Aline vs Concord: how they compare in 2026
Aline and Concord both sell contract lifecycle management with AI built in, and both publish their prices and bar training on customer data in their terms. They tie: each sits in the top two bands on twelve of fifteen axes, with identical grades on twelve. The tie turns on two axes that swap places. Aline reaches the top two bands on AI governance and Concord does not, because Aline's terms write in AI use rules, including no automated decisions with legal effects without human review. Concord reaches them on data stewardship and Aline does not: Concord publishes a subprocessor list with each provider's function and location, lets customers keep data in the United States or Europe, caps debug data retention at six months, and states zero data retention for its AI provider. Aline also documents its Salesforce package in depth. The buyers differ too. Aline is built for in house legal teams of two to five people, while Concord is built for the sales, procurement and finance teams that run contracts without legal. Both market to people who are not lawyers, and neither publishes an accuracy figure.
At a glance
All 15 axes, side by side
The same grid applied to every vendor in the index, graded from public sources. Hover a grade to see what the letter means on that axis.
AI Centrality
How much of the product is actually AI. Whether the machine learning is the mechanism the buyer is paying for or a feature layered onto conventional software, and whether the vendor is specific about which is which.
The models drive the capabilities the vendor leads with, on a contract system that works without them, which is the B band. Aline's AI drafts agreements and memos from a team's clause library, redlines third-party paper against playbooks generated from the team's templates, answers questions about one contract or thousands, and extracts terms from the repository without tagging. The vendor itself says the contract infrastructure came first and the AI layer was added to a system that already understood the documents: approvals and intake workflows, native e-signature through AlineSign, a document repository and file-storage sync all function without the models. That is the B description exactly. Verified 18 September 2026.
The models drive the capabilities the vendor now leads with, on a contract platform that predates them and works without them, which is the B band. AI extraction of key terms, the AI Copilot that answers questions about contracts and suggests edits, AI-generated reports and an agent builder for automated workflows are model work, and the changelog shows them developed release by release. Concord launched in 2014 as a contract lifecycle system, and its drafting, redlining, e-signature, repository, approval workflows, intake forms and deadline reminders all function without the models. Verified 18 September 2026.
Citation Accuracy and Hallucination Disclosure
Whether the vendor publishes measured accuracy on citations and assertions, grounds output to primary sources, and says plainly what its system does when it does not know. Legal has a documented public record of fabricated citations reaching filed briefs, so an untested claim of accuracy is not evidence.
Accuracy and grounding are asserted without measurement or a described method, which is the C band. The Legal AI page says every output cites the clause, source or precedent it came from, that research answers are grounded in the customer's contracts, statutes and approved legal sources and never a hallucinated case, and that the product reads full-length contracts rather than a slice. None of this is measured: no accuracy figure, test set or evaluation is published, no failure mode is named, the approved legal sources are not identified, and nothing describes what the system does when it cannot support an answer. The published terms run the other way, stating in section 9(d) that outputs are not tested, verified, endorsed or guaranteed to be accurate and that customers should independently verify all outputs. The distance between the marketing and the agreement is the finding. Verified 18 September 2026.
Accuracy is asserted without measurement and the grounding method is not described, which is the C band. The vendor's comparison pages claim an accuracy improvement of more than 10 per cent over manual review with no method or source, and the changelog says AI extractions now include notes explaining how each value was identified, which gives a reviewer something to check. The terms state plainly that output may contain hallucinations and must be evaluated with human review, and the AI ethics page says outputs may be incorrect, biased or misleading. The FAQ answers on the AI page, including How does Concord ensure AI accuracy in contract analysis, could not be read and may move this row. Verified 18 September 2026.
Autonomy and Oversight Model
What the system decides on its own, what a lawyer must approve, and whether the vendor documents where the review point sits. A tool that drafts under review and a tool that files without one are different products and different risks.
A written position that judgment stays with the lawyer, with real review surfaces, short of a control structure, which is the B band. The about page states that Aline does not make final calls or replace in-house counsel's read on a deal, and that legal sets the playbook and everyone else works inside it. The product routes contracts for approval on triggers such as value, department or clause-level risk and keeps an audit trail of decisions; redlines are proposed against playbooks for a lawyer to accept. The terms require customers to verify all outputs and bar using the AI for automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects without adequate human review. What is missing for A is a threshold or categorical limit on a named mode: sales users can launch agreements without legal inside the guardrails, and nothing states which outputs may go out without a lawyer's review. Verified 18 September 2026.
