Generative AI tools come in four main types: general-purpose, specialized, custom, and agentic AI. Understanding the differences between these types helps determine their most effective use in law school and legal practice.
While all generative AI tools claim to offer efficiency benefits, they also have significant limitations in their current stage of development. Critical thinking and human legal expertise remain essential when using these tools. AI can assist and augment legal work, but it cannot replace a lawyer's nuanced understanding and ethical judgment. Recent incidents highlight the risks of overreliance on AI-generated content.
The tools listed on this page are just a small sample of available generative AI tools, selected for their potential interest to law students and current adoption by law firms. The field of legal AI is expanding almost daily. As a law student, staying informed about these developments will be valuable for your future practice.
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a general-purpose generative AI tool based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) model series. It generates text by analyzing large datasets and predicting likely text sequences. ChatGPT is commonly used for drafting documents, answering questions, and engaging in text-based tasks.
OpenAI offers several ChatGPT access tiers for individual users:
Free: Designed for casual use, with basic access and limited availability during high-traffic periods.
ChatGPT Plus ($20/month): Faster, more powerful models than the free tier and access to advanced features like Deep Research, file uploads, data analysis, image generation, and voice/video capabilities.
ChatGPT Pro ($200/month): Built for intensive users who need priority access, faster processing, enhanced research capabilities, and early access to experimental tools.
For a breakdown of the models and features included in each plan, see ChatGPT pricing and model comparison.
Lawyer and journalist Bob Ambrogi tested Open AI's Deep Research by asking it to assess the legality of the Trump administration's pause of federal grant, loan, and other financial assistance programs. Within ten minutes, the tool generated a 9,000-word memorandum outlining legal authority, potential legal challenges, case law, grant recipients' rights and remedies, and arguments for and against the policy's legality. It relied primarily on publicly-available sources; Ambrogi questioned how the tool might perform with access to proprietary legal research platforms like Westlaw or Lexis+. Read the full analysis on LLRX.
He also compared Deep Research to Lexis+ AI, Westlaw Precision AI, and Vincent AI using a query about class certification appeal standards under California law. The focus was on the "death knell doctrine," which requires immediate appeal of class certification denials. In his test, Lexis+ AI failed to address the doctrine, Westlaw Precision AI provided a potentially confusing warning, and Vincent AI offered a more thorough response. Despite lacking access to proprietary legal information, Deep Research correctly identified and explained the doctrine.
Updates on features and enhancements are available on OpenAI's official ChatGPT Release Notes webpage.
Claude, developed by Anthropic, is a generative AI tool designed for tasks like answering questions, generating written content, and assisting with coding. Anthropic states that Claude is built with a focus on safety and ethical AI behavior through Anthropic's "Constitutional AI" approach, which is intended to minimize harmful or biased outputs.
On February 24, 2025, Anthropic released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, a hybrid reasoning model designed for both rapid responses and complex problem-solving. (To evaluate its performance, Anthropic employed a unique benchmarking method: testing the AI's ability to navigate and progress in classic Pokémon video games.) The company also introduced Claude Code, an AI-powered tool that assists developers with coding directly from their terminal.
Claude is available through free and paid subscription plans. The Pro plan costs $20 per month and offers higher usage limits, priority access during peak times, and early access to new features.
Microsoft Copilot is a generative AI tool integrated into Microsoft 365 applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. It enhances productivity by assisting with tasks like text generation, data analysis, and automating document creation, making it highly useful in professional settings.
UC Davis students can access Microsoft Copilot at https://copilot.microsoft.com. To ensure data protection, students must sign in using the "Sign in with a work or school account" option, entering their UC Davis email address and password. Authentication with Microsoft Entra ID ensures that input data is protected under enterprise data protection policies and is not used to train AI models. Without this authentication, data entered into Copilot may not be securely stored or protected.
DeepSeek, founded in 2023 by Liang Wenfeng, is a Chinese AI company specializing in open-source LLMs. Notably, DeepSeek stated it developed its DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model at a fraction of the cost of comparable models. Its AI chatbot app, launched on January 10, 2025, became the most-downloaded free iOS app in the U.S. by January 27, 2025.
