For years, the biggest challenge facing in-house legal teams was getting budget approved for legal technology.
Today, a growing number of General Counsel and Heads of Legal are facing a different problem.
They are trying to work out whether they need the technology at all.
In conversations with legal leaders across Australia, Clario is hearing a common frustration. Some teams are locked into expensive legal technology contracts that have failed to meet expectations. Others invested significant time and effort implementing platforms that were supposed to transform the legal function, only to discover they were difficult to adopt, lacked key functionality or simply failed to deliver the promised return on investment.
At the same time, generative AI is changing the economics of legal technology.
Tasks that previously required dedicated software platforms can increasingly be supported through tools such as Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude or custom-built AI assistants.
Why this matters now
The timing matters because AI adoption inside corporate legal departments is accelerating quickly.
ACC and Everlaw’s 2025 research found that GenAI use in corporate law departments more than doubled in a year, rising from 23% in 2024 to 52% in 2025.
Five steps to choosing the right legal technology
The legal teams making the best technology decisions are not evaluating hundreds of vendors. They are following a structured process that quickly narrows the field and reduces implementation risk.
Step 1: Start with the problem, not the technologyOne of the most common mistakes legal teams make is falling in love with a product demonstration before they have clearly defined the problem they are trying to solve.
Start by asking:
- Where is the team losing time?
- Which workflows create the most friction?
- What work is repetitive, manual or difficult to scale?
- What would success actually look like?
- Is this a legal problem, a process problem, a data problem or a resourcing problem?
For example, you may be looking to improve:
- Contract lifecycle management
- Legal intake
- Matter management
- Knowledge retrieval
- Document automation
- External legal spend management
- Contract analytics
The most successful projects start with process mapping, not vendor meetings.
Step 2: Test whether generative AI can solve the problem firstBefore buying another platform, test whether existing AI tools can solve the problem.
This is particularly relevant for:
- Contract review and summarisation
- Email drafting
- Inbox triage
- Policy creation
- Internal legal guidance
- Knowledge retrieval
- First drafts of routine advice
- Simple workflow automation
Dedicated platforms may still be the right answer for complex contract lifecycle management, enterprise matter management, e-billing, regulatory workflows or high-volume legal operations.
Before asking “Which platform should we buy?”, legal teams should ask: Can we solve this with AI first?
Step 3: Create a shortlist, not a longlistWhen creating a shortlist, consider:
- Core functionality
- AI capability
- Ease of implementation
- Security and confidentiality
- Integration with existing systems
- Budget
- Vendor support
- Data portability
- Contract flexibility
- Whether the tool solves one problem well or tries to solve ten poorly
“We don’t need more demos. We need a way to cut through the noise.”
Step 4: Run a proof of concept before signing a contractA proof of concept helps test:
- Real legal workflows
- Actual legal documents
- User experience
- Lawyer adoption
- Business stakeholder adoption
- Integration requirements
- Output quality
- Implementation effort
- Measurable benefits
If a vendor is unwilling to support a proper proof of concept, that tells you something.
Step 5: Evaluate implementation as carefully as the technology itselfAsk:
- Who owns the project internally?
- Who will champion adoption inside the legal team?
- What workflows need to change?
- What training is required?
- How will success be measured?
- What data needs to be cleaned or migrated?
- What happens if the tool does not deliver?
- Can we exit the contract if expectations are not met?
Where Clario can help
Through Clario’s Legal Tech Navigator, we have mapped more than 600 legal technology providers and created a structured way for legal teams to compare vendors, apply filters and generate tailored shortlists based on their specific requirements.
Through our legal secondment model, Clario can provide lawyers, legal operations specialists and AI consultants who can help evaluate technology, support implementation projects, build AI workflows and create the capacity needed to drive change.
The bottom line
The legal teams making the best decisions are not rushing into long-term contracts.
They are defining the problem, testing AI first, narrowing the market quickly, running proof of concepts and focusing just as much on implementation as selection.
In a market with more than 600 vendors competing for attention, clarity is often more valuable than choice.
