Gavel vs Law Insider: how they compare in 2026

G
Gavel profile
L
Law Insider profile
Last verifiedSeptember 25, 2026
Verdict

Gavel and Law Insider both sell AI contract drafting and review inside Microsoft Word, priced openly per user. Gavel Exec redlines against a firm's precedent and playbooks, and Gavel was acquired by Relativity in June 2026. Law Insider's SimpleAI reviews against playbooks and benchmarks language against its public contract database. Gavel's lead is in how it shows its work. It describes a search across a firm's precedent, EDGAR and government sources, names customers such as MIA Contract Lawyers, and states a SOC 2 Type I attestation for Gavel Exec. Law Insider's counterweight is its contract. Its terms bar training on customer content by it or its AI providers, where Gavel's bar sits on a security page. It also gives an uncapped defense against intellectual property claims and a 72 hour breach notice, while Gavel caps its liability at the greater of $100 or a year's fees.

Which one fits

Choose Gavel if

  • You want redlines drawn from your own precedent with the sources shown. Gavel Exec searches your precedent banks and matter files, EDGAR, government sources and the open web, and gives traceable explanations with each redline so you can check the reasoning.
  • You want data hosted outside the United States. Gavel gives each customer its own subdomain, database and file storage, hosts in AWS in the United States by default, and offers the EU, Canada, Australia or any other AWS region.
  • You also automate documents for clients. Gavel Workflows turns intake questionnaires and Word or PDF templates into finished documents, with client portals, court form libraries and tools for selling legal services online, from $83 a month, and its AI is optional.

Choose Law Insider if

  • You want the training bar in the contract you sign. Law Insider's terms state that it does not use customer content to train AI models and requires its third party AI providers not to, and its data processing terms publish a subprocessor list with notice before changes.
  • You want suggested language checked against what others sign. SimpleAI benchmarks proposed and third party clauses against Law Insider's public contract and clause database through its Law Insider Index score, and offers more than 40 standard playbooks.
  • You want stronger recourse than a fee cap. Law Insider's standard terms give an uncapped defense against third party intellectual property claims, a warranty with repair or refund, breach notice within 72 hours, and prompt notice before any compelled disclosure.

At a glance

Category
GavelContract Review & Drafting
Law InsiderContract Review & Drafting
Founded
Gavel2019
Law InsiderNot published
Headquarters
GavelLos Angeles, California, United States
Law InsiderBeaverton, OR, United States
Last verified
GavelOct 16, 2026
Law InsiderSep 22, 2026

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.

Gavel
BB on AI CentralityThe models are the engine of a core capability, layered on a product that would still function without them as a document or workflow system.

The models are the product for one of the two lines and optional for the other. Gavel Exec is built on AI: review, redlining against playbooks, drafting, market benchmarking and document chat are all model output. Gavel Workflows is rules based document automation with conditional logic, and the security page says its AI features, including AI onboarding for Workflows, are entirely optional and that many customers use the automation without enabling AI.

Law Insider
BB on AI CentralityThe models are the engine of a core capability, layered on a product that would still function without them as a document or workflow system.

SimpleAI reviews contracts in Word against playbooks, flags missing clauses and risks, proposes redlines and alternative language, compares documents and answers questions through chat, and the web AI Assistant drafts contracts and clauses. The public contract database, clause search and dictionary that Law Insider was built on remain usable without any model.

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.

Gavel
BB on Citation Accuracy and Hallucination DisclosureGrounding is real and documented, with linked primary sources and a described retrieval method, short of published accuracy figures an outsider can test.

Gavel Exec combines semantic retrieval with matching of text across customer precedents, matter files, EDGAR, government sources, and the open web. Its described analysis considers exact wording, conceptual similarity, and source verification. Answers and revisions include explanations intended to help a lawyer validate the result. That architecture provides a basis for tracing contract analysis, but the public claim that the product flags five times more issues than manual review has no reproducible sample or method. Market benchmarking also requires judgment about comparable agreements. Gavel does not publish a detailed failure analysis showing where extraction, clause interpretation, or proposed revisions become unreliable.

