LegalTech shifts focus toward AI reliability and ROI

The legal technology sector is shifting from speculative AI adoption toward a focus on measurable return on investment (ROI) and technical reliability. In litigation and electronic discovery (ESI), the primary risk is not the documents AI identifies, but the ones it fails to find due to messy data, inconsistent metadata, or complex file structures.

As a result, legal buyers are moving beyond polished demonstrations. Prospective clients are increasingly testing AI tools against their own specific files and test questions to ensure performance under real-world conditions. This demand for accountability is forcing vendors to demonstrate genuine value rather than just potential.

Furthermore, the integration of agentic AI is providing greater visibility into departmental workflows. In some instances, such as insurance claims processing, the implementation of AI has significantly increased productivity, moving manual processing rates from approximately 150 claims per person per month to roughly 700.