DeepSeek offers its models under an open-source license, but its LLMs have been banned by several governments and organizations -- including the United States, Australia, Italy, South Korea, and Taiwan--due to concerns over data privacy, security, and potential alignment with Chinese government narratives. In the U.S., officials at different levels of government—including the White House, Congress, federal agencies, and state governments—have taken action in response to DeepSeek and its perceived risks to national security, citing risks from user data storage on Chinese servers and potential alignments with Chinese government narratives.
Gemini, developed by DeepMind and Google Research, is Google’s generative AI model family designed for multimodal tasks, including text, image, audio, and video processing. It integrates with Google services such as Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, Maps, and Search and is accessible via web and mobile apps.
On March 25, 2025, Google launched Gemini 2.5, a new generation of AI models designed to pause and reason before responding. The flagship model, Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, is multimodal and available to subscribers of the $20/month Gemini Advanced plan via Google AI Studio and the Gemini app.
This follows a series of Gemini releases:
Gemini 2.0 (December 2024) introduced real-time multimodal interaction and tool integration.
Gemini 2.0 Flash (January 2025) focused on speed for writing, research, and learning.
Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite (February 2025) was optimized for speed and affordability.
Gemini Code Assist (February 2025) launched as a free AI coding tool.
Gemini is available in both free and paid versions, with a student discount offered.
Grok, developed by xAI, is a generative AI chatbot for text-based conversations, answering questions, and content generation. It integrates with X (formerly Twitter) and is accessible via a standalone website and mobile app. The latest version, Grok-3, was released in Feburary 2025 with enhanced reasoning and image generation capabilities.
xAI offers Grok through an X Premium+ subscription and a standalone SuperGrok subscription, which does not require an X Premium+ subscription.
In February 2025, Grok-3 briefly restricted responses mentioning Elon Musk and Donald Trump in disinformation-related queries. xAI attributed this to an internal oversight and stated it was later corrected.
Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search engine that provides answers with citations, focusing on direct question-answering rather than conversational use. The platform offers a free version with unlimited searches and a $20/month professional plan that includes access to advanced AI models, file analysis capabilities for PDFs, CSVs, and images, and additional features like image generators and AI design tools.
The platform offers a free version with unlimited searches and a $20/month professional plan that includes advanced AI models, file analysis, and additional features like image generators and AI design tools. On February 14, 2025, Perplexity launched its Deep Research tool, which reviews sources, refines a research plan, and develops a report in response to user prompts. On February 24, 2025, Perplexity AI announced the development of Comet, an AI-powered web browser with agentic search capabilities. Perplexity has not disclosed specific features or a release date for Comet, but interested users can join a waitlist for early access.
Poe is an AI chatbot aggregator developed by Quora, designed to centralize access to multiple AI chatbots within a single platform. Users can interact with various AI chatbots created by many companies and individuals, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Llama, and others. Anyone can create a bot on Poe.
Interactions with Poe's bots consume "compute points," which vary based on the bot and message specifics. Free users receive daily points that reset every 24 hours, while subscribers get more points and access to advanced bots. Subscription pricing begins at $4.99/month.
Overview
CoCounsel is a generative AI tool originally developed by the legal research company Casetext and launched on March 1, 2023. After Thomson Reuters acquired Casetext in August 2023, CoCounsel's capabilities were integrated into various Thomson Reuters products, including Westlaw Precision and Practical Law.
UC Davis Law students can access CoCounsel by logging into Westlaw Precision and selecting CoCounsel from the top menu.
Additional Resources
Overview
Lexis+ AI is an AI-enabled legal research and drafting platform developed by LexisNexis and embedded into Lexis+. It integrates generative artificial intelligence with Lexis's repository of legal information to assist users in conducting research, drafting documents, and analyzing legal information.
Lexis+ AI launched commercially in the U.S. on October 25, 2023, and became available to ABA-accredited law schools in December 2023.
Protégé is a personalized AI assistant within Lexis+ AI. It offers conversational search, summarization, legal drafting, and document upload and analysis capabilities. Protégé was introduced in a commercial preview in August 2024 and became available to law students in February 2025.
Current UC Davis Law students can access Lexis+ AI and Protégé by signing into Lexis+ and selecting 'Protégé' from the left sidebar.