Law Insider
CC on Citation Accuracy and Hallucination DisclosureAccuracy is asserted without measurement, or grounding is claimed while output cites sources the reader cannot open and verify.

Law Insider's home page says generated clauses are validated against the company's contract database and that third party and AI generated clauses can be benchmarked against the Law Insider Index, and the add in draws alternative language from the clause database, which one product page puts at 20 million clauses and another at more than 200 million. No description of how the validation works, no linked sources for a given suggestion and no accuracy figures are published, and the terms state that output may be inaccurate or inappropriate.

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.

Gavel
BB on Autonomy and Oversight ModelA written commitment that the models work alongside a supervising lawyer, with real review surfaces, short of the full control structure: commonly the threshold at which the system stops or what happens after it is wrong.

Proposed redlines and negotiation comments appear within Word, where the lawyer can review and revise them. Playbooks supply preferred positions, and explanations help a user assess why a change was suggested. Projects keep instructions and reference files together, while shared Workspaces support team use. The terms require users of experimental features to review and verify results and warn that those outputs may be incomplete or incorrect. These are identifiable review surfaces and responsibilities. The materials do not define a confidence based stopping rule, a required escalation route for an unsupported answer, or a recovery process after an erroneous revision has been accepted.

Law Insider
BB on Autonomy and Oversight ModelA written commitment that the models work alongside a supervising lawyer, with real review surfaces, short of the full control structure: commonly the threshold at which the system stops or what happens after it is wrong.

Suggestions are proposed, not applied: in Word the user reviews, accepts or ignores each AI highlight and redline. The Terms of Service put the review duty in writing, making the customer responsible for subjecting output to quality control including human review and verification, and describing output as provided as is. What is not published is any limit on use without review, any threshold for uncertain output, or anything on what happens when a suggestion is wrong.

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.

Gavel
BB on Operational and Outcome EvidenceReal deployment evidence with substance, short of full attribution or measurement: a named customer without figures, or figures without the named customer.

Martin Algie of MIA Contract Lawyers describes using Gavel Exec for negotiation and redlining, with an attributed account of how it fits his work. Gavel also identifies more than 2,000 law firms and legal teams using its products. A separate Streeter Law Firm account describes preparing an estate plan in 30 minutes through Gavel Workflows. That outcome concerns rules based document automation and does not isolate an AI effect. The available examples establish recognizable users and practical use cases, but do not provide a dated, controlled before and after evaluation of Exec's accuracy, review completeness, or total professional effort.

Law Insider
CC on Operational and Outcome EvidenceCustomer logos and unattributed testimonials stand in for evidence, or results are quoted with no basis stated.

The site reports more than 10,000 customers worldwide and shows logos including the US Army, Humana, SpaceX, Dow, Chubb, the US Air Force, Cloudflare, NYU, Casio, Wix and DuPont. No case study, named user outcome or measured result is published on the home page, the product pages or the about page.

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.

Gavel
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.

Customer prompts and document content are not used for training, and AI providers, including OpenAI, operate under zero retention agreements, Gavel states. Customers have separate databases and file storage, with controls over whether Workflows data persists. The incorporated privacy policy nevertheless permits analysis of anonymized builder questions to improve questionnaire suggestions, while expressly excluding the answers. That narrower content permission requires attention alongside the general no training statement. Project access controls are asserted without a complete matter segregation model. The terms also distinguish the software relationship from privileged communications with a lawyer, leaving the firm responsible for protecting client confidences.

Law Insider
BB on Privilege and Confidentiality PostureSubstantive published commitments on confidentiality and training use, short of the full picture: commonly silence on segregation between users or matters, or on what the underlying model provider may retain.

The Terms of Service, last updated 23 June 2025, state that Law Insider does not use customer content to train AI models and requires its third party providers not to; the incorporated standard terms bind both parties to confidentiality, require prompt notice before any legally compelled disclosure where permitted, and commit to breach notice within 72 hours; and the data processing terms describe customer data as logically segregated in a multi tenant system. Nothing addresses privilege or separation between matters. The terms send content to third party AI providers, Microsoft and SimpleDocs for processing, while the add in FAQ says documents are never shared with third parties. The standard terms also allow anonymized, aggregated customer content to be used to improve and develop services.

