New product partnerships between Anthropic and legaltech suppliers will provide lawyers with more artificial intelligence tools as boundaries between enterprise software and AI blur.
In the past week, Anthropic, one of the world’s biggest AI suppliers, has announced deals to integrate its AI chatbot, Claude, into the products of two legaltech suppliers – Intapp and LexisNexis.
Anthropic’s latest legal ‘plug-in’ tools, which can be customised, will be able to automate legal tasks including contract reviews, regulatory compliance and format multiple documents, the companies said.
According to LexisNexis, a third-year associate at a top-100 US law firm, who recently tested the Anthropic legal plug-in within LexisNexis’s Protégé legal software, said it completed legal tasks much faster.
“It’s like going from driving a horse and buggy to driving a Maserati,” the associate said.
In the longer term, whether AI is a friend or foe for legaltech suppliers is an open question.
Last month, legaltech company share prices fell sharply over fears that artificial intelligence may upend rather than fuel their businesses. However, some analysts insisted that the share fall was a market overreaction.
The sell-off in professional services company share prices, including legaltech suppliers, was in response to a product update at the end of January by US start-up Anthropic.
Anthropic said that its new Claude legal plug-in could automate legal work such as contract reviews, non-disclosure agreements and compliance. And that was enough to cause a sell-off in legaltech shares, including RELX, owner of LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer in early February.
For now, legaltech suppliers seem keen to co-operate with Claude and other large AI suppliers.
Rudy DeFelice, global head of Harbor Labs, which advises the legal sector on AI and other technologies, said: “Anthropic is establishing itself as the foundational model of choice for the enterprise, and it seems like the Intapp partnership is the continuation of that strategy.
“It already powers parts of Harvey, Legora, LegalZoom and others. The [latest Claude] legal plug-in is a different flavour of this strategy, bringing Claude to legal users rather than bringing legal to Claude users… Claude will continue to be a growing presence in the legaltech ecosystem.”
In a research note, Chris Audet and Weston Wicks, legaltech experts at research company Gartner, said that despite Claude’s widening legal functionality, company legal departments would be wise to continue using specialist legal software from long-established suppliers because it is more reliable, open and secure.
“General counsel should continue to invest in domain-specific legal AI applications because model providers complement, but do not displace, legal-specific applications,” Gartner said.
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