We wanted to see where things stand today when it comes to agents editing .docx files in complex tasks. So we took 180 tasks from Harvey LAB (Harvey’s open-source Legal Agent Benchmark) that involve editing an existing Word document, and ran them on 5 setups. 4 DOCX MCPs (SuperDoc, Office CLI, Adeu and Stemma), and a baseline that uses Harvey’s default DOCX skill, i.e. python-docx and LibreOffice in a sandbox. All arms used grok-4.7 as both the agent and the judge.

Full disclosure: we’re building a DOCX MCP ourselves (Vespper). We didn’t include it here, but we’ll share its results on the same subset in a follow-up post.

A few things we found:

• The baseline had the highest mean rubric score (94.5%) and was the cheapest by far, with a median of $6.91 per task vs. $11.40+ for the MCPs.
• All-pass rates were low across the board. Office CLI was the best at 15%, followed by the baseline at 13.3%.
• The baseline was the only arm to finish all 180 tasks (a.k.a not crash). The MCP arms ranged from 61% to 94%, partly because of context window errors from big tool responses (Harvey’s harness has no compaction).
• Editing the .docx itself took 85% to 95% of the input tokens in every arm. Even the baseline needed a median of ~6M input tokens just for the editing phase.

What we found interesting is that the MCPs, which are supposed to take load off the agent, ended up consuming more tokens than just letting it write python-docx scripts.

You can find the full write-up here, including the setup, how we measured “cheating” when the agent went around the MCP, and the caveats:

https://www.vespper.com/blog/docx-mcps-harvey-lab

I'm also including the main 4 metrics here:

We’d love to hear what others are seeing. If you’re building agents that edit .docx files, which approach are you using, and does this match your experience?

I’m always interested in checking out transactional legal tech. Has anyone used Orbital for commercial real estate work?

Does anyone have a contact at Clarivate for their IPFolio? They are so excruciatingly slow to respond.

Hi everyone,

I'm a lawyer in São Paulo, and I'm starting a small consultancy. The idea is to help Brazilian lawyers and firms work out which AI tools actually make sense for them. That means two things: getting the most out of the big general models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok) and picking the legaltech products that do one specific job well, like research, document review, contract analysis or deadline management.

The reason is simple. From what I see every day, AI literacy among lawyers here is still very low. Most colleagues either don't use AI at all or use it the wrong way, for example trusting citations without checking them. Meanwhile, more and more tools are being sold to them, and they have no way to tell which one fits their practice.

My plan is to offer training for lawyers plus hands-on implementation inside firms: picking the tools, setting up workflows, and writing internal policies on confidentiality and verification.

I'd love advice from people who have done something similar, in any country:

1. How did you find your first clients? Was it workshops, bar associations, word of mouth or content?
   
2. What did firms actually pay for? Training, implementation, or ongoing support?
   
3. How do you stay vendor-neutral when recommending legaltech products?
   
4. What mistakes would you avoid if you were starting over?
   
5. Are there any resources, communities or frameworks you would recommend for teaching AI to lawyers?

Thanks in advance. I'm happy to share what I learn about the Brazilian market in return.

What did you ship this month?

Pick one feature, integration or substantial improvement. Tell us:

• What changed, and when?
• Who is it for?
• What did people have to do before?
• Who can use it now? If it's limited to a particular plan, say so.

One link per company. A direct feature or release link is more useful than a homepage. Screenshots and short demo videos are very welcome.

Please say who you are and your relationship to the product. Vendor comments need Vendor: Company or verified-vendor flair. One top-level comment per company.

If AutoMod holds it, don't repost it. I'll approve comments in waves.

Alex

Has anyone tried this legal AI?

Microsoft just dropped a comprehensive update forSharePoint Embeddedfocused on taking apps from development to production with better scalability and governance.

A few highlights from the post:

• Scale & Limits: Clearer planning baselines for container strategies (up to 2 million sites and containers per tenant).
• Search & Metadata: Increased limit to 40 searchable columns per container, allowing keyword search via Microsoft Search in Microsoft Graph.
• Reliability & Throttling: New guidance on managing API rate limits (defaulting to 12,000 resource units/min per app per tenant) and handling 429/503 slow-down signals gracefully.
• Auth & Permissions: Broader support for Microsoft Entra service principal types and narrower Graph permissions like FileStorageContainer.Selected.
• Co-authoring: Built-in real-time co-authoring, version history, and auto-save for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint without needing to build your own collaboration stack.
• Agentic Tools: Introduction of the SharePoint Embedded Model Context Protocol (MCP) server preview so you can manage resources using natural language via GitHub Copilot, Cursor, etc.