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.

Gavel
BB on UPL and Professional Responsibility PostureA real position is published on advice versus tooling, short of full treatment: commonly a disclaimer without the supervision and competence dimension, or silence on jurisdiction limits.

Gavel's terms state that the company is not a law firm, supplies no legal advice, creates no attorney client relationship, and takes no share of legal fees. Users remain responsible for professional conduct requirements, including unauthorized practice, communications, and confidentiality. This distinction is relevant to Workflows, which lets firms offer client intake and paid legal services through their own interfaces. The lawyer must establish the client relationship and appropriate disclosures. Exec supplies suggestions for review, while experimental features carry an express verification responsibility. The materials do not map competence duties or legal coverage across each jurisdiction served.

Law Insider
BB on UPL and Professional Responsibility PostureA real position is published on advice versus tooling, short of full treatment: commonly a disclaimer without the supervision and competence dimension, or silence on jurisdiction limits.

The Terms of Service state that output, the Word add in and all other content are not legal advice, that Law Insider does not review information for legal accuracy, draw legal conclusions or apply law to facts, that no attorney client relationship is created, that it is not a lawyer referral service, and that users needing advice should consult a qualified attorney licensed in an appropriate jurisdiction; they also make the customer responsible for human review and verification of output. Nothing addresses a lawyer's own professional obligations when using the product, and no jurisdiction limits or ethics guidance are named.

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.

Gavel
CC on AI Governance and Bias DisclosureResponsible AI principles are published without a mechanism, a testing regime, or anything a buyer could audit.

Principles without a mechanism. The security page says the AI is built with legal professionals in mind, putting security, privacy and control first, and that AI is optional. The Gavel Exec information page says the product is trained by practicing deal lawyers. No owner, testing before release, evaluation or finding about uneven output is published.

Law Insider
DD on AI Governance and Bias DisclosureNo governance position published for a system whose output affects legal outcomes.

No AI governance framework, accountable owner, testing before release or bias disclosure is published; the AI features clause in the terms warns that output may be inaccurate but describes no oversight of the models themselves.

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.

Gavel
BB on AI Safety and Data StewardshipSubstantive published policy covering most of the ground, short of the full set: commonly no named subprocessor list or no stated incident practice.

Customers can decide whether Workflows data is stored and can delete stored information immediately. AI provider processing is described as transient under zero retention agreements, while the terms provide a seven day reactivation period after cancellation before account deletion, subject to legal exceptions. The privacy policy adds backup, audit, and dispute exceptions. Security measures include separate customer storage, encryption, two factor authentication, single sign on, and annual external testing. OpenAI is identified among AI providers, but no complete subprocessor register is published. The materials also do not give customers a specific incident notification timetable covering every class of content held by the service.

Law Insider
BB on AI Safety and Data StewardshipSubstantive published policy covering most of the ground, short of the full set: commonly no named subprocessor list or no stated incident practice.

The data processing terms publish hosting on Google Cloud Platform in the US, with the Word add in run by SimpleDocs on AWS in the US and Ireland; least privilege access with multifactor authentication and monitored logs; encryption in transit and at rest; annual third party penetration testing; a documented incident response plan with breach notice without undue delay; a named subprocessor list with advance notice of changes and a right to object; and deletion of customer content on request. The retention period is stated only as long as necessary, and the subprocessor list, which covers marketing, analytics and support tools and SimpleDocs, does not name the AI model provider the product uses.

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.

Gavel
CC on AI Liability and RecourseLiability is addressed only through a standard limitation clause that disclaims the exposure the product creates.

The August 19, 2025 terms disclaim warranties that output will be accurate, current, complete, or suitable for the user's needs. They place reliance on platform information at the user's risk and separately warn that beta and preview features can produce incomplete or incorrect results. Aggregate liability is limited to the greater of $100 or the fees paid for the relevant product during the preceding twelve months. The customer owes an indemnity for specified claims, while no reciprocal AI output indemnity is offered. These provisions allocate ordinary service risk without a warranty that generated legal language will be correct.