On January 14, 2025, Bloomberg Law launched two generative AI tools:
Bloomberg Law Answers integrates with Bloomberg Law Search to provide AI-generated responses to legal questions. The answers, which appear at the top of search results, include citations and links to Bloomberg Law's primary and secondary resources.
Bloomberg Law AI Assistant is chat-based tool designed to generate summaries of documents and answer user queries about specific aspects of a document.
Both features are integrated into the Bloomberg Law platform and are currently in beta. Ongoing refinement is expected.
Current UC Davis Law students can access Bloomberg Law through the law library's A-Z Databases page. Students who have not yet registered for Bloomberg Law should contact the reference desk for an individual registration code.
Descrybe.ai is a free legal research platform that uses generative AI to search and summarize judicial opinions. It provides AI-generated summaries for over 3.6 million judicial opinions, including state appellate and supreme court decisions from all 50 states, as well as federal district, appellate, and supreme court opinions, including U.S. bankruptcy courts. The platform offers case summaries in English and Spanish, including simplified, plain-language versions at a fifth-grade reading level to increase accessibility. Users can perform natural language searches in either language.
Descrybe.ai is currently developing additional free and paid features on top of its proprietary dataset, including a citation-checking feature.
LawDroid Copilot is a generative AI legal assistant that automates tasks such as legal research, document summarization, case briefing, drafting emails or letters, correcting grammar, brainstorming ideas, and translating text. LawDroid Copilot is not affiliated with Microsoft's Copilot.
The LawDroid Copilot Student and Faculty Access Plan provides free access to students and faculty with a verified .edu email account.
midpage.ai uses generative AI to analyze and summarize legal information. Its features include case law summaries, legal precedent analysis, and Microsoft Word integration. In January 2025, the company announced a collaboration with Vanderbilt University's AI Law Lab to develop an AI-powered citator, expected to launch in February.
The platform offers a two-week free trial and discounted subscription rates for law students.
Vincent AI, developed by vLex, is a generative AI legal research tool designed to assist users in finding relevant materials across multiple jurisdictions and languages. It integrates with vLex’s database of over 850 million legal documents, including content from 17 jurisdictions such as Hong Kong, Italy, Peru, and Ecuador. Using large language models, Vincent AI supports tasks like case analysis, argument development, and multi-jurisdictional law comparisons.
vLex's Winter 2025 update introduced multi-modal capabilities, including the ability to process and analyze audio and video content. For example, users can now transcribe and analyze recorded depositions, oral arguments or client interviews. vLex also introduced Vincent Studio, a custom workflow builder allowing law firms and legal departments to create AI-powered legal research and automation tools using Vincent AI and vLex's legal data.
The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) recognized Vincent AI as the 2024 New Product of the Year, marking the first time a generative AI tool has received the New Product Award. Vincent AI’s pricing and accessibility limit its use in academic settings.
VitalLaw AI is a premium generative AI tool available in Wolters Kluwer’s VitalLaw legal research platform, which covers multiple practice areas, including antitrust, cybersecurity and privacy, energy and environment, health, intellectual property, securities, and tax.
Wolters Kluwer provides resources to preview its VitalLaw AI features. The Using VitalLaw AI help section explains how the tool generates responses and links to sources. The help article VitalLaw AI includes screenshots of AI-generated answers and guidance on interacting with the AI assistant. Additionally, Writing Effective AI Prompts offers an introduction and best practices for crafting prompts to optimize results.
Clio announced its generative AI tool, Clio Duo, on October 7, 2023. Integrated into Clio's legal practice management software Clio Manage, Clio Duo allows users to access client and matter details, summarize and generate documents, prioritize tasks and matters, delegate assignments, and create professional communications. It uses Microsoft Azure OpenAI GPT-4 technology and includes an audit log for AI activity. It is available to U.S. law firms using Clio Manage.
Harvey, founded in 2022 by former attorney Winston Weinberg and AI researcher Gabriel Pereyra, is a generative AI platform designed for the legal industry. It uses LLMs to assist with tasks such as contract analysis, research, document drafting, regulatory compliance, and litigation support. Harvey is used by over 125 major law firms and enterprises, including Allen & Overy, Ashurst, CMS, Reed Smith, and PwC UK, with more than 45,000 legal professionals utilizing the platform.