A written commitment to human oversight with review surfaces, short of a control structure for automated steps, which is the B band. The terms require customers to evaluate output accuracy, including by human review, and the AI ethics page says AI should augment rather than replace people and that humans are accountable for Concord's AI tools. Approval workflows, extraction notes and audit trails give reviewers a place to check. The agent builder lets AI agents read properties and trigger workflow actions, and nothing published states which automated actions require a person to approve them. Verified 18 September 2026.
Operational and Outcome Evidence
Named, dated evidence that the product works in production at real firms or legal departments. Case studies with figures and identified customers count. Unattributed testimonials and launch announcements do not.
Named customers with figures, short of any method, which is the B band. The site attributes results to named people at named companies: Xevant's senior legal director says a mutual NDA redline fell from up to 45 minutes to under two, a PharmaCann attorney says a 50-page commercial agreement's first pass takes 15 minutes, and testimonials name Muon Space, Telly, 7th Level, Bison Transport and DailyPay, with a linked 7th Level case study. The about page adds aggregate figures, 95 per cent faster review, $40,000 a year in outside counsel spend saved and 8,400 contracts queried by one team, and says 2,000 users across more than 100 companies. None of the figures states how it was measured or over what period, so they are testimonial figures rather than outcomes a reader can assess. Verified 18 September 2026.
Named customers without measured outcomes, which is the B band. The home page carries attributed testimonials from Vecna Robotics' chief legal and safety officer, LeoVegas' head of legal and legal counsel, Yates Construction's contract administrator, PAAY, GreenSlate, Pima Community College and Navarino, and an associate corporate general counsel at Sevita. The case studies page lists twenty-two stories: eleven named customers from 2022 to 2025, including Sovrn, AANA, Navarino and LeoVegas on the AI features, and eleven anonymised stories from 2018 with figures such as a 70 per cent cut in contract preparation time and signature time falling from a month to three minutes. No story gives a measurement method, and the figured ones predate the AI features and are unnamed. The comparison pages cite third-party market estimates rather than customer results. Verified 18 September 2026.
Privilege and Confidentiality Posture
How client confidences are handled: attorney client privilege and work product treatment, segregation of one client matter from another, whether client data trains any model, and what the vendor commits to in writing rather than in marketing.
A contractual training bar and a named model supply, short of confidentiality terms, segregation and privilege, which is the B band. Section 9 of the Terms of Service states that Aline shall not use inputs or outputs to train its AI features, names OpenAI and Anthropic as the providers behind them, and leaves intellectual property in inputs with the customer; the security page adds that agreements with the model providers legally prevent training on customer data. The agreement has no general confidentiality clause protecting customer contracts, the privacy policy permits use of aggregated or de-identified information for any purpose and archiving after removal, privilege and work product are not addressed, and the only separation statement is that queries run inside the customer's secure contract environment. Section 1 states that no attorney-client relationship or privilege is created with Aline, which concerns Aline's own role rather than the customer's privilege. Verified 18 September 2026.
A contractual training bar and confidentiality terms, with a named AI supply and a documented permission model, short of privilege, which is the B band. Section 5.2 of the Commercial Terms grants Concord a broad perpetual licence to use customer data and output to maintain, provide and improve the system, with an express proviso that Concord will not use customer data or specific output to train its AI models; section 4 treats customer data as confidential information with notice before compelled disclosure. The security page says the AI provider is bound by a zero data retention agreement, the subprocessor list names OpenAI and Google for AI processing, and admins control which document types each user can see. Privilege and work product are not addressed, and the privacy policy permits aggregate and anonymised analysis of content. Verified 18 September 2026.
UPL and Professional Responsibility Posture
Whether the vendor is clear that it supplies a tool rather than legal advice, who its audience is, and how it addresses unauthorized practice of law, competence and supervision duties, and jurisdiction limits. ABA Formal Opinion 512 is the reference point. Where the advice line is not the duty a product raises, the axis is read through the nearest professional duty it does raise: judicial conduct rules and the reviewing duty for products sold only to courts, and the duty to bill for time actually spent for products that draft time entries.