Law Insider
BB on AI Liability and RecourseA real published position on liability, short of the full picture: commonly a stated indemnity without scope or caps.

The standard terms give an uncapped defense against third party intellectual property infringement claims over the service, a warranty that the service performs substantially to its documentation with repair, replacement or refund as the remedy, and a liability cap of fees paid in the preceding 12 months. AI output is excluded from all of it: the Terms of Service provide it as is and with all faults, with no warranty of accuracy, and place decisions made in reliance on it at the customer's own risk. Disputes go to individual arbitration in Delaware with a one year limitation period.

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.

Gavel
BB on Practice Systems Integration DepthReal integrations exist and are documented, short of depth: named connections without a description of what they actually move.

Exec places proposed revisions and comments in Word. Workflows connects document generation to Clio Manage, Docusign, Zapier, DecisionVault, and LegalServer. Clio contacts, matters, custom fields, and billing codes can populate intake, and completed files can return to a matter. Docusign supports variables for recipient details, ordered signers, signature status, and return of completed agreements. DecisionVault fields can be mapped into questionnaires, while LegalServer supports case data and return through a webhook. These are described data movements and configuration choices. The public overview does not provide a complete setup procedure or permission synchronization specification for each connector.

Law Insider
BB on Practice Systems Integration DepthReal integrations exist and are documented, short of depth: named connections without a description of what they actually move.

The integration is Microsoft Word, and it is the main product surface. SimpleAI runs as a Word add in on Mac and Windows, showing highlights, redlines and alternative language inside the document for the user to accept or ignore, with the web AI Assistant available alongside. No other integration is named, and there is no connection to a document management, contract management or matter system.

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.

Gavel
BB on Deployment Model and Data ResidencyDeployment model is stated clearly with partial residency detail, or residency is offered without the processing location being addressed, or the tenancy model is stated on its own with no residency detail published.

Each customer gets a separate subdomain, database, and file storage in the hosted service. The default storage location is in Amazon Web Services facilities in the United States, with other hosting regions offered in the European Union, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere in AWS. The terms nevertheless obtain consent to processing in the United States, and the public regional hosting offer does not map each AI provider's processing location. A chosen storage region therefore does not fix where every model operation runs. Firms with residency requirements need the configured service and processing agreement to specify that boundary.

Law Insider
BB on Deployment Model and Data ResidencyDeployment model is stated clearly with partial residency detail, or residency is offered without the processing location being addressed, or the tenancy model is stated on its own with no residency detail published.

The service is cloud only. The data processing terms say customer data is hosted on Google Cloud Platform in US data centers, that the Word add in runs on SimpleDocs's AWS infrastructure in the US and Ireland, and that customer data is logically segregated in a multi tenant architecture. No residency choice is offered, and where AI processing happens is not stated separately from storage.

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.

Gavel
BB on Security Certifications and Trust CenterCertification is real and stated, short of accessible evidence: a named standard without scope, date, or a way to obtain the report.

Gavel now states that Gavel Exec has SOC 2 Type II attestation covering security, availability, and confidentiality. The scope is the Exec product; AWS infrastructure has its own separate certifications. The security materials also describe annual external testing, secure development practices, employee training, encryption, and authentication controls. A Type II examination concerns operation of controls over a period, but the public page does not expose the report date, examination period, auditor, or full report. Procurement teams can request additional vendor documentation. The attestation statement should not be extended automatically to every Workflows feature or treated as an evaluation of legal output quality.

Law Insider
CC on Security Certifications and Trust CenterBadges appear on the site with no scope, no date, and no report available.

Every page carries SOC 2 Type II, TX-RAMP and GDPR compliance badges, and the add in FAQ calls SimpleAI SOC 2 certified; no auditor, scope, date or report is given. The data processing terms describe annual third party penetration testing and give customers audit rights. The Terms of Service point to a SimpleDocs trust center for the Word add in.

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.

Gavel
BB on Model Supply Chain DisclosureThe supply chain is partly disclosed: providers named without change notification, or architecture described without the providers.