Kira is a machine learning-based AI tool designed for legal document review. It identifies, extracts, and analyzes key provisions from contracts and other legal documents, assisting with tasks such as due diligence, contract analysis, and compliance reviews. In 2021, Kira Systems was acquired by legal technology platform Litera.
LawDroid Copilot is a generative AI legal assistant that automates tasks such as legal research, document summarization, case briefing, drafting emails or letters, correcting grammar, brainstorming ideas, and translating text. LawDroid Copilot is not affiliated with Microsoft's Copilot.
The LawDroid Copilot Student and Faculty Access Plan provides free access to students and faculty with a verified .edu email account.
Oliver, developed by Vecflow and launched in September 2024, is an AI-powered legal assistant designed for legal research, contract drafting, and document analysis. It integrates AI models, including Meta's Llama 3.1 405B, and connects with internal firm databases and external sources like SEC EDGAR filings. Oliver uses an agentic AI architecture. It supports drafting agreements, conducting due diligence, and performing regulatory analysis with real-time source citations.
Paxton AI is a generative AI legal assistant designed to support legal professionals with tasks such as legal research, document drafting, contract review, and document analysis. It uses proprietary LLMs trained on legal documents, case law, statutes, and regulations. The platform includes a Boolean Composer tool that generates precise search strings from natural language input, improving the accuracy and efficiency of legal research and document review.
Paxton AI offers a student rate for individuals with a verified .edu email address.
Reggi (formerly known as RegIntel) is a generative AI tool integrated with Regology's regulatory intelligence platform. It assists users in regulatory compliance by answering natural language questions about legal and regulatory requirements across various jurisdictions. Reggi supports tasks such as discovering regulatory content, summarizing laws, extracting requirements, and drafting policies. It uses a database of over 16 million laws and regulations to provide citable and relevant answers. The current beta version focuses on U.S. federal laws and regulations, as well as those from all 50 U.S. states.
Regology offers a free plan that provides individual access to Reggi.
Spellbook is a generative AI tool that uses GPT-4 and other large language models to assist lawyers with drafting and reviewing legal documents. Integrated into Microsoft Word, it offers features such as instant redlines, drafting new clauses, detecting unusual terms, and identifying missing clauses or boilerplate. Designed specifically for legal work, Spellbook provides contextually relevant suggestions for contract drafting and review.
Spellbook offers a free educational AI access program for law school faculty and students worldwide, supporting legal education and preparing students for the evolving legal industry.
Vincent AI by vLex is an AI-powered platform designed to assist with legal tasks such as research, document analysis, compliance checks, and cross-jurisdictional research. It integrates with tools like Docket Alarm and iManage and supports customizable workflows. It is designed to help legal professional with extracting facts, summarizing documents, comparing laws across jurisdictions, and analyzing contracts for risks and missing clauses. Vincent AI was awarded the New Product Award 2024 by the American Association of Law Libraries.
vLex offers a free 3-day trial of Vincent AI.
Consensus is a web-based, generative AI-powered academic search engine available to students, researchers, and professionals. It offers access to over 200 million research papers, allowing users to query and synthesize peer-reviewed research.
Consensus provides a Free plan with basic search functionality and premium subscriptions for advanced features like AI-assisted analysis and customizable workflows.
Humata is an AI tool that helps users analyze and summarize large documents, such as PDFs, by providing context-based answers with highlighted references. It supports interactive tasks like document analysis and content extraction.
Humata's free plan includes up to 60 pages and 10 answers per month. The student plan, available for $1.99/month with a verified .edu email, offers up to 200 pages per month.
NotebookLM is an AI-powered note-taking and research tool developed by Google. NotebookLM allows users to upload documents, including Google Docs and PDFs, to generate summaries, ask questions, and highlight key ideas. It helps users organize information, generate insights, and interact with their notes. "Audio Overviews" provide podcast-style summaries of documents. NotebookLM also supports analysis of images, charts, and diagrams.
NotebookLM offers a free version for individual users.
ResearchRabbit is an AI-powered research discovery platform designed to enhance literature exploration and management. It provides personalized recommendations, updates on new publications, and interactive visualizations to map connections between papers and authors. It also supports collaboration by allowing users to share collections and engage in discussions.
