Methodology
Every vendor in the AI Legal Index is assessed the same way: 15 capability axes, each carrying a letter grade from A to D, and 12 legal signals, each carrying a recorded value rather than a grade. No vendor is published with a blank axis. A vendor that cannot be graded on an axis carries a rated judgement explaining why, not an empty cell.
An AI Legal Index grade measures what a buyer can verify from public sources on the date shown. It is not a rating of how good the product is. A vendor can build an excellent system and grade low on an axis because it publishes nothing an outsider can check.
What each letter means
Verifiable evidence at the top of this axis under the AI Legal Index grading framework. Named, dated, and checkable by an outsider without contacting the vendor.
Substantive disclosure with a real gap. Enough for a buyer to act on, short of the artifact that would settle the question.
The claim is made and the documentation behind it is not published, or the coverage is standard and silent on the questions this axis asks.
Nothing published on this axis that a buyer can check, or a claim that cannot be tested. A D under the AI Legal Index grading framework records an absence far more often than a defect, and absence is dated: it means not located in public sources on the date shown.
The published scale is A to D. F is reserved for an aggravated absence on an axis that plainly applies to the product, so it remains a rated grade rather than a theoretical one. The bar means something different on every axis, so each axis carries its own band wording, shown when a grade is hovered on a vendor profile.
15 capability axes, applied to every vendor
Ten axes are the family standard and are applied identically across the sibling indices, which is what allows a legal vendor and a vendor in another market to be read against the same bar. Five are specific to legal, and two of those five are graded nowhere else in this territory.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
AI Governance and Bias Disclosure
Published governance over model behaviour: 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
12 recorded signals, not graded
A signal answers a question of fact rather than a question of degree, so it records a value from a published set instead of resolving to a letter. Every signal is recorded on every published vendor, including where the value is that nothing was located.
Five source bases, shown on every record
Vendor Published
The vendor’s own documentation, terms of service, data processing addendum or trust center. The most common basis, and the one the index prefers, because a buyer can open it.
Third Party Estimated
An outside source the index could corroborate but not confirm with the vendor. Always labelled as an estimate on the record.
Practitioner Interview
A named practitioner describing use in production. Used where a claim cannot be settled from documents.
Bar Guidance or Court Record
An ethics opinion, a court order, an opinion, or a disciplinary record, cited to the issuing body and the date. Required for any adverse signal value.
Operator Verified
Checked directly in the product or against a live artifact by the index, on the date shown.
How a vendor is placed
Categories are drawn by what the software does and who buys it rather than by practice area, because practice area taxonomies split products that behave identically and combine products that do not. A vendor carries one primary category and may carry secondary categories where the product genuinely spans. A vendor whose legal work is incidental to a general purpose product is not indexed.
What this method cannot tell you
This index measures disclosure, not quality
The only thing an outside party can honestly measure about a vendor it does not have inside is what that vendor has published and what the public record shows. A product can be excellent and grade low because nothing about it is checkable, and the index says exactly that rather than crediting a claim it cannot test.
Every judgement is dated and none is permanent
A grade or a signal describes public sources on the date shown. Vendors publish terms, trust pages and accuracy figures continuously, so a record is a photograph rather than a verdict. Send a source and the record is reviewed and redated.
Absence of a court record is not evidence of accuracy
The fabricated citation signal records what has been located in the public record. Nothing located is the common value and it is a statement about the record, not a clearance. Most orders in this area address the filer’s verification failure rather than a product, and the index preserves that distinction rather than collapsing it into a mark against a vendor.
This is not legal advice and not a recommendation
The index is an editorial reference. It is not a regulatory body, not a law firm, and nothing published here recommends retaining or avoiding a vendor. A lawyer’s duties of competence, confidentiality and supervision are not transferable to a tool or to an index of tools.
Nothing here is for sale
No vendor pays for inclusion, placement, or rating, and there is no sponsored tier. A vendor that supplies documentation gets its record corrected and redated, which is the same treatment a reader who sends a source gets.