One provider is named, without the full set, the models or change notice. The security page and Privacy Policy say Gavel holds zero data retention agreements with the AI models it uses, including OpenAI, so one provider and its retention position are stated. Other providers, the models and versions, and where they run are not. The Gavel Exec information page describes the architecture: hybrid semantic and full text retrieval, trained on precedent. No commitment to notify customers of changes is made.

Law Insider
BB on Model Supply Chain DisclosureThe supply chain is partly disclosed: providers named without change notification, or architecture described without the providers.

The provider is named in the marketing: Law Insider's home page says clauses are generated using OpenAI, and the add in page describes review with Law Insider OpenAI. The Terms of Service say AI features use third party providers bound not to train on customer content. The specific models, where they run and any notice of model changes are not published, and OpenAI does not appear on the published subprocessor list.

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.

Gavel
BB on Commercial TransparencyReal pricing is published for part of the range, with enterprise tiers withheld, or the unit and structure are stated without the figure.

Pricing for Gavel Exec is $160 per user each month or $1,740 per user billed annually, with 1,000 monthly completions. A trial includes 25 requests per user, and teams of at least ten can request pricing. Workflows starts at $83 monthly for Lite, with Pro advertised at $290 and Scale from $417 monthly when billed annually. Its public pricing sections show conflicting Standard figures of $210 and $165, so that tier needs confirmation. General onboarding and training are advertised as free, while custom automation work can require a separate quote. The products have different allowances and should not be treated as one combined subscription.

Law Insider
BB on Commercial TransparencyReal pricing is published for part of the range, with enterprise tiers withheld, or the unit and structure are stated without the figure.

SimpleAI costs $179 per user per month, or $1,790 per user per year on annual billing, after a seven day free trial that requires a card and converts automatically unless canceled; plans can be changed or canceled at any time, with fees already paid kept. Enterprise pricing is available only through sales.

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.

Gavel
BB on Firm and Practice CoverageSegment and practice coverage is described with substance, short of the boundaries: what is supported is clear, what is not is left open.

Transactional attorneys, corporate legal teams, and in house counsel working on commercial agreements, corporate matters, and real estate are the users of Gavel Exec. Gavel Workflows addresses repeatable document production across estate planning, probate, family law, bankruptcy, employment, corporate work, and property matters. Its customers range from solo practices to larger firms and legal startups. Court forms and legal templates extend the automation product beyond negotiated contracts, while client portals support direct intake. The company describes use across multiple countries, but does not define the legal reliability of every AI feature by jurisdiction or identify a complete set of unsupported practice areas.

Law Insider
BB on Firm and Practice CoverageSegment and practice coverage is described with substance, short of the boundaries: what is supported is clear, what is not is left open.

The use covers contract drafting, review, redlining and comparison for legal teams and business users, in nearly any language, in Word on Mac or Windows. One boundary is stated in the terms: the service must not be used in high risk environments or to process sensitive personal data unless Law Insider agrees in writing. Firm sizes, work beyond contracts and jurisdictions are not addressed.

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?

Gavel
Permitted, in the contract

The terms incorporate a privacy policy that permits analysis of anonymized workflow builder questions to improve questionnaire suggestions. It expressly excludes the answers and says generated questionnaires contain no personal information. That is a limited product improvement permission concerning builder content, not a statement that client answers train models. Gavel's security promise separately rejects training on customer data, and its providers are bound to zero retention. The contract does not expressly exclude model improvement from the builder question permission.

Law Insider
Never, in the contract

The Terms of Service, last updated 23 June 2025, state that Law Insider does not use customer content to train artificial intelligence or machine learning models and requires its third party AI providers not to either. The incorporated standard terms separately allow customer content to be anonymized and aggregated with other customers' data to improve and develop services, which is not framed as model training.

Prompt and Output Retention

How long does the product keep what a lawyer typed, and can that be set to zero?

Gavel
Customer set, zero available

The customer controls storage and zero is available. The security page says that for AI features Gavel stores no documents, that its AI providers process data only for the request and then delete it under zero data retention agreements, and that customers decide whether Workflows data is stored and can delete it immediately. The Terms and Privacy Policy add that account data is deleted seven days after cancellation, save where law or backups require longer. Gavel Exec Projects keep instructions and referenced files together, which is storage the customer chooses.

