The legal industry isn’t known for moving fast.
While tech startups were out here reinventing the way humans socialize, work out, and even order coffee, legal teams were still emailing Word docs back and forth like it was 2005.
Then Artificial Intelligence (AI) showed up.
At first, it was more of a curiosity. It could help search legal databases and automate basic tasks, but let’s just say no lawyers were losing sleep over it.
Fast forward to 2024, and AI is actively shaping how legal teams operate, slashing time spent on contract review, eliminating compliance blind spots, and making workflows faster without forcing legal teams to change how they work.
SpotDraft is at the forefront of this shift. We’re building legal-first AI that fits seamlessly into the way teams already work.
But how did we get here? And more importantly, where are we going next? Let's take a deep dive into the journey of AI in legal tech and what SpotDraft has planned for the future.
The evolution of AI in legal tech
AI in legal started out like a junior associate on their first day; eager but clueless. It could handle basic automation, and maybe pull out key clauses, but nothing much beyond that.
Fast forward to today, and AI is actively making legal teams’ work faster, smarter, and less soul-crushing. Here’s how we got here:
2011: IBM Watson plays Jeopardy, and lawyers start paying attention
In February 2011, IBM's Watson made headlines by defeating Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.
That was the moment AI proved it could process human language with some actual intelligence. Lawyers, even the cautious skeptics, looked at Watson and thought: If it can master trivia, maybe it can handle case law?
Spoiler: Not yet. Watson’s big moment was more of a proof of concept. But it planted the idea that AI could do more than just crunch numbers; it could understand legal text, or at least pretend convincingly.
2016: AI starts law school (kind of) with ROSS Intelligence
By 2016, AI-powered legal research became a thing. ROSS Intelligence launched an AI-driven legal assistant, promising to make research faster and more precise. Instead of flipping through a mountain of case law, lawyers could just ask ROSS a legal question and get answers based on existing precedents.
For a while, it worked. Big firms experimented with ROSS, and it looked like AI research assistants were here to stay. Then Westlaw sued them for allegedly using their data improperly, and well… ROSS didn't make it out alive.
But the idea stuck: AI could actually be useful in legal research.
2018-2019: AI learns to actually read contracts
Up until this point, AI in legal tech was mostly a glorified search engine. It could pull cases, sure, but it didn’t understand them. That started changing when Natural Language Processing (NLP) got an upgrade.
“If you try to read a complex contract carefully, from front to back, and expect to understand it on just the first read-through, that’s wishful thinking (and potentially very messy).”
~ Sterling Miller, CEO and Senior Counsel, Hilgers Graben PLLC
Ten Things: How to Read a Contract
Now, AI could actually read contracts and spot key clauses. Legal teams could scan documents faster, extract data automatically, and even flag risks. This was also when AI-powered contract review tools started gaining traction because no one wanted to manually compare 200 pages of indemnification clauses.
2021-2022: AI learns to write, and lawyers panic (briefly)
“To me, AI is the next internet. If you're not using it, you're falling behind. AI is going to move rapidly in a direction where it will help a lot of us make processes more efficient. I don't think the GC goes away. AI is a tool but it doesn't replace decision making."
~ Celaena Powder, VP of Legal, Seismic
From Security to Sales: Building Cross-functional Bridges
Enter OpenAI’s GPT-3. Suddenly, AI wasn’t just analyzing contracts; it was writing them. Need a new clause? AI could draft one. Need a summary? AI could generate it in seconds. This was the moment legal AI went from “useful tool” to “maybe we should be a little worried.”
The big question at the time: Is AI going to replace lawyers?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: AI still needs human oversight. It can draft a contract, but should you trust it blindly? Absolutely not. (Unless you enjoy lawsuits.) But what it could do was take over the most painful parts of legal work—summarizing redlines, checking for missing clauses, and enforcing playbooks automatically.
“While many fear AI will replace them, I firmly believe it holds more potential to augment humans, especially in the legal profession. With the right oversight, tools like these can enable legal professionals to become exponentially more efficient at high-value work.”
~ Tanguy Chau CEO & Founder of Paxton.ai
Unlocking The 10x Lawyer: How Generative AI Can Transform The Legal Landscape
2023-2024: AI becomes a full-fledged member of the legal team
By now, AI was doing more than assisting; it was actively managing contract workflows.
