Vendors in this category rarely publish prices, which means most buyers negotiate without knowing what normal looks like. That asymmetry is deliberate and it is expensive.
This is not a price list. It is a guide to the structures you will be quoted, and to the costs that arrive after the licence.
The three pricing models
Per seat, per month
The dominant model, inherited from software generally. Predictable, easy to budget, easy to compare.
Its weakness is specific to AI products: you pay identically for the partner who logs in twice a month and the associate who lives in the tool. In most firms, usage distribution is heavily skewed, so seat pricing means paying full price for a large tail of near-dormant licences.
Negotiate: a true-up structure rather than a fixed count, so you can start narrow and add seats as usage proves itself. Resist annual commitments on seat numbers in year one.
Consumption
Priced by usage, whether that is documents processed, queries run, pages reviewed or tokens consumed. Aligns cost to value and is fairer for uneven usage.
Its weakness is budget unpredictability, which finance departments dislike intensely, and the fact that few buyers can forecast their own consumption before they have used the product.
Negotiate: a cap or a ceiling price, and a defined unit. “Per document” needs a definition. A 400-page agreement and a one-page NDA are not the same unit of work, and whether the vendor treats them as one will change your bill by an order of magnitude.
Enterprise agreement
A negotiated annual figure covering a defined scope. Standard above a certain firm size.
The risk is a scope that quietly excludes what you assumed was included. New modules, new practice areas, additional integrations and support tiers routinely sit outside.
Negotiate: the renewal cap, in writing, before signature. This is the single most valuable clause in the contract and the hardest to get afterwards.
The line items that are not in the first quote
Across implementations, the same items are underestimated.
Configuration and playbook building. For contract review specifically, encoding your positions is legal work done by senior people. Several weeks of attention is normal. It is the most commonly missed cost in the category.
Integration. Connecting to a document management system, an email environment or a billing platform is a project. Where a vendor quotes a professional services figure for this, treat it as a floor.
Data migration. Relevant mainly to CLM and repository products, and routinely the largest single implementation line.
Training. Not just the initial session. Ongoing training as the product changes, and onboarding for every new joiner. Under ABA Formal Opinion 512, time spent learning a tool generally cannot be billed to clients, so this lands squarely on firm overhead.
The internal owner. Someone has to run this. In firms where nobody owns the tool, usage decays to a handful of enthusiasts within two quarters. That person’s time is a real cost whether or not anyone accounts for it.
Security and diligence review. For firms with institutional clients, the vendor security assessment is a genuine cost in professional time.
What the money is buying, in market context
It helps to know what is happening on the other side of the table. Harvey raised $200 million at an $11 billion valuation in March 2026. Legora raised $550 million at $5.55 billion the same month. Clio raised $500 million at $5 billion alongside a $1 billion acquisition.
Companies at that stage are optimising for growth and logos, not margin. That is leverage, and it is time-limited. Firms negotiating now are negotiating in the most favourable conditions this market is likely to offer.
Building a business case that survives contact with finance
Three numbers, honestly derived.
Current cost of the task. Volume multiplied by time multiplied by fully loaded hourly cost. Use a real measurement, not an estimate from the person who wants the tool.
Expected cost after. The same calculation using measured pilot results, not vendor claims. If you have not run a structured pilot, you do not have this number.
Total cost of ownership. Licence plus every line item above, over three years, with the renewal at list price rather than your introductory rate.
Then be honest about what the saving actually is. In a firm billing hourly, time saved is not money earned unless that time is redeployed onto billable work or the firm’s pricing changes. At present 86 per cent of solo firms and 78 per cent of small firms have not adjusted pricing after adopting AI, and only 18 per cent of organisations measure return on investment at all. A business case that assumes the saving materialises automatically is a business case that will not survive its first review.
Five things to get into the contract
- A renewal price cap, expressed as a percentage.
- Data terms: no training on your inputs, defined retention, defined deletion, named access.
- Assignment and change of control, given how much consolidation this market is seeing.
- Data export on exit, in a defined format, at no additional charge.
- A defined unit of consumption, if you are on a consumption model.
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