Law Insider
Customer controlled, no zero option

The Terms of Service let the customer request deletion of its content, and the data processing terms commit to returning or deleting personal data on request or by the end of the term, keeping it only as long as necessary. No fixed period, no zero retention setting and no retention terms for the AI providers are stated, and data cannot be exported after the agreement ends unless an order form provides otherwise.

Ethical Walls and Matter Segregation

Does retrieval respect the firm’s ethical walls, or can the model read across them?

Gavel
Claimed, not documented

Separation between customers is documented; walls inside a customer are asserted without detail. The security page states that each customer has its own subdomain, isolated database and separate file storage. Within a firm, the Gavel Exec FAQ describes matter-based Projects with granular access controls and Workspaces that share Projects and Playbooks, but no permission model, roles or enforcement are documented.

Law Insider
Not addressed

Customer data is described as logically segregated between customers in a multi tenant system, but nothing in the Terms of Service, the standard terms, the data processing terms, the product pages or the privacy policy addresses walls or permissions between matters or users within a customer's account.

Third Party Request and Subpoena Notice

If someone subpoenas the vendor for a firm’s data, does the firm hear about it first?

Gavel
Disclosure addressed, notice absent

The Terms of Service (19 August 2025, section J) reserve Gavel's right to cooperate fully with law enforcement or a court order requiring disclosure of information about anyone posting materials on the platform, with the user waiving claims arising from it, and the Privacy Policy permits disclosure where required by law, legal process or government request. Neither document commits to, or reserves discretion over, notifying the customer.

Law Insider
Notice committed

The standard terms incorporated into the Terms of Service allow confidential information to be disclosed only where required by law, provided the disclosing party is promptly notified where permitted and the receiving party cooperates to minimize the disclosure. The data processing terms add that a public authority's request for personal data will, where legally allowed, be challenged and promptly notified. The privacy policy separately reserves disclosure in response to law enforcement or public authority requests.

Primary Law Corpus Provenance

Where does the law in this product come from, and does the vendor have the right to use it?

Gavel
Sources named, basis unstated

Gavel Exec identifies customer precedents and matter files, EDGAR, government sources, and the open web as inputs to its retrieval and verification process. It does not publish a licensing basis or update schedule for the complete collection, and the dataset behind market clause benchmarking is not identified. Naming those sources helps explain the product's inputs, but says nothing about the rights, coverage, or continued currency of every item used in an answer.

Law Insider
Not addressed

The product draws on a database of publicly sourced contracts and clauses, with third party clauses and templates held under their creators' rights; it is a contract collection, and the home page, the add in product page and the Terms of Service identify no body of primary law behind the output.

Good Law Verification

Does the product tell you when the authority it just cited has been overruled?

Gavel
Not addressed

Agreements are what Exec primarily analyzes and revises, while Workflows assembles documents and court forms from templates. Neither product identifies a citator that tracks subsequent treatment of a judgment. The template library also does not describe a complete process for verifying the continuing currency of every statutory reference or form. Lawyers need to verify any authority used in the resulting work and ensure that their chosen templates remain appropriate for the filing jurisdiction.

Law Insider
Not addressed

The product works on contract language rather than legal authority, and nothing on the home page, the add in product page or in the Terms of Service addresses checking authority for later history.

Refusal and Uncertainty Behavior

What does the product do when the answer is not in the corpus?

Gavel
Not addressed

Gavel Exec explains proposed revisions and uses playbooks and reference material to support review. It does not describe a specific abstention response when those inputs cannot support an answer, or a confidence indicator that determines when work returns to a lawyer. Reviewable redlines help a user inspect the result, but they do not show that the system recognizes every unsupported legal proposition. The lawyer remains responsible for resolving uncertainty before relying on the suggested language.

Law Insider
Not addressed

The home page, the add in product page and the Terms of Service describe no confidence indicator, abstention path or behavior for output the system is unsure of; the terms warn only that output may be inaccurate or inappropriate.