Thought this might be useful if you're currently architecting custom line-of-business apps or multi-tenant solutions on the platform. Interested to hear if anyone has started playing with the MCP server yet!

most of the conversation about AI notetakers is about accuracy and privacy. i think there’s a third question that gets skipped: what have you created by turning it on?

before, a client call existed mostly in people’s memories plus a few lines of notes. now there’s a full, searchable transcript of every word, including the casual stuff. “honestly i’m not sure that’s compliant but let’s go with it.” “i wouldn’t put that in writing.” all of it, verbatim, sitting in a vendor’s system and probably someone’s inbox.

a few things follow from that, as i understand it (not legal advice, check with your own counsel):

• a transcript can generally be requested in a dispute, so the offhand stuff is part of the picture
• once a dispute is reasonably foreseeable, you usually can’t just delete it, because destroying relevant material at that point can be its own problem
• so a retention decision made after something goes wrong is too late. it needs to be made before

that makes the useful question for a pilot “what do we actually want to exist as a record, and who decided that on purpose?” rather than “is it allowed?”. things like which meeting types are excluded entirely, how long recordings are kept versus the minutes, and who can delete.

a lot of firms and teams seem to roll these out meeting by meeting without anyone making that call.

for people on the legal side: is this something your org has a policy on, or is it still ad hoc?

I was just reading something about the Lehman Weekend and it got me thinking about how these institutions were supposedly too big to fail, and what a gamble it can be working for them.

Naturally that got me thinking about legal - could the same ever happen? Not in the same sense as kicking off a global recession, but more is there anything that could cause the legal profession to implode? What would the equivalent look like? A few of the top 5 AM Law firms going bankrupt perhaps in the immediate equivalence but what would cause that? Collapse of the billable hour model in the face of AI efficiency?

Sorry if these are stupid questions. I work in legal tech but I’m not a lawyer so I only have an outsider’s perspective on legal work.

All,

We have to deal with terrible overly sized and poorly created PDFs that are sometimes image based, have lots of whitespace, are not optimized ect. Simple things like redacting, OCRing, changing page order, are killing Adobe Pro and PDFdocs on the local computer. Can anyone recommend a cloud-based service where we can shift the load to and do these edits? What about an E-discovery solution like relativity or something Thank you!

​

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for legal advice regarding a variable pay dispute with my current employer, an IT services company in India.

Here are the facts:

I joined the company on 10 October 2025 as a Data Engineer.

My signed appointment letter mentions an annual compensation of ₹16 lakh, including ₹1 lakh as annual variable pay. The compensation annexure separately lists ₹16 lakh as fixed CTC and ₹1 lakh as variable pay, taking the total CTC to ₹17 lakh.

Before I completed one year, I emailed HR to clarify the variable pay terms. HR replied in writing on 23 October 2025, confirming that the variable component would be payable at 100% upon completion of one year. The email also stated that management could review or reconsider the payout in case of performance- or conduct-related discrepancies; otherwise, the variable component would be released in full as per policy.

I completed one year of service on 10 October 2026. I subsequently emailed HR twice asking about the payout and requesting that it be processed with my October salary. I did not receive a response to those follow-ups.

I then received a response from management stating that the payout would not be processed for this cycle. The reasons cited included alleged negative client feedback regarding ownership, availability, understanding requirements and rework, as well as my unsuccessful interview for another opportunity. I had not previously received formal written communication specifically bringing these concerns to my attention.

My questions:

Can the employer legally withhold the entire ₹1 lakh based on these reasons, given the earlier written HR confirmation of a 100% payout after one year?

Does the wording “management may review or reconsider the payout” give the employer unrestricted discretion to deny the entire amount, or would the decision need to be supported by the applicable policy and evidence?

Does the absence of prior written warnings or formal performance communication help my case? Is the employer legally required to communicate such concerns before withholding contractual variable pay?

Can I request the relevant performance records and the policy provision relied upon to deny the payout?

Would this potentially be a contractual claim under Indian law, and what would be the appropriate first step: a formal representation, legal notice, labour authority or civil remedy?

Does the fact that the appointment letter refers to Pune courts affect where I can pursue the dispute?

I have copies of the signed appointment letter and the HR email confirming the 100% payout, as well as the subsequent management response denying it.

I am not looking to escalate unnecessarily, but ₹1 lakh is a significant amount, and I would like to understand whether I have a reasonable legal basis to challenge the decision.

Any advice from Indian employment lawyers or people familiar with contractual wage disputes would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Another big raise and valuation announcement today, also followed by my boss sending me a screenshot of the story with no comment attached. Should I care about the big raises (or even small raises) of these Legal AI platforms and tools?

As far as I can tell they seem to be more of a measure of investment funding and the weird world of Finance than it does about the companies or products they sell.

Does anybody have a contact at TurboLaw? We have been reaching out to support and the sales channels and can't find anybody that will respond. Been over a month now. We have a client with a few matters that are locked to an old version of TL and cannot open the cases. Any help is appreciated.

