The bar for what legal software should do already moved. And it moved past most legal tech vendors.
You can feel it even if you haven't put words to it, yet. Before SaaS, software was clunky. You had to fight the tool. Then software got easier, until the best software was genuinely intuitive. You could figure out how to do what you wanted without a manual. For a long time, that was the target. Intuitive was the goal.
But now, with AI, the target has moved. Intuitive isn't enough. Intuitive isn't the bar anymore. Software shouldn't just be easy to figure out. It should figure you out. It should know what you're trying to do and do it.
It's time to expect more.
Not a tool you operate. A tool that does the work.
For a legal team, that means the questions that hit you all day should just get answered. Is this clause standard. What's our EU policy. Can I sign this NDA. The software should answer what it can, pull in a lawyer when it can't, and route and track the rest, right where your team already works. If it's harder to use than Slacking a lawyer, it isn't good enough.
That's the higher expectation on what software should do for you.
"Do More With Less": You and Your Vendors
You already know the legacy vendors. Clunky software, multi-year contracts, six-month rollouts. Easy to spot, easy to write off.
The problems now are subtler. Incumbent software might be perfectly fine. But the business model behind it still operates like it's a pre-AI world. It's run to protect margins. In a post-AI world, vendors need to cut their own costs to cut your price. The software might not be legacy. But the business model is.
Building and running software used to be slow and expensive. With AI, it isn't. Code is less of a mystery. It certainly isn't the bottleneck. The incumbents, though, were built for a different era, and they're still paying for it. Engineering and support budget goes to keeping pre-AI systems alive, just to stay where they are, not to get anywhere better. That's the cost baked into your price. A vendor that isn't carrying that weight can charge less, and should.
The phrase "Do more with less" gets aimed at legal and legal ops every few years. Handle more volume, no new headcount, trim the budget. Vendors sell software to help you do it. Your vendors should do more with less too. More capabilities. Lower prices. Higher expectations and lower prices aren't mutually exclusive.
Everyone tells legal to do more with less. Your vendors should do the same. AI means they can do more with less too: more capability, lower price.
We publish our pricing because we believe in transparency. Hidden prices and custom quotes aren't built to serve you. They're built to maximize margins, not the value you get. A vendor doing more with less has no reason to hide the number.
You've done more with less for years. It's time your vendors did too.