Fabricated Citation Record

Does a public court record exist addressing fabricated or hallucinated legal citations in output from this product?

Gavel
None located

No reported citation fabrication incident naming Gavel, Gavel Exec, or the former name Documate appears in the AI Hallucination Cases database reviewed on October 16, 2026. This observation concerns reported false authority, not every form of product error or litigation involving the company. A contract revision can still misstate a provision or market position without fabricating a citation, so an absence of reported cases does not replace professional verification.

Law Insider
None located

The AI Hallucination Cases database maintained by Damien Charlotin records no case naming Law Insider or SimpleDocs, and no court order, opinion or disciplinary record naming the product is on the public record. This is a statement about the public record rather than a finding about the product.

Bar Guidance Alignment

Has the vendor engaged in public with the ethics opinions its buyers are bound by?

Gavel
Generic reference

Professional responsibility appears in general terms only. The Terms of Service make users solely responsible for complying with rules of professional conduct, including those on unauthorized practice, communications and confidentiality, and prohibit use that violates them. No ethics opinion or bar guidance is named.

Law Insider
Generic reference

The Terms of Service carry a no legal advice clause: output and all content are not legal advice, no attorney client relationship is created, and users needing advice should consult a qualified attorney licensed in an appropriate jurisdiction. No bar or ethics opinion is named.

Billing and Fee Posture

Does the vendor address what happens to the bill when the work takes an hour instead of six?

Gavel
Savings claims only

Gavel markets faster document preparation and contract review to firms that bill clients. Workflows also supports packaging legal services and collecting payments, but that commerce function does not explain how to bill time saved by AI or disclose an AI expense to a client. No method is published for attributing actual lawyer time to model assisted work. The product's efficiency claims therefore need a separate firm policy on fees, time records, and client communication.

Law Insider
Not addressed

The home page, the add in product page and the Terms of Service claim speed without cost or time figures, and nothing addresses how work done with the product is billed or disclosed to a law firm's clients.

Outside Counsel Guideline Readiness

Can a firm get this vendor through a client’s AI clause without a bespoke negotiation?

Gavel
On request only

The material exists behind a sales conversation. OpenAI is the only AI provider named, as one of the providers Gavel uses, so the list is incomplete. No subprocessor list is published, the Gavel Exec page directs buyers needing security, privacy or vendor details to schedule a demo, and the Terms route customers handling third party data to a survey to decide whether a Data Processing Addendum is needed.

Law Insider
Subprocessors listed

The data processing terms publish a subprocessor list with each vendor's purpose, data categories and location, name the hosting providers, Google Cloud Platform and AWS, and commit to notice before a new subprocessor gains access, with a right to object. The list covers marketing, analytics, support and SimpleDocs; the AI model provider, which Law Insider's home page names as OpenAI, does not appear on it.

Court Disclosure Support

If a judge’s standing order requires an AI disclosure, can the product produce one?

Gavel
Not addressed

Suggestions arrive as Word revisions and comments, with no described export identifying AI involvement, the producing model, retrieved sources, and human verification for each filing. Workflows can generate court forms from templates, which likewise does not show whether a model contributed to particular language. Gavel describes no court disclosure template or certification workflow. A lawyer who must disclose AI use would need to preserve the necessary record separately.

Law Insider
Not addressed

The home page, the add in product page and the Terms of Service describe no record of AI involvement in a document, no export of that record and no disclosure guidance.

What neither one publishes

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.

Signals neither addresses in public material
  • Good Law Verification
  • Refusal and Uncertainty Behavior
  • Court Disclosure Support
Change log

Product updates

The latest logged changes from each vendor, newest first, each linked to its source.

Law Insider

  • Product / capability

    SimpleDocs, Law Insider's parent, launched Risk Review 2.0 in SimpleAI, the engine inside the Law Insider Word Add in.

