Best AI Tools for Legal Writing and Drafting

What is AI legal writing?

AI legal writing tools are any tools that leverage AI to assist with both the creation of legal writing, and various tasks associated with it. AI legal writing can involve everything from using AI to streamline the creation of communications and templated pieces, to assisting with research or editing.

Because the legal industry is bound by more laws and regulations than many other industries, AI legal writing isn’t as “fast and loose” as AI writing in other areas. While AI legal writing involves the use of generative AI and large language models, both of which power AI writing tools in other industries, they’re usually more restrictive and prescriptive in application.

Opportunities: How AI is helping lawyers write faster and smarter

The entire point of AI is to streamline previously manual processes. With AI legal writing, there’s no doubt it’s having a significant impact on law firm productivity: 82% of firms report some degree of efficiency gains, while 65% are saving up to five hours each week.

These productivity gains aren’t manifesting out of thin air. They’re the result of AI benefitting numerous areas across AI writing and its associated workflows:

• Improved accuracy across documents
• Consistency across documentation and communications, including use of stats and language
• Enhanced accuracy in due diligence and compliance matters
• Faster workflows that translate to more prompt client communications and delivery

On top of the above benefits, some premium AI-powered legal tools will access case law databases and help expedite your legal research. This is especially useful for newer lawyers, as it can allow them to get up to speed faster (delivering even further efficiency gains for firms and individuals).

While AI isn’t here to replace lawyers and their role in the legal system, it can make routine administrative and writing tasks far less cumbersome than before.

Risks and concerns lawyers should know about

While AI in legal practice is increasingly common and has its benefits, there are still risks and concerns lawyers need to be aware of. This is especially true if you or your team are using general AI tools not built for legal work. 

Before using AI for legal writing, there are a few concerns to have on your radar:

• Data privacy: General AI tools, like ChatGPT, aren’t built to meet legal industry confidentiality standards. Inputting any client or case details into these kinds of tools can breach various laws, compromise your ethical obligations, and impact patient trust.
• Hallucinations: When AI generates false information, including incorrect case citations or legal reasoning, it’s called a hallucination. These issues can impact a case, your reputation, and even result in court sanctions and fines.
• Bias: Any AI trained on incorrect or biased information will impact what it creates. This can result in biased recommendations and written products, and make your firm look anything but impartial.
• Ethical compliance: In 2024, the American Bar Association released their first official ethics guidance for use of AI tools in law. It’s essential that any AI tool you use follows their ongoing ethics guidance, and that you stay on top of these guidelines as they evolve.
• Jurisdictional nuances: AI tools, especially general tools, can fail to recognize regional laws or court formatting requirements. It’s essential lawyers review any AI outputs to ensure these nuances are accounted for.

As is the case when you adopt any new tool or software, you need to carefully vet AI tools before implementing them. Your firm also needs to have the right guidelines and practices in place to ensure you use these tools properly and navigate the AI ecosystem successfully.

What to look for in AI legal writing software

There are countless AI tools available, and it’s important you choose the right one for your needs. The following are critical if you want to get the most out of an AI legal writing tool.

• Accuracy and legal context awareness: Legal writing isn’t the same as general writing, so many general AI tools will misinterpret context. Your AI legal writing software should be designed specifically for legal professionals.
• Citation and jurisdictional alignment: Legal writing will often use legal citations, like Bluebook or McGill. Legal writing tools should be able to handle these citations when needed. 
• Data security and client confidentiality: Security is everything in law. Your AI tool of choice should keep all client data secure and confidential, using the latest in cybersecurity.
• Customization: An AI tool shouldn’t hold you back from your unique goals. Your tool should have customizable templates, clause libraries, tone settings, and more.
• Workflow integration: An AI tool should integrate seamlessly into your workflows, whether it’s MS Word, DocuSign, or the Clio ecosystem.

If you truly want to get the most out of your AI legal writing software, take our free AI certification course today!

Best AI tools for legal writing and drafting

There are countless automation and AI tools for writing legal documents available, with more showing up every week. We’ve done the research so you don’t have to, highlighting the best in both legal-specific and general use.

Legal-specific tools

These tools are purpose-built for legal professionals, offering AI-powered support and automation tailored to the unique demands of legal drafting, document review, and casework.

Clio Duo

Clio Duo is a legal AI tool that helps you streamline numerous routine tasks, including scheduling and prioritization of your day. With Clio Duo, you can:

• Ask your AI assistant about your schedule for the day, have it create calendar events, and keep you focused on the present
• Receive summaries of your documents or cases, as well as answers to questions about particular case files on the fly
• Extract in-depth insights and details from documents with the click of a button, enabling faster, more strategic decision-making
• Generate professional, on-brand messages and replies, allowing for prompt client responses

Clio Duo isn’t a replacement for traditional human writing, but it is a powerful supplement to the expertise of you and your team.

Clio Draft

Technically, Clio Draft isn’t AI. But, Clio Draft is a powerful automation tool tailored to the content side of the legal industry, streamlining everything from information gathering to document drafting itself. With Clio Draft, you can:

• Save up to 80% of the time it takes to manually draft legal documents
• Automate information gathering, including client information intake
• Reduce errors with automatic pronoun and clause agreement
• Pull from a library of current, ready-to-fill forms for all 50 states
• Sign on the go with a federally-compliant signature tool that works on any file type
• Convert existing Microsoft Word documents into quick-fill templates, saving your team countless time in the future

Best of all, Clio Draft pairs well with Clio Duo. With both, you can take a bulk of the busy work off your plate, allowing you to focus on building client relationships and finding the best path forward for every case.

