidence review and ediscovery
Everlaw. Built for litigation, ediscovery and investigations. Its AI features include review and writing assistants and predictive coding.
Personal injury case work
EvenUp. It calls itself an AI platform for personal injury firms, with products that run from intake through demands and negotiation.
Supio. It describes itself as an agentic AI platform for plaintiff law and mass torts.
Answering the phone
Smith.ai. AI and live agents answer calls and run intake for law firms around the clock. As of November 2026, its site lists AI-first plans starting at $1.60 per call.
Running the practice
Clio. Practice management software. Clio says its AI connects a firm's work and surfaces what might otherwise be missed, and that it does not train external models.
Knowing the client's file
Del, from my company, Deliberately.ai. Del is an AI teammate for law firms, built first for family law. Del reads the whole matter file and keeps it current, finds what is missing against a disclosure or discovery request, and drafts from the firm's own templates. Pricing starts at $45 per matter per month with unlimited users.
General chatbots
ChatGPT and similar products are useful for general knowledge work. Explaining a concept. Outlining an argument on a hypothetical. Editing your own non-confidential writing. I compared them with matter-specific products in AI legal assistant vs. ChatGPT.
One honest limit. I have not tested the other vendors' products on client work. This list tells you what each one is for. It does not tell you which one is best.
Five questions to ask any vendor
Does it know our matters, or do we have to brief it every time?
Does every answer show the document or authority it came from?
Is client data ever used to train models, and is the platform independently audited?
Does it work with the document storage and email we already use?
What does it cost for a firm our size, all in?
Then ask for a trial on a real file. A messy one.
What the ethics rules expect before you buy
ABA Formal Opinion 512, issued in July 2024, says a lawyer needs a reasonable understanding of an AI tool's benefits and risks before using it for a client. It also says lawyers should vet an outside AI vendor much as they would any other outsourced provider, looking at security, confidentiality and data retention.
That is the minimum. It also happens to be a decent buying checklist.
This is practical commentary, not legal advice. Check your own state's rules before you rely on it.
What I would not do
Buy by category. "We need an AI tool" is not a requirement.
Pilot five products at once. Nobody will know which one helped.
Skip the policy. Decide what may go into each product before the first login.
The bottom line
A firm doesn't need fifteen AI tools. It needs the one or two that match where its time goes. Find that bottleneck first, and most of this list stops being relevant to you. That is the point of it.
If your bottleneck is the client file, you can try Del free.
Related reading: Best family law software in 2026 · ChatGPT prompts for lawyers and law firms