I was an early adopter of CoCounsel. And it blew my mind. The idea that AI could read cases, summarize depositions, and draft research memos felt revolutionary. I evangelized it to anyone who would listen. Today, that same product feels slow and antiquated compared to what I can do with Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini for a fraction of the price. The legal AI industry has a serious problem: they're charging Ferrari prices for Honda Civic performance.
I’m not saying that all legal niche products are bad. It can be hard to train, systematize, and scale one off bots for an organization. There is an efficiency to having AI baked into case management software. And products that are developed and trained on lots of data in a niche are certainly options to consider. However, law firms are making a mistake if they ignore products simply because they are widely available at a low cost.
The Emperor Has No Clothes
Legal AI companies want you to believe they've built something special. Something worth $500, $1,000, or even $2,000 per user per month. They pitch security, compliance, and legal-specific training as justifications for these eye-watering prices. But here's the uncomfortable truth most vendors won't tell you: under the hood, they're using the exact same language models you can access directly. CoCounsel runs on GPT-4. Harvey uses Claude. Lexis+ AI Copilot is powered by Anthropic's models. They're essentially charging you a 10x to 50x markup to put a legal wrapper around technology you can use yourself.
The security argument is particularly rich. These vendors act like they've solved some impossible puzzle, when in reality, Google Workspace with Gemini costs $14 per month and meets the same security standards that most law firms require. Google has SOC 2 Type II certification. They offer data residency options. They have enterprise-grade admin controls. Unless you're handling classified government work, the security difference between a $14 Google Workspace account and a $1,000 legal AI subscription is largely theatrical.
Meanwhile, the performance gap keeps widening. When I use Claude directly, I get responses in seconds. When I use CoCounsel, I wait. And wait. The interface feels clunky, like software designed by committee in 2019. The prompting is rigid. The outputs are formulaic. It's like driving a luxury car from five years ago while everyone else is zooming past in Teslas.
The Real Cost of Falling Behind
Law firms are hemorrhaging money on these products while missing the real revolution happening in plain sight.. The cost of ChatGPT is $240 per year. Compare that to spending $24,000 annually on a legal AI platform that saves the same two hours. The math isn't just bad; it's embarrassing.
The opportunity cost is even worse. While firms debate whether to spend six figures on specialized legal AI, their competitors are already using consumer AI tools to draft contracts, analyze documents, and prepare for depositions. They're experimenting, learning, and building AI competency across their entire workforce. Not just the chosen few who get expensive licenses, but everyone from paralegals to partners.
This democratization of AI is the real game changer. When every person in your firm has access to AI, innovation happens organically. The paralegal who figures out how to use Claude to organize discovery documents. The junior associate who creates a Gemini prompt that perfectly formats interrogatories. The partner who uses ChatGPT to brainstorm litigation strategies. These discoveries compound. Knowledge spreads. The entire firm levels up.
Here's What Actually Works
Forget the expensive legal AI platforms. Here's your playbook for 2025:
Start with Google Workspace with Gemini for $14 per user per month. You get email, documents, storage, and AI built into everything. The AI can summarize your emails, draft documents, and analyze spreadsheets. It's secure enough for 99% of law firms.
Add Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus for your power users at $20 per month. These are your Swiss Army knives. They can analyze contracts, draft briefs, summarize depositions, and research legal questions. Yes, you need to be smart about what client data you share, but that's true for any tool.
Train your people. This is where firms fail. They buy expensive tools and expect magic. Spend a fraction of what you'd pay for legal AI on training. Teach prompt engineering. Share best practices. Create internal libraries of proven prompts. Make AI literacy as important as legal research skills.
Build simple workflows. You don't need complex integrations. A paralegal copying text from a PDF into Claude and getting a summary is a workflow. Or even better yet, Gemini will do summaries of documents automatically in Google Drive. A partner dictating notes into ChatGPT's voice mode and getting a client memo is a workflow. Start simple. Iterate.
Google’s Notebook LM is the most powerful and useful AI product that I have come across for lawyers. And it’s included in a $14 a month workspace license.
Monitor and measure. Track how people use AI. What works? What doesn't? Which prompts generate the best results? This isn't about surveillance; it's about learning. The firms that figure this out fastest will dominate the next decade.
The Future Is Already Here
The legal AI vendors are hoping you don't notice that their emperor has no clothes. They're banking on law firms' risk aversion and technology confusion to maintain their pricing power. But the market is waking up. Firms are realizing that a $20 ChatGPT subscription can do 80% of what a $1,000 legal AI platform does, often better and definitely faster.
This isn't about being cheap. It's about being smart. The best technology isn't always the most expensive. The best solution isn't always the one with "legal" in the name. Sometimes the best tool is the one your team will actually use, that responds instantly, that costs less than lunch, and that gets better every month without requiring committee approval for an upgrade.
The legal profession needs to stop treating AI like it's some exotic technology that requires special handling. It's a tool. A powerful one, but still just a tool. And right now, the best tools aren't coming from legal tech vendors. They're coming from companies that serve billions of users and iterate at light speed.
Three years ago, CoCounsel was magic. Today, it's a relic. The question isn't whether to adopt AI in your practice. It's whether you'll overpay for yesterday's technology or embrace the tools that are actually pushing the boundaries. The choice should be obvious. The fact that it isn't tells you everything you need to know about why legal tech is broken.