- AI-driven contract redlining saved legal teams hours
- Compliance checks happened in real-time instead of after-the-fact disasters
- AI started tracking contract risk, flagging potential issues before they became real problems
At this point, in-house legal teams stopped asking, ‘Should we use AI?’ and started asking, ‘How do we integrate it into everything we do?’
2025: SpotDraft’s vision—AI that actually thinks ahead
“AI has the potential to solve two huge problems all legal departments face: 1) lack of budget and 2) lack of manpower. If the use of AI can provide less expensive legal services (either used internally or purchased through a law firm), the value is immediately apparent. If the use of AI can free up current staff from spending time on transactional-tasks, the value (if not immediately apparent) is exponentially greater than merely paying less for legal services. Freeing up attorney time gives you and your business clients more access to better and more involved legal services (i.e., attorneys who can dedicate more time to thinking through problems and advising clients). The combination of these benefits will allow in-house legal departments to actually deliver on the old CEO/CFO demand of ‘doing more with less.’”
~ Sterling Miller, CEO of Hilgers Graben PLLC
Ten Things: Artificial Intelligence – What Every Legal Department Really Needs to Know
Here’s where things are headed next:
- AI will predict risks before they happen
- Contract approvals won’t be manual; AI will recommend the right workflow based on past deals
- AI will deliver insights before you even need them
The future of legal AI is intelligence. AI won’t replace lawyers, but it will make them 10x more efficient.
And at SpotDraft, we’re making sure AI is a must-have for every legal team that wants to stay ahead. Our plan is to be the leading platform for legal work automation, transforming the way legal teams operate and deliver value to their organizations.
Also read: Global AI Regulation: The World's Approach to Ethical AI Use
What SpotDraft has done in legal AI so far
2024 was the year we stopped just talking about AI in legal tech and actually built real, tangible solutions that made legal teams faster, smarter, and less bogged down by manual work.
Here’s what we rolled out:
#1 AI-powered contract analysis
Legal teams don’t have time to play detective with contracts. That’s why we built VerifAI, a tool that makes contract review instant and automated:
- VerifAI in SpotDraft: AI scans contracts in real-time, checking them against your playbooks and flagging compliance issues before they turn into problems
- VerifAI across historical contracts: VerifAI scans older agreements, checks them against updated policies, and flags anything that doesn’t align with your latest standards
#2 Smart contract workflows
With AI-powered workflows, legal teams can get instant answers and track changes effortlessly.
- Ask AI on contracts: Just type a question, “What’s the termination clause in this contract?” and AI instantly pulls up the relevant section, with highlights
- AI-powered summary for redlines: AI summarizes all redlines automatically, so you can see what’s changed without digging through every document
#3 Efficiency and cost savings
Legal teams are stretched thin, so we made sure AI cuts out repetitive work and saves companies real money.
- Automated metadata extraction: AI pulls key data from contracts automatically. No more manually filling in contract dates, payment terms, or renewal deadlines. The data is accurate and instant
- Conditional approval routing: AI determines who needs to approve what, based on contract metadata
And we’re just getting started.
Up next? AI that does even more thinking for you: flagging risks before they escalate, optimizing contract approvals before you even realize there’s a bottleneck, and integrating into your workflows like it was built specifically for your team.
How SpotDraft’s AI helped Gameskraft scale legal operations
Gameskraft’s legal team, managing 300+ contracts annually with just five people, struggled with scattered contract storage, slow approvals, and manual data entry that wasted hours every week.
Every contract request meant digging through emails, tracking versions manually, and handling routine agreements that should have been automated. They needed a system that could eliminate inefficiencies and give legal and business teams better control over contracts.
“Thanks to SpotDraft, we save over 10 hours every week. Our contract lifecycle management efficiency has increased by 70-75%.”
~ Aditi Kapoor, Director, Legal, Gameskraft
How Gameskraft Increased Contracting Efficiency by 75% with SpotDraft
AI automated metadata extraction, making it easy to find contract terms instantly. Business teams gained self-serve capabilities, handling standard contracts without waiting on legal.
