How much does legal AI cost for a law firm?
There is no single number, because legal AI is sold four different ways. The pricing models, the arithmetic that predicts your bill, and the costs that never appear on the quote.
There is no single number, because legal AI is sold four different ways and the shape of the price matters more than the figure attached to it. Two firms of the same size can pay ten times differently for capability that looks identical on a comparison page, entirely because of how the vendor decided to charge.
What follows is how to work out your own number: the four pricing models in the market, the arithmetic that actually predicts your bill, and the costs that never appear on the quote.
Find yours before you compare anything.
Per seat, as an add-on
The most common model, and the one that surprises firms. The AI is a separate per-user-per-month charge stacked on your case management seat, and it is frequently quoted at or above the price of the seat itself. Ask whether every user has to carry it or only the ones who use it, because firm-wide licensing to serve four attorneys is where the budget goes.
Credits or tokens
You buy an allowance and each summary, draft or long document spends some of it. It looks cheap at signup and becomes unpredictable in the month you catch a 3,000-page production. If you are quoted this way, ask what a single medical record review costs in credits, then multiply by your real caseload rather than by the demo.
Per document or per gigabyte
Standard in litigation document review, where the volume is the product. Sensible for a large discovery exercise, punishing for everyday work, because the fee scales with how much you read rather than with how much value you got from reading it.
Included in the platform
The AI is part of the software you already pay for, at no separate charge and with no consumption meter. The thing to verify here is that "included" means the real capability rather than a rewrite box, which is a question with its own short test.
The number to compare is annual cost per attorney, all in. Take the platform seat, add the AI add-on for every user who has to hold a licence, multiply by twelve, and add whatever the consumption model is likely to run in a busy month. Do it for the firm you will be in eighteen months rather than the firm you are now, because per-seat pricing is the line item that grows without anyone deciding to spend more. A six-person firm paying a modest monthly add-on per user is spending several thousand dollars a year on the AI alone, before a single medical record has been read. Then check what the money buys, because an add-on with less access to your matters than an agent wired into the platform is the expensive half of that comparison.
Six users, everything on
One plan$49 per user, with the AI already in it.
CaseFuze has one plan and no tier above it. The agent, the model choice, document analysis and drafting are in the same $49 per user per month as case management, billing and IOLTA trust accounting. There is no AI seat, no credit balance and no per-page meter, which means the bill does not move when a 2,000-page production lands on a Friday.
- No usage meter. Read what you need to read. The cost of the month is the seat count and nothing else.
- Every model included. Switch per task rather than paying for a premium tier to reach the better one.
- Volume pricing above 25 seats. The feature set stays identical at every size.
Six costs the comparison page leaves out.
Seats you cannot avoid buying
Many add-ons are licensed firm-wide or by tier rather than by the person using them. Ask for the price of exactly the users who need it, and get the answer in writing before it becomes a renewal conversation.
The second vendor review
A separate AI product means a separate contract, separate retention terms and, if you act for a covered entity, a separate business associate agreement. Somebody has to read all of it, and that somebody bills.
The pasting tax
A tool that cannot see your matters is one you feed by hand. Five minutes of summarizing the file into a prompt, several times a day, across a firm, is a real cost that never appears as a line item and never stops.
Rework on unusable output
A draft delivered as plain prose that somebody rebuilds into the format the court wants is a draft you paid for twice. Ask whether output lands on the matter as a document, and whether it can produce court formats such as 28-line or 26-line pleading paper.
The annual increase
Per-seat AI pricing is new and moving. Ask what the renewal terms are and whether the credit allowance is guaranteed for the term, because a consumption model repriced mid-contract is a budget you no longer control.
Onboarding and training
Some vendors bill implementation for the AI module separately from the platform, and all of them cost you the hours it takes before people actually use it. Ask what the one-off charge is and what the first month looks like, because a licence nobody has been shown how to use is the most expensive line on the invoice.
Stop pricing the AI separately.
One plan with the whole platform in it, including the agent, every model and unmetered document analysis. Free for your first six months with no credit card, and free data migration from whatever you are leaving.
What legal AI costs, answered.
Is free AI good enough for a small firm?
Why do the prices vary so much?
Should I pay more for a better model?
Does the cost drop as the firm grows?
What does it actually save?
One plan, with the AI in it.
Every model, unmetered document analysis and free migration. $49 per user per month.