Anthropic has made a significant move into the legal sector, with the launch of 12 practice area plugins via its Claude AI-agent technology.
At the same time, it has forged agreements to connect Claude with the software of more than 20 leading legaltech suppliers.
Anthropic’s direct provision of legal tools – alongside its partnerships with long-established legaltech companies – has been described as highly significant by legaltech commentators.
Artificial Lawyer said “such a vitally important foundational model maker moving very openly into the heart of the legal tech market – and moving major incumbents to join in – is an incredible and unprecedented accomplishment”.
The latest product launches follow Anthropic’s release of legal plugins for Claude Cowork in February, a move that led to a slump in the shares of legal information and technology companies, including Thomson Reuters and RELX, the owner of LexisNexis.
The latest plugins have been designed to cover various legal practice areas. They include Commercial Legal, which “reviews vendor agreements and NDAs against your playbooks and routes escalations with a plain-language summary for business stakeholders”, according to Claude.
Other plugins include Corporate Legal, Employment Legal, Privacy Legal, Product Legal, Regulatory Legal, AI Governance Legal, IP Legal and Litigation Legal.
Anthropic has also launched more than 20 model context protocol (MCP) connectors that link Claude and an array of legal tech providers. They include legal AI assistants Harvey and Solve Intelligence, contract lifecycle and drafting providers Definely, DocuSign and Ironclad, alongside legal research specialists including Thomson Reuters, Midpage, Trellis, Legal Data Hunter and Descrybe as well as the Free Law Project.
Nnamdi Emelifeonwu, CEO of London-based Definely, said: “Working with Anthropic as part of ‘Claude for the legal industry’ is a big step towards the future of contract review, and we’re excited to be at the forefront – meeting lawyers where they are increasingly working.”
The Claude for the legal industry blog unveiling the new products said it was building on the fact that “legal professionals have become the most engaged Claude Cowork users of any knowledge-work function”.
It added: “Legal work runs on a specific technology stack: contract lifecycle systems, research platforms, document management, e-discovery, data rooms, firm-specific precedents and much more. Claude now connects to all of it through several key building blocks.
“First, MCP connectors bring your legal work (the documents, communications and records tied to specific matters) into Claude. Secondly, practice-area plugins package the tasks that lawyers run most often. And finally, because both are built on open protocols, firms and in-house teams can customise Claude to match the way they actually practice.”
Mark Pike, Anthropic’s associate general counsel, told Law.com: “I don’t think it’s necessarily that Anthropic decided to go into the legal space so much as that this new technology has made it possible for knowledge workers to be able to use agentic tools to get work done, and we are meeting our customers, platform partners and users where they are.”
Last month, Anthropic joined forces with global law firm Freshfields to expedite co-AI innovation in a multi-year agreement, with the main focus areas comprising legal and market research, contract review, along with document drafting and due diligence.
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