BriefCatch

BriefCatch is another AI tool for lawyers, which focuses on the editorial side of legal writing. BriefCatch integrates with Word and Outlook, using machine learning to analyze writing for:

• Common errors
• Proper citations
• Areas of improvement
• Readability

If you primarily use Microsoft Word and don’t need a more fleshed out content creation tool, BriefCatch is a trusted and streamlined tool for editorial workflows.

CoCounsel

CoCounsel by Thomson Reuters is an AI-powered set of legal tools that handles everything from research, document review, analysis, and drafting. CoCounsel boasts:

• High data privacy standards
• Secure processing for all client data
• End-to-end content support

CoCounsel is powerful, but it comes at a high cost. If you’re a lean firm or an individual lawyer, the pricing and one-to-three year contract commitments could be a dealbreaker.

General AI tools

While not designed exclusively for legal use, these general-purpose AI tools can still assist with brainstorming, formatting, and research—just be sure to use them with caution and legal oversight.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT has become a household name, and for good reason. With ChatGPT, you can quickly:

• Pull research summaries from across the web
• Generate templates and outlines based on inputs
• Receive answers to questions on the fly
• Brainstorm with an AI-powered partner

While ChatGPT is a highly capable tool, it’s not built for legal use. As a result, you’ll need to consider your ethical obligations as well as the limitations of general AI tools before leveraging ChatGPT for legal writing tasks. 

Want a safer way to use AI in your law firm? Try the AI for Lawyers GPT—a free, public-facing AI guide.

GPTs are custom versions of ChatGPT that focus on specific topics—in this case, helping legal professionals understand responsible AI adoption.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is another general AI tool, similar to ChatGPT, that’s capable of helping with the same sets of tasks. Copilot is built into the Microsoft suite and requires a subscription.

Like ChatGPT, take caution when using Copilot for any legal matters. This tool wasn’t designed for legal use cases, and thus isn’t necessarily up to date with jurisdictional matters or legal citation formats.

Real use cases: How lawyers are using AI writing tools today

You know how to go about finding the right AI legal writing tool. Now, how are these tools actually being used in the real world? 

• Contract drafting automation: AI can easily automate the drafting of general contracts, leaving you with only the task of reviewing the contract before delivery.
• Internal memo writing: AI can pull from your style guide or existing messaging and quickly create internal memos, keeping your staff in the loop while staying on brand.
• Deposition and transcript summarization: AI can summarize deposition and call transcripts, providing highlights of the major points.
• Email generation and client communication drafting: Similar to memos, AI can easily create client communications, leaving you with review and nothing more.
• Legal research summaries: The right AI can comb through reputable legal research databases, offering summaries based on the topic you’re searching for.

Keep in mind, all of the above still requires you, the human, to critically review the AI-generated work product. But, it still saves valuable time, freeing you up for other matters.

How Clio Duo supports responsible AI legal writing

Clio Duo is our powerful AI partner which is built directly into Clio Manage. Clio Duo supports legal writing by AI to:

• Pull instant summaries of cases and clients
• Streamline scheduling and calendar management
• Pull cited details from any documents in your system
• Generate professional replies using your firm’s tone

Clio Duo is built specifically for legal professionals and adheres to strict data security standards, enabling you to leverage AI while keeping client and firm data secure.

Book a Clio Duo demo

When to use Clio Draft for document automation

Clio Draft is a powerful content automation tool that can deliver even further benefits with the right background knowledge. While Clio Draft automates much of the content creation process, it’s worth noting it’s not AI, but instead runs on cloud computing and conditional logic. Clio Draft is capable of one-off content, but truly shines with any content that’s:

• Repeatable, like a form template
• Structured in nature, such as legal documents
• Reliant on compliance and precision
• Works where you work, right in Microsoft Word

By allowing Clio Draft to streamline the above tasks, you’ll have more time for more complex work products—or building relationships with clients and pushing your firm forward.

Best practices for using AI tools in your legal writing

Powerful AI tools alone aren’t enough to see significant gains. With the following as foundational best practices, you can use AI safely, ethically, and to the fullest:

• Always review any AI output, no matter the task
• Always be aware of what’s shared with the AI
• Always stay on top of compliance and best-use standards
• Always verify sources and citations from AI

The above may sound like a substantial amount of manual input, but rest assured—AI review gets faster over time and you still wind up saving time in the end.

Working smarter, not harder

With the right automation or AI legal writing software at your side, you can be more productive than ever, bolster client satisfaction, ramp up new hires faster, and ultimately do more with less.

When looking for the right AI legal writing tools, keep in mind they’re not all the same. General AI tools, while powerful in their own right, aren’t built for legal. Because of this, they carry certain risks that could far outweigh any productivity gains. Look for tools built for the legal industry, with security and ethics at the forefront.

Lastly, focus on finding a tool that helps where you need it most, whether that’s drafting or research or a little bit of everything.

Clio Duo checks all the right boxes. Clio Duo was built from the ground up for the legal industry, offering safe, compliant AI. Clio Duo can help you get the answers you need, summarize case materials, and work more efficiently across the board. See for yourself with a free demo.