Last week, legal tech stocks in companies like Thomson Reuters and RELX (Lexis’ parent) plummeted in response to Anthropic’s release of legal plug-ins for its AI product, Claude. According to TechCrunch, the plug-ins will handle specialized tasks like document review and contract drafting, and produce more consistent outcomes. Here at Above the Law, Stephen Embry predicted that GenAI giants like Anthropic will gobble up large chunks of the enterprise legal tech space. But in the solo and small space, I don’t see a real upset to the status quo any time soon.
For starters, non-legal tech tools have always competed with specialized legal tech products in the solo and small firm space. Solos have always had access to cloud-based platforms like Google Drive, Basecamp, Monday, Airtable, and even Outlook to run their practices. Many of these general-purpose tools actually preceded the launch of Clio and MyCase, today’s market leaders in cloud-based practice management software. In fact, every edition of my book on starting a law firm, Solo by Choice, since 2008 has included a dedicated section comparing the pros and cons of non-legal tech tools with legal-specific platforms. In short, the idea that a big tech company might offer a cheaper alternative to legal tech isn’t exactly breaking news for this segment of the market.
Yet even though general purpose tools (first practice management and now AI) have always been available to the solo/small firm market at lower cost, inertia has consistently pushed solos toward legal applications. After all, most solos and small firms, especially just starting out, get the bulk of their information about legal products from resource-constrained bar associations that rely on hefty sponsorships from legal vendors in exchange for member access. A lawyer launching a law firm today is going to hear about Clio or MyCase at a CLE or through a bar association discount program long before they stumble across a YouTube video showing how to deploy Gemini or Claude in legal practice. Bar affiliation also conveys to legal products an imprimatur of professional legitimacy and trustworthiness. Just as nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM, many solos and smalls believe that no one ever was disciplined for relying on Westlaw/Lexis/fill in the blank. [Author FYI: That’s no longer true when it comes to hallucinations.]
And there’s the tech capacity issue. Solo and small firms don’t typically have a deep tech bench. For many, the appeal of a law practice management platform is that right off the shelf, it does 80 percent of the tasks law firm owners need, from intake forms, payment processing, calendaring, client portals, and even legal research with Clio’s vLex acquisition. As powerful as Claude’s Legal Skills may be, they’re also a strictly DIY operation. Claude skills are open-source files hosted on GitHub that need to be downloaded into Claude Cowork, which itself needs to be installed and configured. For solos who haven’t even opened up a chat window on ChatGPT, that’s a pretty big stretch.
Now that’s not to say that general purpose AI tools won’t ever make in-roads in the solo/small firm space. There’s a place for general AI at either end of the solo growth curve. Starting out, both cash-strapped and tech-savvy solos will opt for general over legal AI either because they have the skill to deploy it or lack an affordable alternative. Down the road, for those small firms that edge towards 10 or more team members, multiple seats can become cost prohibitive or legal platforms may prove too rigid to accommodate a firm’s unique workflows and protocols. At that point, some firms will look beyond Clio or MyCase to explore general AI solutions or to build custom tools and implement more agentic workflows. But significantly, by the time a firm reaches that stage, it typically has the resources to bring on a developer or consultant. In most cases, it’s not the head of the firm who’s configuring plug-ins and tinkering with markdown skill files at midnight.
Don’t get me wrong. Right now, general AI tools are cheaper and more powerful (not to mention equally secure) as their legal tech counterparts. Solo and small firm lawyers who don’t take the time to familiarize themselves with the basics of general AI tools are missing out on tremendous cost savings and quality improvements. But having been in the solo and small firm space as long as I have, I know that at the end of the day, bar associations wield more influence over technology choices than economics or markets. The choice between gen AI versus legal AI is just the latest chapter in a continuing saga of cheap-but-DIY versus pricier-but-turnkey solutions. And the ending is always the same: some lawyers will innovate but the vast majority will stick with legal tools. In other words, they’ll choose IBM.
Carolyn Elefant is one of the country’s most recognized advocates for solo and small firm lawyers. She founded MyShingle.com in 2002, the longest-running blog for solo practitioners, where she has published thousands of articles, resources, and guides on starting, running, and growing independent law practices. She is the author of Solo by Choice, widely regarded as the definitive handbook for launching and sustaining a law practice, and has spoken at countless bar events and legal conferences on technology, innovation, and regulatory reform that impacts solos and smalls. Elefant also develops practical tools like the AI Teach-In to help small firms adopt AI and she consistently champions reforms to level the playing field for independent lawyers. Alongside this work, she runs the Law Offices of Carolyn Elefant, a national energy and regulatory practice that handles selective complex, high-stakes matters.