A clear disclaimer sits in the terms while the marketing addresses non-lawyers in advice terms, which is the C band. Section 1 of the terms is plain: Aline is not a law firm or an attorney, nothing on the service is legal advice, no attorney-client relationship is created, and anyone needing legal advice should consult a licensed attorney. Against that, the product is sold to sales, procurement, finance and founders as well as lawyers, the home page promises accurate documents drafted without expensive counsel, and the FAQ says business users can launch agreements without deep legal expertise. The vendor's line that legal sets the playbook and others work inside it is a real guardrail, but nothing addresses supervision or competence duties for the lawyers who set it, and no jurisdiction limit is stated. Verified 18 September 2026.
An output-accuracy disclaimer sits in the terms while the marketing positions the product for contract work without legal review, which is the C band. The terms say output may be inaccurate and must be reviewed by a person, but contain no statement that the product does not provide legal advice. The home page describes a post-legal world in which 70 per cent of companies do not run contracts through legal and says Concord is built for them, with the AI Copilot answering business teams' contract questions and suggesting edits. The FAQ Does Concord's AI replace the need for legal review could not be read and may state a position. Verified 18 September 2026.
AI Governance and Bias Disclosure
Published governance over model behavior: who owns it inside the vendor, what is tested before release, and what is disclosed about disparate output across matter types, parties, or populations.
AI use rules are incorporated into the agreement, short of any evidence of how the vendor builds and tests, which is the B band and the ceiling for customer-side governance. Section 9(f) of the terms prohibits using the AI for automated decisions with legal or similarly significant effects on individuals without adequate human review, for discriminatory or harmful purposes, or to represent output as vetted by Aline or as wholly human-generated, and the about page publishes principles including that judgment stays human and that claims should be earned. What is missing for A is the vendor side: no one inside Aline is named as accountable for model behaviour, nothing describes testing before release, and nothing is disclosed about uneven output. Verified 18 September 2026.
A principles framework with light practices and no mechanism a reader can check, which is the C band. The vendor's Ethical Approach to AI page sets out principles on security, privacy, human accountability for design choices and training data selection, bias mitigation through team education and diverse training scenarios, and transparency through indicators when an automated system is in use, and it closes with a limitations section acknowledging incorrect, biased or misleading output. No accountable owner, pre-release testing regime or bias result is published. The FAQ answers on bias and accuracy could not be read. Verified 18 September 2026.
AI Safety and Data Stewardship
Retention, deletion, access control, and what happens to prompts and documents after they are processed. Whether the vendor states its subprocessors and its incident practice, or leaves the buyer to assume.
Security basics are published while the privacy policy covering customer data is generic, which places this at C. The security page states encryption in transit and at rest, regular penetration testing, single sign-on through Microsoft Entra and Okta, and hosting on AWS in the United States, and the pricing FAQ says customers own their data, can download it at any time, and have a grace period after cancelling before it is removed. The privacy policy, last revised in November 2023, retains information as long as needed, permits keeping data in archives after removal from the service, names AWS, Sendgrid and Stripe among providers without a full list, and states no incident notification commitment; nothing addresses how long prompts and outputs are kept. Verified 18 September 2026.
A substantive published position covering most of the ground, short of an incident notice commitment, which is the B band. The security page states AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS 1.2 or higher in transit, need-to-know staff access, granular customer access controls with SSO and two-factor authentication, encrypted daily backups, twice-yearly external penetration tests and an annual subprocessor review, and says the AI provider is bound by zero data retention. A full subprocessor list is published with each provider's function and processing location. The privacy policy caps debug data retention at six months and returns customer data on request within 30 days of termination. Incident handling is described only as a strict internal policy with no notification timeline, and deletion after termination is not committed to. Verified 18 September 2026.
AI Liability and Recourse
What the vendor stands behind contractually when its output is wrong. Indemnities, caps, carve outs, insurance, and whether any of it is published or only reachable through a negotiated agreement.
A published liability position with a vendor indemnity and a cap, short of anything that stands behind output, which is the B band. Section 14 of the terms gives a vendor indemnity against third-party claims that the service infringes intellectual property, with modify, license or refund remedies and stated exclusions; section 15 caps Aline's liability at fees paid in the prior twelve months and excludes indirect damages for both parties. Section 9 then excludes infringement claims arising from outputs, states that outputs are not tested or guaranteed accurate, and applies the service disclaimers to the AI features. No insurance position is published. Verified 18 September 2026.