    Source
The Law Insider update →

In summary

Gavel

Gavel, formerly Documate and acquired by Relativity in June 2026, makes two products. Gavel Exec is AI contract review and drafting for transactional lawyers inside Word and on the web. Gavel Workflows is no code document automation used in estate planning, family law and real estate. According to the AI Legal Index, Gavel Exec redlines against a firm's precedent and playbooks, benchmarks terms against market data and explains its reasoning. Gavel publishes prices from $160 per user a month for Gavel Exec, offers hosting in several regions, and states zero data retention with OpenAI. Gavel Exec is SOC 2 Type II certified, and the company says its AI features are optional.

Source: AI Legal Index, 2026

Law Insider

Law Insider, from Law Insider Inc. of Beaverton, Oregon, is operated with SimpleDocs, which acquired it. It sells SimpleAI, a Word add in that reviews contracts against playbooks, flags missing clauses and risks, and proposes redlines and alternative language, alongside a web assistant for drafting. Suggested language is benchmarked against its public contract and clause database. The AI Legal Index records terms that bar training on customer content by Law Insider or its AI providers. It costs $179 per user a month or $1,790 a year, and it reports more than 10,000 customers. SimpleAI ships with a library of more than 40 standard playbooks, and clause generation uses OpenAI models.

Source: AI Legal Index, 2026

Questions buyers ask

Gavel vs Law Insider: which is better for contract review in Word?

They are close. Gavel publishes more on how its answers are sourced, names customers and states a SOC 2 attestation. Law Insider publishes stronger contract terms on training and liability, and benchmarks against a large contract database. Both publish per user prices. From the AI Legal Index, based on each vendor's own published materials as of September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.

Does Law Insider train AI on customer contracts?

No, under its terms of service, which state that it does not use customer content to train AI or machine learning models and requires its third party providers not to. Its standard terms separately allow anonymized, aggregated customer content to be used to improve its services. Gavel's security page says it does not train on customer data or prompts, but that statement is not in its terms. From the AI Legal Index, based on each vendor's own published materials as of September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.

Who owns Gavel and Law Insider?

Relativity acquired Gavel in June 2026 and plans to bring Gavel's Word drafting into RelativityOne. Gavel still sells under its own name and contracts as Documate, Inc. Law Insider's about page announces that SimpleDocs acquired it, and SimpleDocs runs the infrastructure behind the SimpleAI Word add in. From the AI Legal Index, based on each vendor's own published materials as of September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.

How much do Gavel and Law Insider cost?

Gavel Exec costs $160 per user a month or $1,740 a year, with 1,000 AI completions a month, and teams of ten or more get a quote. Gavel Workflows runs from $83 to $290 a month. Law Insider's SimpleAI costs $179 per user a month or $1,790 a year after a seven day card backed trial, with enterprise pricing through sales. From the AI Legal Index, based on each vendor's own published materials as of September 25, 2026. No vendor pays for placement.

Disclosure

Neither vendor paid for inclusion, placement or a grade, and neither reviewed this page before it published. Everything on it comes from public material on the dates shown. How the index grades.

Law Insider's subprocessor list does not include OpenAI, which its home page names as the source of its clause generation. Gavel's SOC 2 attestation is Type I, a point in time review of design, and covers Gavel Exec but not Gavel Workflows. Relativity acquired Gavel in June 2026, and SimpleDocs acquired Law Insider. Both still sell under their own names. Neither vendor reviewed this page.

Contact

Correct a record, or ask how something was graded

Every grade and every signal on this index is drawn from public sources and dated. If a record is wrong, out of date, or missing an artifact the index did not locate, send the source and it will be reviewed and the record redated. Vendors are welcome to submit documentation. Nothing on this index is for sale, including a listing, a placement, or a grade.

AI Legal Index

The AI Legal Index is an independent index that tracks changes to AI vendors in legal. It holds 462 vendors across 9 categories, each graded on the same 15 capability axes and recorded against 12 legal signals, from public sources. No vendor pays for inclusion, placement, or rating.

Index Status
Last index update
November 8, 2026
The AI Legal Index is an editorial reference. It is not a regulatory body, not a law firm, and nothing published here is legal advice or a recommendation to retain or avoid a vendor. Records are verified against published sources, bar guidance and public court records. Where a record reads not addressed, the material was not located in public sources on the date shown. See the Methodology page for evaluation standards and limitations.
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