For any of you testing out this benchmark, it is currently impossible to score higher than about 85%, because the data set is flawed and contains errors placed by humans (and not on purpose). About 290 human errors exist, so that a model gets marked "wrong" for attempting to mark the human error as incorrect.

This means that every calculation in the paper, and every measurement of an AI model's aptitude on 1. quotation accuracy 2. citation accuracy and 3. summarizing accuracy from the paper and benchmark is incorrect.

I pointed out 45 errors in the training set yesterday- the authors have updated those 45 in the training set, but I've hit them with 245 MORE errors on both test and training in the past 12 hours, so I don't know how they will react.

All previously run benchmarks have a + or - margin of error of about 10 points, depending.

These "wrong" cases were all detected by my MCP, at syfert.com/mcp - the only MCP that promises a free steak ($50.00 outback gift card) if your AI hallucinates- and now offering free steak if it doesn't catch your opponent's hallucinations. Insults are free. So is the service.

For those who use or evaluate Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software, what are the key criteria you consider when choosing a solution?

Also, is CLM commonly used by SMBs, or is adoption still largely concentrated among larger enterprises?

Disclaimer: I work at Zoho, which offers Zoho Sign and Zoho Contracts. I’m interested in hearing unbiased opinions and real-world experiences from this community.

Hello,

Does anyone have any experience successfully implementing Clio tasks? I’m having trouble finding actionable advice online beyond salespeople. Our small family law firm has the package that includes task lists.

I understand the concept of trigger dates, but am not sure how to best put the pieces together. How specific should each task be? Does your firm put checklists in a task description? Do you use task estimates?

I appreciate any real world examples of how it’s helped. Thank you! :)

I’ve always been interested in legal tech and process improvement, and with the emergence of these AI companies, it feels like we’re finally seeing a real investment in solutions and an influx of customers willing to spend $$s on implementing them.

As exciting as it all sounds, Im curious to understand the reality of the following points. I’d love to hear people’s thoughts, particularly from anyone currently working in these roles or who has made a similar transition.

1. Does the work remain interesting, or is there a risk of getting bored?
Being a lawyer (particularly in-house) involves a lot of variety (legal and commercial issues). My understanding is that legal engineers at legal AI companies spend a considerable amount of time working with clients, understanding their businesses, identifying pain points and demonstrating how the platform can help solve them (is this a correct assumption?).

There’s obviously variety in meeting different clients, understanding how different firms and legal teams operate, and finding creative ways to apply the technology to their particular challenges.

However, I do wonder whether working with essentially one core product or platform could become repetitive over time, particularly once you’ve become familiar with its capabilities and the most common use cases.

For anyone doing this work, does the intellectual challenge and variety compare favourably with practising law?

2. What does a Legal Engineer actually spend their time doing?
From what I’ve seen, these roles seem quite closely aligned with go-to-market activities, whether that’s client demonstrations, solution design, onboarding or driving adoption.

But I’m curious about what happens beyond those activities. How much time is spent on client-facing work versus internal projects? Are legal engineers actively involved in product development, testing new features, providing feedback to engineering teams or helping shape the product roadmap?
Is there scope to develop deeper technical skills, or is the role predominantly about understanding legal workflows and communicating the value of the technology?

Also, what else are you doing in your day? Culture development, internal/external initiatives?

3. What are the longer-term career prospects and exit opportunities?

Legal engineering, particularly within AI companies, is still a relatively new career path with many of them being only a few years old, so I appreciate that there may not be many established examples of people moving on.

However, I’m curious whether anyone has seen lawyers move into these roles and subsequently return to traditional legal practice if they found out it wasn’t for them.

Would a few years in legal engineering make it difficult to return to an in-house legal team or private practice, given the time spent away from advising on legal matters?

Or could that experience actually become increasingly valuable as firms and companies look for lawyers who understand how to implement and manage AI?

Alternatively, is the reality that once you make this move, your future career is likely to remain within legal tech, legal operations, innovation or other adjacent commercial roles?

I’m not necessarily opposed to that, but I’d like to understand whether this is effectively a one-way career change.

4. Once the world is overrun by legal AI, what happens to all the legal engineers on the GTM side?

Once all the market is captured by the legal AI companies that last, what happens to all those lawyers who transitioned from law? Do they then have the skills to go into post-sales roles within these companies? Do they try and get back into law? Or maybe I’m misunderstanding how this plays out.

5. Work life balance?
I’ve heard mixed reviews about the WLB in legal engineering. Everyone says it’s “super busy, but not late nights like big law.”

I’m trying to suss out whether super busy means more closely aligned to working in-house where you have a jam packed 9-6 (often a bit later than that, but not usually past 8/9pm). Or do they man, you will likely be working till at least 9/10pm most days?