A standard published liability position with a vendor indemnity and cap, short of anything behind output, which is the B band. Section 7.1 of the terms gives a vendor indemnity against third-party claims that the system infringes intellectual property, with modify, license or refund remedies; section 8 caps each party's liability at fees paid in the prior twelve months and excludes indirect damages; section 6.1 warrants security measures and material conformance with documentation. Section 6.3 states that output may contain hallucinations and that Concord is not liable for damages relating to output. The pricing comparison lists a 99.5 per cent uptime guarantee on higher plans. No insurance position is published. Verified 18 September 2026.
Practice Systems Integration Depth
How deeply the product reaches into the systems legal work already lives in: document management such as iManage and NetDocuments, Word and Outlook, contract lifecycle management, matter management, e-billing, and court filing systems.
The principal integration is documented to implementer depth in the vendor's public help centre, which is the A band. The help centre's Salesforce managed package guide sets out who installs what, the install scopes, the Aline Admin permission set, OAuth pairing in which Aline writes a signing key into the Salesforce org and signs every request with it, revocation on disconnect, which Opportunity, Account and Owner fields flow into documents, how editable and read-only fields behave at launch, and an error-log tab with named failure cases. A companion article documents mapping CRM fields from Salesforce or HubSpot into template fields, with override at launch. The pricing and product pages name file-storage sync with Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, OneDrive and SharePoint, CRM integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Close, approval notifications in Slack, and single sign-on through Microsoft Entra and Okta; the storage sync is not documented to the same depth. No document management system used by law departments, such as iManage or NetDocuments, is named. Flagged for sampling. Verified 18 September 2026.
A broad set of named integrations with some depth described, short of implementer documentation read, which is the B band. The pricing page lists Google Calendar and Outlook, a Microsoft Word plugin, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, DocuSign, Salesforce, HubSpot, Zapier, the Concord REST API, and MCP connections for ChatGPT and Claude, with SSO through Okta, OneLogin and Azure AD and SAML 2.0 and LDAP. The changelog describes field-level bidirectional Salesforce sync and webhook events. The public API reference at api.doc.concordnow.com was opened and returned no readable content (it renders in the browser only), so the top band is not asserted on it; third-party integration listings describe its operations but are not credited. No document management system used by law firms or legal departments is named. Verified 18 September 2026.
Deployment Model and Data Residency
Where the software runs and where the data sits. Multi tenant cloud, single tenant, private deployment, on premises, and whether region of residence is a published option or an enterprise conversation.
The hosting model and region are stated, with no options and no tenancy detail, which is the B band. The security FAQ states that Aline runs on AWS in the United States, and the terms and privacy policy confirm storage and processing in the United States, while also reserving processing in any country where Aline maintains facilities. No single-tenant or private deployment is offered, no other region is available, and processing location for calls to the model providers is not stated separately. Verified 18 September 2026.
Hosting and residency choice are stated, without a tenancy model, which is the B band. The subprocessor list shows AWS hosting in the EU region for EU customers and North America for North American customers, the security page says customers can choose where their data is stored in data centres in the United States and Europe, and the plan comparison lists data residency. AI processing locations are given per provider (OpenAI in North America, Google in North America and the EU). No tenancy model or private deployment option is stated. Verified 18 September 2026.
Security Certifications and Trust Center
Independent attestation a buyer can pull without a sales call: SOC 2, ISO 27001, penetration test summaries, a trust center with current reports and named scope rather than a badge image.
A named attestation is claimed, short of any route to the evidence, which is the B band. The security page states that Aline is SOC 2 Type II certified and regularly penetration tested. No auditor, report period or scope is given, no trust centre exists, and no route to obtain the report is described beyond contacting the team. The same page describes Aline as GDPR certified, which is not a certification scheme, and the pricing FAQ uses the word compliant for the SOC 2 claim; both are recorded as imprecision in the claims rather than as findings against the attestation. Verified 18 September 2026.
A named attestation with a published access route, short of evidence read, which is the B band. The Security & Compliance page states that Concord provides a SOC 2 Type II report through its Conveyor portal, holds a Cloud Security Alliance STAR Level One entry (a self-assessment), and is certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK and Swiss extensions. The auditor, report period and scope are not stated on the page. The Conveyor portal was opened and returned an empty page, so its contents could not be read. Verified 18 September 2026.
