Legal Tech Predictions for 2025


We’ve asked some entrepreneurs and founders about the future they see for innovations in legal technology in 2025. Unsurprisingly, many have thoughts about the use of artificial intelligence (AI), workflow optimization, efficiency, staffing, communications, and investment.
Lourdes M. Fuentes, CEO, Karta Legal LLC
Vendors as Gatekeepers of GenAI: Rather than lawyers building custom AI solutions, they’ll increasingly rely on vendors to embed generative AI capabilities into the tools they already use—document management systems, eDiscovery platforms, and legal research databases. This strategy minimizes risk, leverages vendor expertise, and addresses lawyers’ primary concern: time.
Emerging Roles, Elusive Unicorns: Firms will scramble to create new roles like “GenAI Czar” or “Innovation Officer,” expecting these individuals to balance technical know-how, change management expertise, and deep legal acumen. The reality? Few such unicorns exist. Consultancies will step into the breach, profiting as firms fumble through mis-hires and misaligned expectations.
Legal Education Renaissance: Curiosity will continue driving lawyers to educate themselves on GenAI, spurred by fear of obsolescence and the recognition that technical literacy is now a core competency. Law schools and CLE providers will expand programs, but gaps between theoretical knowledge and practical application will remain significant.
Patrice Gimenez, CEO, LegalPat
2025 will be a significant year in the legal technology industry and clients will demand that their legal counsel utilize software that include AI!
The Impact of AI: Small- to mid-size firms will continue to push for the adoption of AI along with the ethical standards now being enforced by state and federal bar associations. Large firms will find a delay in adoption because of the difficulties with policing the use of available products. It will be commonplace for software developers to request legal opinions on how their product uses the information provided by a user to generate AI information. AI features such as contract review, legal research, document summarizing and review, and document drafting will become “required” features.
Efficiencies: Employees will no longer accept job positions with law firms that have not adopted software that provides workflow and productivity features. Firms that continue to utilize legacy desktop products will see an increase in lost employees who join firms with more modern web-based products. Automating document generation will be just one required feature to give an employee time back. Client portals will also become a requirement to improve client relationships without causing a drain on employee resources.
Importance of Integrations: Software, like case management solutions, that do not incorporate additional product integrations within their core products will struggle to compete in an already overpopulated market. Case management software products must offer bundled packages or include the same features within their core products.
Dean Shapero, CEO and Founder, FlyTech
Productivity and Spend: At FlyTech, the marketing agency I founded in 2021 to connect technology companies with legal teams, we’ve been watching law firm software investment closely. We saw inbound lead rates skyrocket in Q4 of 2024 for most categories of legal tech. Analyzing that performance alongside Thomson Reuters’ data showing that "amid an acceleration of demand and continued gains in productivity," 2024 was a historically profitable year for law firms. As more and more attorneys grow comfortable using AI to become more productive and law firms have more capital to invest, we expect 2025 to be the biggest year on record for legal tech revenues.
Gabriel Stiritz, Founder & CEO, Lexamica
Collaboration: The legal industry will see a fundamental shift in how law firms collaborate and share data, moving away from siloed practices toward interconnected networks that optimize case placement and client outcomes. AI will transform the backend of legal practices, but its primary impact will be enhancing rather than replacing attorney decision-making—particularly in areas like case evaluation, resource allocation, and identifying optimal handling attorneys.
Specialization: We’ll see the emergence of specialized legal tech platforms that solve specific high-value problems rather than trying to be all-in-one solutions, with a particular focus on using data to drive better business decisions around marketing spend, referral partnerships, and practice area focus.
Communication: Client expectations around transparency and communication will force firms to adopt technologies that provide real-time visibility into case status and progress, making “black box” legal services a thing of the past.
Eric Voogt, Founder and CEO, Proof Technology
AI and Innovation: In terms of AI and legal tech, I believe we’re at year one or two in a massive revolution in the way lawyers practice law. I see an acceleration in both the innovation out there and law firms rate of adoption of these new innovative technologies. I see significant investment dollars flowing into legal technology in 2025 and for the foreseeable future. In the way lawyers practice, you're going to see AI doing some of the heavy lifting like document review and analysis, allowing lawyers and paralegals to focus on the tasks that take human judgment that only their experience and education can provide and that are frankly the more rewarding work for these professionals. The lawyers and paralegals that leverage this technology and adapt the fastest are going to find more satisfaction in their work and perform that work more efficiently.
I think we will get the most gains in the discovery process of litigation which is consistently and by far the most expensive and time consuming part of any piece of litigation. As a litigator, I used to have to look through banker box after banker box of documents before a deposition, flag with a sticky notes, highlight, add to my outline and make three sets of copies. Today. AI can effectively summarize a lot of those documents for you, point you in the right direction and cut hours from the discovery and deposition process.
AI and Accuracy: Hallucinations with generative AI are a real concern—when AI confidently produces incorrect or nonsensical information, software companies will need to assure lawyers and lawyers need to ensure that their technology has systems and oversight in place to verify and validate any AI-generated content. Lawyers have an ethical responsibility under the rules of competency and diligence to not only understand the limits of the technology they use but to review in depth any outputs produced by AI. Significant human oversight will still and always be required.
Tech and Transformation: I see a 10-year run where a lot is going to change. During the pandemic, businesses of all stripes had no choice but to start using tools like Zoom, and lawyers and courts and judges and clerks realized that there are better ways to work. Legal practices of all sizes will continue in this trajectory of transformation in the way they work. As ever, time is of the essence and those who emphasize efficiency will come out on top. Lawyers and paralegals who are willing to think differently about how to get the job done—supported by the adoption of technology and optimized workflows will get more out of their jobs if repetitive, rote tasks are automated, for example. And, this will help narrow the justice gap in the United States by allowing lawyers to take on cases for individuals and businesses that couldn't afford them previously, effectively opening the court house doors when they were closed before.