AI Legal Tools Compared: Harvey, Legora, Spellbook, CoCounsel

Spellbook is the pick for contract drafting and review inside Word. CoCounsel Legal is the pick if your research lives in Westlaw. Harvey and Legora are broad platforms aimed at law firms and larger legal teams. None of them replaces a lawyer, and none should be used to skip review. They shorten the first draft and the first read.

This is for business owners and operators who buy or work alongside legal teams. It is not legal advice.

Key takeaways

• The category has split into four shapes: broad platforms (Harvey, Legora), a contract specialist (Spellbook), and a research-led assistant (CoCounsel Legal).
• All four publish security claims. Treat them as a starting point for due diligence, not a finish line.
• Vendor stats like "hours saved" are vendor claims. Test on your own documents.
• Small teams rarely need a platform built for large firms.

What changed since the first AI lawyer headlines?

Early coverage asked whether AI could "argue a case". The market went another way. The money is in daily work: reviewing contracts, searching law, summarizing bundles of documents, tracking regulatory change.

The tools now describe themselves as agents or workspaces, not chatbots. They plan a task, show the steps, and work across many documents. The lawyer still checks the result.

What does Harvey do?

Harvey is a legal AI platform for law firms and corporate legal teams. Its site lists Agents, Vault (document storage and bulk analysis), Knowledge (legal, regulatory and tax research), Spaces (shared workspaces with ethical walls), Contract Intelligence, Horizon Scanning and a mobile app.

Harvey says it serves 3,000+ legal organizations in 70+ countries, including 80+ AmLaw 100 firms. It lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, 27701 and 42001, GDPR and CCPA compliance, plus SAML SSO and audit logs. Its site says it raised $550 million at a $15.5 billion valuation.

Best for: large firms and enterprise legal departments that want one governed platform.

Watch out for: it is an enterprise product. Expect a sales process, not a credit card.

What does Legora do?

Legora calls itself collaborative AI for lawyers. Its site lists an Agent for end-to-end work, Monitors for regulatory change, Lists, a Word add-in, an Outlook add-in, Tabular Review, Legal Research and a mobile app. It names M&A, litigation, banking, tax and insurance as practice areas, for both law firms and in-house teams.

On security it lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, GDPR and HIPAA, and says it does zero AI training on your data. Its customer ROI figures come from its own report on in-house teams, so read them as marketing.

Best for: firms and in-house teams that want a Harvey-style platform and are comparing options.

Watch out for: the overlap with Harvey is large. Run both on the same test documents.

What does Spellbook do?

Spellbook is narrower, which is its strength. It is an AI contract review and drafting tool for transactional lawyers. Its features are Review (redlines and risk flags), Draft, Compare, Ask, Playbooks and a Repository for signed contracts.

It works in Microsoft Word and Google Docs, and connects to tools such as Slack, SharePoint, Google Drive and iManage. Spellbook says 5,000+ legal teams and law firms use it, and lists SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR, with zero data retention from its LLM providers.

Best for: small firms and in-house counsel whose week is mostly contracts.

Watch out for: playbooks are only as good as the rules you encode. Spend time on them.

What does CoCounsel Legal do?

CoCounsel Legal is Thomson Reuters' assistant. It grounds answers in Westlaw primary law and Practical Law guidance, and builds a visible step-by-step plan you can inspect.

Features include Workspaces for matter context, Brief Builder, Tabular Analysis for large document sets, and Deep Research. It integrates with Word, Teams, Outlook, iManage, NetDocuments and SharePoint, and lists SOC 2 and ISO 42001. Thomson Reuters cites a Forrester study in which 76% of users reported better research and drafting quality.

Best for: litigators and research-heavy teams already paying for Westlaw.

Watch out for: value depends on your Westlaw subscription and how you license the add-on.

How do they compare?

Prices are not published on the pages I checked, so I am not quoting any. Ask each vendor for a written quote.

Can general assistants like Claude or ChatGPT do this work?

For low-risk tasks, yes. Claude and ChatGPT can explain a clause, draft a plain-language summary or prepare questions for your lawyer. They do not give you a legal research database, matter workspaces or firm-grade controls.

The main risk is invented citations. A general model can produce a case name that sounds right and does not exist. If a tool cites law, open the source and read it before anything goes to a client or a court. Legal-specific tools reduce that risk by grounding answers in real databases. They do not remove it.

How to choose

1. Name the main job: contracts, research, or everything.
2. Check where your team works. If it is Word all day, test the Word add-in first.
3. Ask for security documents: SOC 2 report, data retention terms, subprocessors.
4. Run a bake-off on five past documents with known answers. Score missed issues and made-up citations.
5. Keep a human sign-off. Write it into your process.

Bottom line

Small team with contract volume: start with Spellbook. Research-heavy and already on Westlaw: look at CoCounsel Legal. Large firm or big legal department: shortlist Harvey and Legora and test both. In every case, the tool speeds up the work and the lawyer owns the result.