Model Supply Chain Disclosure
Which models sit underneath, whose they are, where they run, and whether the vendor commits to telling customers when that changes. A legal buyer inherits every dependency it cannot see.
Model providers are named, including in the agreement, without any change notification, which is the B band. Section 9(e) of the Terms of Service names OpenAI and Anthropic as the providers behind the AI features, and the home and about pages say the product runs on Anthropic Claude, OpenAI and Google Gemini, picked per task. The contractual list, last revised in November 2023, no longer matches the site, which adds Google. No model version is given, and the terms reserve the right to modify the service without notice, so no commitment exists to tell customers when a provider changes. Verified 18 September 2026.
Model providers are named with their processing locations, without a change notification commitment, which is the B band. The subprocessor list names OpenAI as the AI-based data extraction provider in North America, Google for LLM tooling and OCR in North America and the EU, and LangSmith as an LLM tool, and the security page says the AI provider is contractually bound to zero data retention. No model versions are given and nothing commits Concord to notify customers before a provider changes. Verified 18 September 2026.
Commercial Transparency
Whether a buyer can learn what this costs without entering a sales process: published rates, the unit being charged, what sits behind an enterprise tier, and what implementation adds.
A buyer can price the product before a sales conversation, including what implementation adds, which is the A band. The pricing page publishes a Team plan starting at $200 per full user per month and $50 per support user per month, with unlimited documents, workflows, templates and AI reports, playbooks and chat, and up to 20 hours of onboarding, implementation and training included; the FAQ states there are no maintenance or contract-volume fees and offers a 21-day free trial. Enterprise pricing is by quotation, and the page's annual figure is shown as $24,00, a display error. A pricing row is written. Verified 18 September 2026.
A buyer can price the product and see what each tier includes before any conversation, which is the A band. The pricing page publishes Essentials at $499 a month, Business at $899 a month and Enterprise at $1,299 a month, each billed annually with five users included and additional users at $49, $69 and $89 a month, with a feature comparison across tiers and volume discounts available on Enterprise. The terms cap renewal price increases at five per cent. The vendor's comparison pages describe the Essentials price inconsistently, once as per user; the pricing page is the figure of record. A pricing row is written. Verified 18 September 2026.
Firm and Practice Coverage
Who the product is actually built for. AmLaw, midlaw, small firm and solo, in house departments, government and courts, and which practice areas are supported rather than merely claimed.
The segment is defined precisely and the contract work described with substance, short of practice boundaries, which is the B band. The vendor says it is built for two-to-five-person in-house legal departments, and for GC-led teams at companies of 100 to 1,000 employees, contrasting itself with enterprise CLMs built for 50-person departments; it also serves procurement, finance and sales users and has recently added a law-firm offering. The work covered is commercial contracting: NDAs, MSAs, DPAs, vendor agreements, policies and board memos, plus legal research questions. Nothing states which jurisdictions or contract types it handles less well, and the scope of the research function is not bounded. Verified 18 September 2026.
Segments and uses are described with substance, short of stated limits, which is the B band. The vendor sells to small companies, single teams inside larger businesses, and enterprises needing subsidiary management, and describes use cases for legal, procurement, finance, sales, HR, operations and IT across any contract type, with customers in robotics, gaming, construction, payments and education. It does not state which contract types, languages or jurisdictions its AI handles less well, or whether it suits law firms. Verified 18 September 2026.
The 12 legal signals, side by side
Recorded rather than graded. These are the questions a practitioner has to answer before a tool touches a client matter, and the answers are taken from public material only.
Client Data in Training
Can material a lawyer puts into this product be used to train a model?
The published Terms of Service prohibit training on customer inputs and outputs. Section 9(b) bars Aline from using inputs or outputs to train its AI features, and the security page adds that agreements with its third-party model providers legally prevent training on customer data. Two things sit alongside and are recorded: the privacy policy permits use of aggregated or de-identified information for any purpose, and the Legal AI page says the product learns a team's negotiating positions and applies them, which is described as personalization rather than model training.