"My favorite feature of SpotDraft is the AI that updates contract metadata. It saves me so much time daily as a legal professional by capturing essential contract information after it's signed and executed."
~ Meghna De, Associate Counsel, GameskraftHow Gameskraft Increased Contracting Efficiency by 75% with SpotDraft
AI-powered workflows streamlined contract requests tracked approvals in real time, and ensured compliance without manual oversight.
SpotDraft reed Gameskraft’s legal team to focus on strategic work, ensuring compliance while eliminating bottlenecks.
Read the full case study
SpotDraft’s AI Roadmap for 2025
Legal teams don’t need more tools. They need better tools; ones that actively improve the way work gets done. AI will start making legal work smarter, faster, and easier in ways that were impossible before.
SpotDraft’s AI will move beyond simply answering questions or highlighting clauses. It will predict contract risks, optimize workflows, and ensure compliance before things go wrong.
Here’s what’s coming.
#1 AI that predicts and prevents risks
Legal risks don’t announce themselves. They sit buried in old contracts, hidden inside vague clauses, waiting for the right moment to cause contract chaos. The usual process?
Lawyers spend hours sifting through agreements to catch what AI should have flagged instantly.
SpotDraft AI will handle that risk detection for you.
- Historical contract risk scanning: AI will go through past contracts, checking them against updated policies. If something no longer meets compliance standards, it gets flagged
- Real-time compliance checks: AI will analyze contracts as they’re being drafted or reviewed. The moment it spots non-standard clauses, risky terms, or missing approvals, it raises the alarm
Also read: How To Mitigate Privacy Issues Around AI: 6 Best Practices
#2 AI that enables smarter decision-making
Legal decisions shouldn’t be made in the dark. Contracts leave a trail—what terms get renegotiated most often, which clauses cause slowdowns, and where risks tend to hide. SpotDraft’s AI will turn that history into strategy.
- Contract data insights that actually matter: AI will track patterns across contracts. If certain clauses keep getting rejected, legal teams will know before the next negotiation. Instead of reacting to roadblocks, teams will anticipate them and adjust their playbooks accordingly
- A smart AskAI that remembers: In 2025, you will be able to ask AI questions about your contracts and get instant answers. Plus, ASk AI will remember your previous questions to provide more semantic answers
#3 AI that integrates seamlessly
Legal tech is frustrating when it forces teams to work around it. The best AI works inside existing workflows, making approvals, contract execution, and compliance checks frictionless.
- Intelligent contract approvals: AI will recommend approval flows based on deal size, risk level, and past approvals. No more unnecessary escalations or contracts getting stuck in limbo because someone wasn’t sure who needed to sign off
- Obligation tracking without manual effort: AI will extract obligations from contracts and create reminders automatically. If a renewal review is due in six months, you won’t need to set a calendar event, AI will make sure the right people know when to act
SpotDraft AI is designed to eliminate blind spots. Legal teams won’t need to rely on memory, outdated spreadsheets, or last-minute fire drills. They’ll know exactly what’s happening with every contract, every obligation, every risk.
SpotDraft’s vision for AI in 2025
“I really believe that if AI is deployed in the right way, it’s going to allow us to elevate and to focus on the right aspects of the work, the work that offers the most value”
~ Mary O’Carroll, Chief Operating Officer at Goodwill
Why advances in AI present a golden opportunity for legal ops
While AI continues its march into the legal arena, one thing remains clear: robots aren't here to steal lawyers' jobs. Instead, they're empowering legal professionals to work smarter, not harder.
Across the world, law firms and in-house teams are integrating AI to draft contracts, monitor compliance, and even assist in dispute resolution. What once seemed like science fiction is happening right now.
SpotDraft’s vision for AI in 2025 is simple: make legal work smarter.
- No more repetitive legal tasks: AI handles them so your team can focus on strategy, negotiations, and high-impact work
- Stronger compliance and risk management: AI scans contracts against playbooks, catches deviations, and flags potential risks before they become problems
- Instant access to legal intelligence: Instead of wasting hours searching for contract terms, AI delivers the answer in seconds, making every decision more informed and data-driven
By the end of 2025, legal AI will be the foundation of modern legal operations. And SpotDraft is leading the way.
