The AI stack a modern in-house legal ops team actually deploys — research, drafting, contract lifecycle, and the horizontal AI layer underneath. Five picks, ranked by leverage.
1. Harvey — the legal AI workhorse
Harvey is the legal-domain AI assistant trusted by Am Law firms and increasingly by sophisticated in-house teams. Trained on legal corpora, structured for matter management, with strong workflow integrations. ooligo score: 9.1.
What it replaces: outside counsel hours on first-pass research and drafting, the 2 a.m. associate work that nobody should do anyway.
Where to start: pick one matter type (NDAs, employment, vendor MSAs) and route the first-draft work through Harvey for 30 days. Measure cycle time.
Spellbook is the AI redlining and drafting copilot inside Microsoft Word, where contracts actually live. Faster path to value than full CLM rip-and-replace. ooligo score: 8.7.
What it replaces: the 6-hour first markup of a vendor MSA, the playbook lookup that takes 20 minutes per clause.
Where to start: install Spellbook for two contract managers. Give them your playbook. Time the next five MSA reviews against the last five.
Casetext (Co-Counsel) is the AI legal research platform with verified citations and matter-aware querying. The cleanest answer to “which case said what” without hallucination. ooligo score: 8.8.
What it replaces: Westlaw research time at 2x speed, the junior-associate summarization work, ad-hoc ChatGPT-for-law (which hallucinates citations).
Where to start: route the next litigation hold or research memo through Casetext alongside your existing tool. Compare quality and time.
Claude is the assistant your legal ops team should standardize on for everything that isn’t pure legal research. Long context (1M tokens) makes whole-contract review trivial. ooligo score: 9.5.
What it replaces: ad-hoc ChatGPT, scattered prompts, the document-comparison work that used to eat afternoons.
Where to start: build 3 Skills — contract-summarizer, clause-extractor, policy-Q-and-A. Pair with MCP access to your DMS for grounded answers.
Ironclad is the CLM platform that has invested most credibly in AI (Ironclad AI Assist, AI Repository). For mid-market and enterprise legal teams, it’s the right backbone. ooligo score: 8.9.
What it replaces: SharePoint contract folders, the spreadsheet of renewal dates that someone forgot to update, the manual obligation tracking work.
Where to start: migrate one contract type fully (vendor MSAs is usually best). Don’t try to boil the ocean — get one type live, then expand.
The AI stack a modern in-house legal ops team actually deploys — research, drafting, contract lifecycle, and the horizontal AI layer underneath. Five picks, ranked by leverage.
1. Harvey — the legal AI workhorse
Harvey is the legal-domain AI assistant trusted by Am Law firms and increasingly by sophisticated in-house teams. Trained on legal corpora, structured for matter management, with strong workflow integrations. ooligo score: 9.1.
What it replaces: outside counsel hours on first-pass research and drafting, the 2 a.m. associate work that nobody should do anyway.
Where to start: pick one matter type (NDAs, employment, vendor MSAs) and route the first-draft work through Harvey for 30 days. Measure cycle time.
Full Harvey review →
2. Spellbook — AI in Word for contract drafting
Spellbook is the AI redlining and drafting copilot inside Microsoft Word, where contracts actually live. Faster path to value than full CLM rip-and-replace. ooligo score: 8.7.
What it replaces: the 6-hour first markup of a vendor MSA, the playbook lookup that takes 20 minutes per clause.
Where to start: install Spellbook for two contract managers. Give them your playbook. Time the next five MSA reviews against the last five.
Full Spellbook review →
3. Casetext — AI legal research
Casetext (Co-Counsel) is the AI legal research platform with verified citations and matter-aware querying. The cleanest answer to “which case said what” without hallucination. ooligo score: 8.8.
What it replaces: Westlaw research time at 2x speed, the junior-associate summarization work, ad-hoc ChatGPT-for-law (which hallucinates citations).
Where to start: route the next litigation hold or research memo through Casetext alongside your existing tool. Compare quality and time.
Full Casetext review →
4. Claude — the horizontal AI layer
Claude is the assistant your legal ops team should standardize on for everything that isn’t pure legal research. Long context (1M tokens) makes whole-contract review trivial. ooligo score: 9.5.
What it replaces: ad-hoc ChatGPT, scattered prompts, the document-comparison work that used to eat afternoons.
Where to start: build 3 Skills — contract-summarizer, clause-extractor, policy-Q-and-A. Pair with MCP access to your DMS for grounded answers.
Full Claude review →
5. Ironclad — the CLM with serious AI
Ironclad is the CLM platform that has invested most credibly in AI (Ironclad AI Assist, AI Repository). For mid-market and enterprise legal teams, it’s the right backbone. ooligo score: 8.9.
What it replaces: SharePoint contract folders, the spreadsheet of renewal dates that someone forgot to update, the manual obligation tracking work.
Where to start: migrate one contract type fully (vendor MSAs is usually best). Don’t try to boil the ocean — get one type live, then expand.
Full Ironclad review →
What’s not on this list (and why)
The minimum viable AI legal ops stack
If you want to start with two:
Add Harvey when you’re outsourcing more than $500K/year to outside counsel. Add Casetext when in-house research becomes a real workload.