The published Commercial Terms prohibit training on customer data and output. Section 5.2 grants Concord a broad perpetual license to use customer data and output to maintain, provide and improve the system, subject to an express proviso that Concord will not use them to train its AI models. The security page adds that the AI provider is contractually bound to zero data retention and that no customer data is used for AI model training.
Prompt and Output Retention
How long does the product keep what a lawyer typed, and can that be set to zero?
Retention is acknowledged without a stated period. The privacy policy keeps information as long as needed to provide the service and meet legal obligations and allows archiving after removal from the service; the pricing FAQ says customers can download data at any time and have a grace period after canceling before data is removed. No period is given for prompts or outputs and no zero-retention option is published.
The customer controls deletion of its content in the product. The privacy policy says users can edit or delete content through the system, caps debug data retention at six months, keeps anonymized analytics indefinitely, and returns a copy of customer data on request within 30 days of termination. The AI provider is bound to zero data retention.
Ethical Walls and Matter Segregation
Does retrieval respect the firm’s ethical walls, or can the model read across them?
Separation is asserted with no published detail on how it is enforced. The Legal AI page says queries run inside the customer's secure contract environment, and the Enterprise plan includes SSO, directory sync and Aline Groups. Nothing documents how access is separated between matters, teams or users within a customer, or whether it follows permissions from connected file stores.
The product's own permission model is documented. The security page says administrators can create unlimited roles and categories, grant rights feature by feature, and control which document types each user can see; the Business plan adds custom roles and teams, and the changelog records custom-role permissions over folders and properties.
Third Party Request and Subpoena Notice
If someone subpoenas the vendor for a firm’s data, does the firm hear about it first?
Disclosure in response to legal process is addressed and customer notice is not. Section 7 of the terms lets Aline access, preserve or share information when it believes in good faith that doing so is reasonably necessary to comply with legal process, and the privacy policy permits disclosure as required by law. Neither document commits to notifying the customer or reserves a position on notice.
The Commercial Terms commit to prompt written notice and a reasonable effort to obtain a protective order before compelled disclosure of confidential information, which includes customer data. The privacy policy separately reserves disclosure to law enforcement with or without notice at Concord's discretion; the agreement is recorded as controlling for customer data, and the conflict is noted.
Primary Law Corpus Provenance
Where does the law in this product come from, and does the vendor have the right to use it?
Searched the home, about, Legal AI, security and pricing pages and the terms on 18 September 2026. The research function is said to draw on the customer's contracts, statutes and approved legal sources, but no source of statutes or other law is named and no jurisdictions are listed.
Searched the home, pricing, security, subprocessor and AI pages and the terms on 18 September 2026. The AI works over the customer's own contracts; no external legal corpus is described.
Good Law Verification
Does the product tell you when the authority it just cited has been overruled?
Searched the same surfaces on 18 September 2026. Nothing states whether any authority the research function cites is checked for subsequent history. Most output cites clauses in the customer's own contracts, where the question does not arise.
Searched the same surfaces on 18 September 2026. The product does not cite case law, so no subsequent-history check arises and none is described.
Refusal and Uncertainty Behavior
What does the product do when the answer is not in the corpus?
Searched the same surfaces on 18 September 2026. No abstention or uncertainty behavior is described. The Legal AI page says answers are cited and never a hallucinated case, which is a claim about output rather than a description of what the system does when it cannot find support; the terms say outputs are not verified and must be checked.
Searched the home, pricing, Security & Compliance, Subprocessors and Ethical Approach to AI pages, the Commercial Terms of Service, the Privacy Policy, and the changelog and comparison pages in the site's search index on 18 September 2026. No abstention path, confidence indicator or grounding score is described; the terms and the AI page say output may be wrong and must be checked by a person, and AI extractions carry notes explaining how each value was identified.
Two FAQ answers on the AI page, How does Concord ensure AI accuracy in contract analysis and What happens if the AI makes a mistake in contract analysis, were located but could not be read (collapsed and absent from the served page) and are recorded under R128; under R130 neither asks this row's question.
Fabricated Citation Record
Does a public court record exist addressing fabricated or hallucinated legal citations in output from this product?
Searched the AI Hallucination Cases database maintained by Damien Charlotin and trade press reporting on 18 September 2026 for court records addressing fabricated or hallucinated legal citations in output from Aline. None located. This signal does not record litigation history of any other kind.