The platform’s core features are free.
Athena, the proprietary AI assistant of American law firm Troutman Pepper, launched in August 2023 and built on OpenAI’s GPT technology. Deployed within the firm’s private cloud, it assists with tasks like drafting, summarizing, editing, and document analysis. By August 2024, Athena had over 1,000 active users, with features such as "chat with documents," image creation via DALL-E 3, and security and ethics safeguards, including mandatory training for users.
Law firm Ballard Spahr has launched three internal AI tools to improve efficiency and reduce costs:
The tools, locally hosted for security, aim to automate non-billable tasks and streamline workflows. Initially, the firm restricted AI use in client work but later developed structured policies for safer usage. These tools are part of the firm's Ballard360 legal tech suite.
DechertMind is a proprietary suite of generative AI tools developed by the global law firm Dechert and launched in April 2023. Initially introduced as a chatbot, it has since evolved into a more comprehensive platform for tasks like document drafting, review, and research. Built in-house by Dechert’s innovation team, DechertMind leverages custom AI models tailored to the firm’s specific needs, offering greater control and customization compared to third-party AI tools. In November 2024, Dechert was recognized by The American Lawyer for its innovative use of generative AI.
Davis Wright Tremaine (DWT) launched a generative AI chatbot in 2023 for firm employees, using the ChatGPT platform but restricting its information sources to the firm’s public-facing content. In 2025, DWT expanded its AI platform with DWT Prose, a tool that suggests writing edits based on the work of the firm's established attorneys. DWT Prose integrates multiple commercially available LLMs alongside custom AI models developed in-house. DWT also announced a partnership with Stanford University's CodeX to develop new AI-powered tools tailored to specific use cases identified by the firm.
fleetAI is a generative AI platform developed by Dentons, the world’s largest law firm by number of lawyers, operating in over 80 countries. Launched in August 2023 and built on OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology, fleetAI assists with tasks like document analysis, summarization, automated reporting, and clause extraction. It also supports multiple document uploads and generates context-based legal questions. Currently used firm-wide, fleetAI is set to expand globally and integrate with additional legal technologies, including future features like contract-specific automated reports.
On October 21, 2024, Microsoft announced new capabilities in Copilot Studio that enable the creation of autonomous agents, with a public preview set for late November 2024. According to Microsoft, these autonomous agents can streamline complex workflows and enhance productivity. The company noted that international law firm Clifford Chance is already using autonomous agents built with Copilot Studio.
Manus is an autonomous AI agent developed by the Chinese startup Monica. Launched on March 6, 2025, it is designed to independently perform complex real-world tasks without continuous human guidance. Manus can handle activities such as sorting resumes, analyzing stock correlations, and evaluating real estate properties.
Unlike AI systems that require explicit instructions, Manus can proactively initiate tasks, analyze data, and adapt its actions in real time. It operates asynchronously in the cloud, allowing it to continue tasks even when users are offline.
Operator is an AI agent developed by OpenAI that automates web-based tasks by mimicking human interaction, including typing, clicking, and scrolling. OpenAI released a "research preview" of Operator on January 23, 2025, which is currently available to ChatGPT Pro users in the United States. Operator uses GPT-4 to interpret screenshots and navigate websites, pausing for user input when encountering obstacles like CAPTCHAs or sensitive data. OpenAI has partnered with companies like DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber to test and refine Operator's capabilities.
On August 22, 2024, legal technology company Spellbook announced the release of Spellbook Associate, an AI agent designed to handle complex, multi-step workflows in transactional matters. According to the company, Spellbook Associate performs tasks similar to those of a junior associate, such as drafting financing documents from term sheets, reviewing documents for risks, and revising employment packages. The platform uses generative AI to plan, execute, and adapt workflows autonomously. Early access is available to legal teams on a first-come, first-served basis.
Swarm is an experimental framework from OpenAI that allows developers to create AI programs that work together to complete tasks. Each program, or "agent," has a specific role, such as finding information, analyzing it, or sharing the results. The agents can pass tasks to one another, making it easier to handle complex processes. For example, one agent might create a database query, another could run the query, and a third would explain the results. Swarm is a work in progress and invites contributions from the community to explore its potential.