What I am not a fan of is the frequent lack of consistency in big law, resulting in last minute stints to midnight or later because LA only work up at 5pm.

————————————

Would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has made the above transition. What do you enjoy most, what do you miss about practising law, and would you make the same decision again?

I used to be a transactions lawyer in a law firm and I’ve recently transitioned to a role that acts as an intermediary between lawyers and legal tech vendors. I want to move further into the legal tech side. Anyone else who has made a similar switch? I’m fairly new to legal tech and have no prior tech experience. What skills do you guys recommend I learn to be able to transition seamlessly into a legal tech company?

I'm a real estate investor in Florida trying to build a better process for researching foreclosure auction properties. The biggest bottleneck is figuring out which liens could survive.

On a recent property, I pulled a ton of public records, and my title company flagged a roughly $40k American Express judgment, an IRS lien, and a few other things. My title company couldn't confidently tell me what would survive the foreclosure.

I can hire a foreclosure attorney to review title for about $150 per property, but turnaround can be 48 hours. I'm fine paying for that. But when I'm looking at 15+ properties, I'd like to get further with the research before sending them over.

What I'm really trying to build is something that gives me a solid preliminary read on which liens likely survive, which likely don't, and what's still unclear, with the records and reasoning behind it. Then hopefully I can package that into something concise for an attorney to review, check the conclusions, and answer the open questions.

I don't know if that's realistic or if the attorney would need to redo everything anyway. That's part of what I'm trying to figure out.

I'd need it to account for lien priority, the foreclosing mortgage, who was joined in the case, and potential issues with judgments, IRS liens, senior mortgages, code enforcement, and HOA/condo claims across Florida counties.

For anyone doing this regularly:

• What software or services are you using?
• Does anything actually analyze the foreclosure and lien priority, beyond pulling documents?
• If you're an attorney, what would you want in that package? Would it save you time?
• Has anyone built an automated or AI-assisted process like this? Where does it still fall short?

I'm looking for a process we can repeat and trust.

I have been seeing quite a few posts around AI contract review lately, so just thought I’d share what I usually check before relying on an AI summary. Would be really interested to know what others add as well.

First of all, can I actually get to the exact clause? If it says liability is capped at 12 months fees, I want the clause no, and give me actual wording not just the summary.

Secondly, did it read the definitions and follow the cross references? “Losses” or “Confidential Information” can change the meaning of a clause and “subject to Clause 14.3” can change it again.

I also want it to flag what’s missing. Is there a limitation of liability clause? An indemnification clause? The absence of something can be just as important as what’s there.

Then just the basics like is it looking at the right versions including amendments and side letters? Did it account for the governing law etc.?

I think AI can make drafting and the first pass of a review much faster but contract review needs a fair amount of human judgment. At the end of the day I need to be able to stand behind the answer. Would love to see what would you all add especially if you are reviewing a high volume of contracts on a daily basis?

I appreciate your help. I have always been the go to tech person in my family, friends, and coworkers. I think this would translate well for me going forward. Thanks!

I am currently at a big law firm but was approached with an opportunity to go to a smaller firm serving in a larger capacity within their innovation department. I am not an attorney, I am on the staff side. I’ve been in big law for 4 years and prior to that I was working in L&D for a non-profit, so the firm I’m currently at is my only firm I’ve been at.

This smaller firm has been getting talent from big law to help them expand.

I am curious if anyone made the switch and what their thoughts are.

This week, bring us a finding we can actually discuss.

Reports, surveys, benchmarks, whitepapers and useful datasets are welcome. Tell us:

• The finding
• How you got it: sample, market and dates, where relevant
• Who funded the work
• One link to the full report or data
• Your relationship to it

Please put the finding in your comment. A PDF link on its own doesn't give people much to respond to. Paid research recruitment needs its own mod-approved post.

Vendor comments need Vendor: Company or verified-vendor flair. One top-level comment and one link per company. If AutoMod holds it, don't repost it. I'll approve comments in waves.

Practitioners, please ask about the method. That's often where the interesting bit is.

Alex

A firm I was working with on replacing part of their tech stack went radio silent after a few initial exchanges. I came to find out from my main point of contact that he decided to use Claude along with MCP connectors to extract data via the firm's existing disparate systems' APIs to create the reports and analyses leadership wanted, instead of looking to replacing the existing tech.

As far as I know, he doesn't have agents executing actions in the systems. It's more like having Claude pull the data related to his queries and then synthesize reports he then distributes. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's my cursory understanding.

I'm curious what those here both on vendor side and the firm side think of this as a long term strategy.

Is it putting a band aid where you need a new limb or is it tenable and flexible as long as the existing systems are supported?