Searched the AI Hallucination Cases database maintained by Damien Charlotin and trade press reporting on 18 September 2026 for court records addressing fabricated or hallucinated content in output from Concord's contract platform. None located. Results for Concord Music Group v. Anthropic concern an unrelated party. This signal does not record litigation history of any other kind.
Bar Guidance Alignment
Has the vendor engaged in public with the ethics opinions its buyers are bound by?
Searched the home, about, Legal AI, security and pricing pages and the terms on 18 September 2026. No bar ethics opinion or court rule on AI is named or engaged. The terms' statement that Aline is not a law firm and gives no legal advice is recorded on the UPL axis.
Searched the home, pricing, security and AI pages and the terms on 18 September 2026. No bar ethics opinion or court rule on AI is named or engaged. The AI page's FAQ on regulation could not be read.
Billing and Fee Posture
Does the vendor address what happens to the bill when the work takes an hour instead of six?
The product is bought mainly by in-house legal teams that bill no client for the work. The savings it claims are the buyer's own, including $40,000 a year in outside counsel spend and faster reviews. The vendor has recently added a law-firm offering, where a fee relationship would arise, and nothing addresses billing or disclosure for that use.
The product is bought by businesses to manage their own contracts, where no client is billed for the work. Savings are claimed for the buyer's own time and spend, such as hours saved and missed renewals avoided.
Outside Counsel Guideline Readiness
Can a firm get this vendor through a client’s AI clause without a bespoke negotiation?
Providers touching customer content are named across the AI and the infrastructure, without a formal list or forwardable DPA. Section 9(e) of the terms names OpenAI and Anthropic as AI providers, the home and about pages add Google Gemini, and the privacy policy names AWS, Sendgrid and Stripe among service providers. The contractual list dates from November 2023 and no longer matches the site, and no data processing agreement is published.
A current subprocessor list is published and names the AI providers. It lists OpenAI for AI-based data extraction, Google for LLM tooling and OCR and LangSmith as an LLM tool, alongside AWS hosting and other processors, each with a function, processing location and transfer mechanism. The data processing agreement is available on request rather than published.
Court Disclosure Support
If a judge’s standing order requires an AI disclosure, can the product produce one?
Some elements of a record exist, short of a document-level export. The vendor says every output cites the clause, source or precedent it came from, and approval workflows keep an audit trail of decisions. Nothing records which model produced an output or who verified it, and no disclosure export is described.
Some elements of a record exist, short of an AI disclosure export. The tamper-evident audit trail logs every action on a document with time and user, which the vendor presents as usable in court, and AI extractions carry notes explaining how each value was identified. Nothing records which model produced an AI suggestion or who verified it.
The questions both sides leave open
Derived from the records above rather than written, so it cannot favor either vendor. Take these into both conversations and ask each side the same question.
- Primary Law Corpus Provenance
- Good Law Verification
- Refusal and Uncertainty Behavior
- Bar Guidance Alignment
Which one fits
Choose Aline if
- You are a legal team of two to five at a company of 100 to 1,000 people. Aline is built for that size, drafts agreements, memos and policies from your clause library, redlines third party paper against playbooks built from your templates, and lets sales launch agreements inside guardrails legal sets.
- You need the Salesforce connection documented before you commit. Aline's help center sets out the managed package install, the permission set, OAuth pairing with a signing key, which Opportunity and Account fields flow into documents, and named failure cases, and it maps HubSpot fields the same way.
- You want AI use rules and model providers in the contract. Aline's terms bar training on inputs and outputs, bar automated decisions with legal effects without adequate human review, and name OpenAI and Anthropic as providers; its site adds Google Gemini, picked per task.
Choose Concord if
- Your sales, procurement and finance teams run contracts without legal in the loop. Concord gives them intake forms and legal approved templates, an AI Copilot that answers contract questions and suggests edits, and extraction with notes explaining how each value was found.
- You need to choose where data sits and see who processes it. Concord stores data in AWS regions in the United States or Europe, publishes a subprocessor list naming OpenAI, Google and LangSmith for AI with each one's location, and states zero data retention for its AI provider.
- You want a team price and room to connect your own AI. Concord publishes plans at $499, $899 and $1,299 a month for five users, billed annually, caps renewal increases at five percent, and offers a REST API and MCP connections for ChatGPT and Claude.
