Harvey runs $1,000+ a seat. EvenUp bills $200-800 per demand letter. Here's what ten AI legal tools actually cost, published where it's published, and who each one is really built for.
Most "best AI tools for lawyers" lists are written for firms with a procurement department and a seven-figure tech budget. That's not a solo practice. Per the ABA's 2024 Solo & Small Firm TechReport, 74% of solo attorneys spend under $3,000 a year on all software combined -- roughly $250 a month, across every tool in the practice, not just AI. This list starts from that number, not from what the enterprise vendors want to sell you.
Line up the published pricing for the well-known AI legal tools and a gap appears. Below about $100/mo, the market is prompt libraries and practice-management add-ons. Above about $199/mo, it's enterprise and mid-market monoliths built for multi-seat firms. There's a wide band in between that's almost empty -- which is notable, because a $250/mo total software budget can't absorb a single $499 or $639 seat and still pay for anything else.
| Tool | Price | Who it's actually built for |
|---|---|---|
| Harvey | ~$1,000+/seat/mo; $50k-300k contracts | Enterprise and large mid-market firms with a procurement process |
| CoCounsel (Thomson Reuters) | $104-639/user/mo | Firms already inside the Thomson Reuters ecosystem |
| Lexis+ AI | est. $128-494/mo | Firms already paying for Lexis research subscriptions |
| Paxton AI | $499/user/mo | Firms with an enterprise-scale legal-AI line item |
| Spellbook | est. $99-350/user/mo; opaque pricing, seat minimums | Transactional teams that can fill a multi-seat minimum |
| Clio Duo | $39-59/mo | Existing Clio practice-management subscribers only -- it's an add-on, not standalone |
| EvenUp | est. $200-800 per demand letter | PI firms buying one document at a time, not a monthly subscription |
| The Legal Prompts | $29 / $49 / $99 / $399 tiers | Solos who want a prompt library -- no runtime or agent execution included |
| Legal Skills HQ (founding catalog) | $29/mo founding seat | Solo attorneys who want a preconfigured, running skill set -- not just prompts -- at a solo budget |
Pricing shown is published or independently estimated where a vendor does not publish a rate card, current as of this research. Several vendors change pricing without notice -- verify current terms directly with the vendor before budgeting.
Everything above $199/mo -- Harvey, CoCounsel, Lexis+ AI, Paxton AI, and Spellbook at the high end of its range -- is built and priced for firms with multiple seats to fill and a budget line for legal AI specifically. That's a legitimate way to buy software. It's just not a solo attorney's budget.
Below $100/mo, the honest options are narrower than the marketing suggests. Clio Duo is real, but it's an add-on: you need an existing Clio subscription before the $39-59/mo even applies. The Legal Prompts is real too, and cheap, but it's a library -- you get prompts to run yourself in whatever AI tool you already have, not a preconfigured agent that executes a workflow end to end.
EvenUp sits outside the subscription comparison entirely: $200-800 per demand letter is a per-document price, so the total cost scales with your caseload rather than staying flat. Worth knowing if you're comparing it to anything billed monthly.
We're one entry in this comparison, not a neutral judge of it, so take this for what it is: a disclosed position, not a verdict. The founding catalog is priced at $29/mo -- inside the solo software budget, not above it -- and it's a preconfigured, running skill set rather than a prompt library you operate by hand. That combination -- runtime, not just prompts, at a price a solo budget can actually absorb -- is the empty band in the table above. Every output it produces is a draft for attorney review, the same standard that should apply to any AI tool on this list regardless of price.
Below roughly $100/mo, the published options are mostly prompt libraries like The Legal Prompts ($29-$399 tiers) or add-ons to existing practice-management software like Clio Duo ($39-59/mo, requires an active Clio subscription). Neither is a standalone running agent -- they're a library of prompts, or a feature bolted onto software you already pay for.
Most of the well-known names -- Harvey, CoCounsel, Lexis+ AI, Paxton AI, Spellbook -- are built and priced for mid-market and enterprise firms with multiple seats and a procurement process, not a solo budget. Harvey alone runs $50k-300k contracts. That's the price of the underlying research and workflow infrastructure, sold at enterprise seat counts.
It's a narrow band. Most tools priced for a solo budget are prompt libraries with no runtime -- you still copy the prompt and run it yourself. A preconfigured, running skill set at a solo price point is unusual enough that it's worth checking exactly what a given product includes before assuming "AI tool" means the same thing at $29/mo and at $499/mo.
Per the ABA's 2024 Solo & Small Firm TechReport, 74% of solos spend under $3,000 a year on all software combined -- roughly $250/mo across every tool in the practice, not just AI. A single $499/mo or $1,000+/seat/mo product would consume that entire budget by itself.
No. Every tool discussed here -- regardless of price -- produces a draft for attorney review, not a finished or filed work product. None of them replace the attorney's judgment, verification, or sign-off.
Ten preloaded skills, running on a private workspace in your own cloud account, for $29/mo as a founding member -- not a prompt to copy, a workflow that runs. Every output is a draft for attorney review.
Join the founding member list Or take the free privilege self-audit