Which case management software has AI built in?
Almost every vendor now says yes, and the phrase covers four different products at four different prices. How to tell them apart in about fifteen seconds on a demo call.
Almost all of it says yes now, which is why the answer is useless on its own. "AI built in" is being used for four different products with four different price tags and four different amounts of access to your file. Two of them save a firm real hours. One saves a few minutes. One is a separate subscription wearing your case management software as a jacket.
The way to sort them takes one question, and you can ask it on a demo call in about fifteen seconds. It is at the bottom of this page. First, what the four things actually are.
What "AI built in" turns out to mean.
A text box in the corner
A chat panel bolted to the sidebar that can rewrite the note you are looking at or summarize the text you paste into it. It knows nothing about the matter unless you tell it. Useful for tidying an email. It will not shorten a single afternoon of real work.
Search across your documents
Ask a question and get back the passages from your files that answer it. Genuinely valuable on a firm with years of documents, and much better than filename search. It reads documents only, so it cannot answer anything about time, billing or trust, because those are database records rather than files.
An agent wired to the database
It queries the same records the application runs on, so it can answer about a caseload, a client balance, where the month went, or which matters have not moved in three weeks. Add document access and it also reads what you upload. This is the version that replaces work rather than decorating it.
A third-party assistant, resold
A separate legal AI product integrated into the interface and billed as an extra seat charge on top of your case management seat. It can be excellent. It is also a second vendor, a second set of retention terms and a second bill, and the integration is usually thinner than the demo suggests. Ask what happens to it if either contract ends.
No context pasted
Model: your choiceAsk it your own trust balance.
On the demo, ask the assistant what the trust balance is on a named client, without pasting anything in. A text box in the corner cannot answer. Document search cannot answer, because the number is not in a document. An agent connected to the database answers immediately, and everything else it can do follows from the same connection. It is the shortest question that separates the four products above, and no salesperson can talk around it.
- Then ask it to draft something. A demand, a client update, a complaint on pleading paper. Reading is half the job; the other half is getting a document back.
- Then ask what it costs. Included in the seat, or an add-on per user per month. The answer changes the total by more than the software you are comparing.
- Then ask what is retained. Not whether it is secure. How long the input is kept and whether it trains anything.
Seven questions worth asking before you sign.
Is it included or is it an add-on?
Get the per-user-per-month figure for the AI specifically, and whether every seat has to carry it. A firm of twelve that has to license the assistant firm-wide to give it to four attorneys is paying three times what it thinks.
What can it see without me pasting?
Matters, contacts, time, billing, trust, documents. Ask for the list. "It has access to your data" is not the list.
Which models, and can I choose?
Models have real differences on long documents versus drafting. Being able to switch per task is worth more than any single vendor's claim about which one is best.
How long is my input retained?
Ask for the retention period in the contract, not the security page. "We do not train on your data" and "we do not keep your data" are separate promises and vendors frequently make only the first.
Does it write documents back into the matter?
A draft you have to copy out of a chat panel and reformat is half a feature. Ask whether the output lands as a document on the file, and whether it can produce court formats such as 28-line or 26-line pleading paper rather than plain prose.
Can I control it at firm level?
Who can use it, on which matters, and what gets logged. Individual attorneys choosing their own settings is not a policy, and it is the thing a malpractice carrier will ask about.
What breaks if I leave?
If the assistant is a third-party product, find out whose contract holds your data, who you notify to delete it, and what happens to the drafts already on your matters.
Case management with the AI already inside it.
CaseFuze runs the agent against the same database the application runs on, so it answers about your matters, your ledger and your documents without anything pasted. Your choice of model, all HIPAA compliant, none of them retaining a thing. It is in the $49 per user per month plan, and there is no tier above it.
Choosing software with AI, answered.
Can I just use ChatGPT alongside the software I already have?
Is an add-on assistant ever the right answer?
Does the AI need my whole database to be useful?
What if my firm is not ready to use AI yet?
How do I test it on a trial rather than a demo?
Case management with the AI already inside it.
No add-on seat, no second vendor, no pasting. $49 per user per month, with no tier above it.