In summary
Aline
Aline, from Aline Technologies, Inc., founded in 2019 by a former general counsel and based in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, is a contract lifecycle platform with built in AI for in house legal teams of two to five people. It drafts from a team's clause library, redlines against playbooks built from its templates, answers questions across contracts and extracts terms, alongside approvals, electronic signature and a repository. The AI Legal Index grades it in the top two bands on twelve of fifteen capability axes, with A grades on integration depth and pricing, from $200 per full user a month. Its terms bar training on inputs and outputs and name OpenAI and Anthropic. As of 18 September 2026 the index located no accuracy measure and no retention period for prompts.
Concord
Concord, from Concord Worldwide, Inc., launched in 2014 and headquartered in Austin, Texas with an office in Paris, is a contract lifecycle platform covering drafting, negotiation, electronic signature, storage and renewal tracking for legal teams and the business teams that handle contracts without them. Its AI Copilot answers contract questions and suggests edits, extraction explains each value it finds, and its Horizon workspace adds an agent builder. The AI Legal Index grades it in the top two bands on twelve of fifteen capability axes, with an A on pricing: plans from $499 a month for five users. Its terms bar training on customer data, and it lets customers keep data in the United States or Europe. As of 18 September 2026 the index located no accuracy measure and no incident notice timeline.
Questions buyers ask
Aline vs Concord: which is better for a small legal team?
The grid does not separate them: both sit in the top two bands on twelve of fifteen AI Legal Index capability axes. Aline is designed for in house legal teams of two to five and documents its Salesforce integration in depth. Concord is designed as much for business teams working without legal, publishes a fuller subprocessor list and offers United States or European data storage. A legal team that runs the process itself has more to read from Aline.
Do Aline and Concord train AI on customer contracts?
Both sets of terms say no. Aline's terms of service state that it shall not use inputs or outputs to train its AI features, and its security page says agreements with its model providers prevent training. Concord's commercial terms grant it a broad license to use customer data to improve its system, with an express proviso that it will not use customer data or output to train its AI models. Graded by AI Legal Index against 15 capability axes and 12 legal signals, including privilege handling and citation accuracy, from each vendor's own published materials, verified September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Which AI models do Aline and Concord use?
Aline's terms name OpenAI and Anthropic, and its site says it runs on Anthropic Claude, OpenAI and Google Gemini, picked per task. Concord's subprocessor list names OpenAI for AI extraction in North America, Google for language model tooling and OCR in North America and the EU, and LangSmith as a model tool. Neither names model versions or commits to notice before changing providers. Graded by AI Legal Index against 15 capability axes and 12 legal signals, including privilege handling and citation accuracy, from each vendor's own published materials, verified September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
How much do Aline and Concord cost?
Aline's Team plan starts at $200 per full user and $50 per support user a month, with up to 20 hours of onboarding and a 21 day free trial; Enterprise is quoted. Concord charges $499, $899 or $1,299 a month billed annually, each for five users, with extra users at $49 to $89 a month and renewal increases capped at five percent. Graded by AI Legal Index against 15 capability axes and 12 legal signals, including privilege handling and citation accuracy, from each vendor's own published materials, verified September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
What do Aline and Concord both leave unpublished?
Whether their AI is accurate and what a business user should not rely on it for. Neither publishes an accuracy figure or test set, or describes what its AI does when it cannot support an answer. Both market to people who are not lawyers without addressing supervision or where legal review is required. Neither addresses privilege or work product, names bar guidance on AI, or commits to a breach notice timeline. Graded by AI Legal Index against 15 capability axes and 12 legal signals, including privilege handling and citation accuracy, from each vendor's own published materials, verified September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.
Three readings to weigh. Both vendors disclaim legal advice or output accuracy in their terms while marketing to people who are not lawyers, which is why both sit at C on professional responsibility. Aline's contractual list of AI providers dates from November 2023 and omits Google, which its site now names. Concord's privacy policy reserves disclosure to law enforcement with or without notice, while its commercial terms commit to prompt notice for customer data; the terms control. Both records were verified on 18 September 2026. Neither vendor reviewed this page.
Neither vendor paid for inclusion, placement or a grade, and neither reviewed this page before it published. Everything above comes from public material on the dates shown. How the index grades.