Client intake:
6 best legal software platforms for 2025
The legal sector is undergoing a digital transformation.
Client onboarding, litigation, and M&A matters all benefit from the right technology. However, firms must carefully consider which platforms are worth the investment. It may seem ideal to use multiple platforms to improve efficiency. But an overload of platforms can have the opposite effect, leading to convoluted workflows and drained resources. Here, we’ve compiled a list of the six best legal software platforms available on the market, their use cases and benefits.
TL;DR
The legal sector’s digital transformation emphasises the need for efficient AI-driven platforms. While multiple platforms seem beneficial, they can complicate workflows. We’ve compiled the top six legal software platforms:
- Xapien: AI-powered research for informed decision-making.
- LexisNexis: Offers legal management tools and past case data.
- Imprima: AI analysis, virtual data rooms, and document summaries.
- Kira: Efficient contract review and collaboration tools.
- Luminance: AI automation for contract review and drafting.
- ComplyAdvantage: AI-driven fraud and AML detection for financial transactions.
While all of the above platforms deliver great value in streamlining the legal processes, their scope of analysis is limited to existing data sets, such as contracts, sanctions and watchlist databases. Xapien is the only platform that scours through compliance datasets, corporate records, and the entire indexed web to derive insights from open-source information.
1. Xapien
Xapien is a research platform that can scour through millions of publicly available online information sources to derive insights that are relevant to a particular subject. With AI-based and machine learning functionalities, Xapien quickly processes and consolidates vast, unstructured sources to deliver highly detailed yet easy-to-digest reports. The platform’s ability to consolidate and process unstructured data makes it a valuable resource to inform any legal proceeding. Generating in-depth background reports on any person or organisation within minutes, Xapien brings efficiency and clarity to the client intake process, but can also be used to aid with M&A proceedings or informal discovery in litigation. This saves firms from having to invest time and money into various systems for all of these processes.
For example, Xapien supports lawyers in making stronger decisions around client intake in the current complex sanction landscape. UK law firms are currently facing scrutiny for working with Russian oligarchs in light of the Ukraine invasion — a practice that is technically legal, but ethically dubious. [2] This scrutiny has proved so potentially damaging that these lawyers are now facing negative consequences for working with these clients. [3]The most important question law firms can ask themselves has shifted from “can we work with this client?” to “should we work with this client?”. Xapien enables and empowers that decision-making.
Xapien’s research power is so far-reaching that it can uncover dubious and potentially damaging connections that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. It gives a clear, thorough picture of a potential client, enabling you to make fully informed decisions, quickly.
What Xapien offers
- AI and machine learning functionalities to enable research at a size and scale that would be impossible for manual researchers.
- Vast research capabilities that can be used across a range of different legal use cases, from counterparty research in litigation to due diligence as part of client intake.
- Intelligent analysis of millions of publicly available online data sources to only draw information that’s relevant to the intended subject.
[2] London Lawfare: how lawyers helped Russia’s super-rich | Financial Times
[3] Calls for US to issue visa bans for UK lawyers enabling Russian oligarchs | The Guardian
2. LexisNexis
An expansive dataset of past legal decisions is the key selling point and primary function of LexisNexis. Lawyers looking into previous cases can find details to inform their existing and future legal strategies. Lexis also offers legal management tools and other functions.
What LexisNexis offers
- A variety of legal management solutions within a single platform, including document creation and expert analytics.
- Automated contract drafting to ensure a high level of quality and regulations are met while saving time.
- News and media monitoring that allows users to stay up-to-date on important legal news and changes in legislation.
3. Imprima
Imprima is an AI-powered analysis and summary platform that can process and organise large amounts of documentation and data inputted by the user. Imprima’s main capability is in serving as a virtual “data room”, to assist lawyers in centralising a mass library of legal documents.
What Imprima offers
- Smart Redaction and Smart Indexing features to aid in contract documentation and the ability to create a virtual data room.
- Generates AI-powered automated summaries of legal documents to save on time and costs if they were to be done manually.
- A Smart Review feature that scours through contract documentations to quickly find what users need to review.
4. Kira
Kira is another platform that aids in reviewing a large number of contracts efficiently and effectively. Its document review functions reduce the workload on manual review teams and can save on resources whilst maintaining accuracy. Kira also provides Donor research tools for team management within its system scope.
What Kira offers
- Machine learning technology to review and analyse contracts at speed.
- The ability for legal teams to communicate, delegate, synchronise, and collaborate within the Kira system.
- Quick identification and extraction of specific clauses, provisions, and data points from contracts to then be manually reviewed.
Suggested reading: Technology has fundamentally changed how lawyers can conduct their services for the better. Read our explainer How AI can streamline your client intake process for more insight and to find out how you can realise the benefits of AI for your firm.
5. Luminance
Luminance is an AI-powered platform that seeks to automate legal workflows. Aside from high-volume contract review capabilities, Luminance can also automate contract drafting. It assists lawyers in handling over 25 types of contractual reviews.
What Luminance offers
- A simple plug-and-play functionality that allows lawyers with little to no technical training to realise the platform’s benefits effectively and quickly.
- Analysis of documents on a conceptual level, allowing users to easily search for “conceptually similar” documents.
- Advanced document and clause comparison technology that lawyers and paralegals can use for redaction, remediation, and reporting.
6. ComplyAdvantage
ComplyAdvantage performs AI-driven detection of fraud and anti-money laundering (AML) activity. ComplyAdvantage carries out PEPs and sanctions checks, watchlist checks, and some adverse media checks. Their sanction lists are automated so they stay fully up-to-date. This is a valuable capability in a world where sanction lists are growing rapidly and changing by the day.
What ComplyAdvantage offers
- The ability to monitor and screen financial transactions in real-time so that users never miss out on critical updates.
- Donor Research Tools for automating and effectively optimising the onboarding and monitoring of new clients.
- Know Your Business functions to help map out company ownership and control using combined AML and corporate structure searches.
Xapien is the only platform that does it for you
While all of the above platforms deliver great value in streamlining the legal processes, their scope of analysis is limited to existing data sets, such as contracts, or sanctions and watchlist databases. Beyond search tools, growth-minded lawyers need a research tool that can perform extensive analysis in return for a greater scope of insights. Xapien is the only platform available that fits the bill. As well as scouring through existing datasets, from PEPs and sanctions lists to corporate records, Xapien scours the entire web and derives insights from open-source information. This capacity allows it to streamline and enhance legal processes across the firm.
Our platform’s key functions include:
- The ability to address both structured and open-source data at ease, with the assurance that all research follows compliance and regulation protocols.
- Delivery of insights that are relevant to the intended subject. This can be a few simple terms of context that are provided by the user and used to disambiguate between false positives.
- Final reports that are comprehensive yet digestible and shareable, and help empower lawyers in making better-informed decisions.
Xapien is the single, all-in platform of choice to help your law firm capitalise on its budget spend and see efficiencies across the board. Book a demo with Xapien today to turbo-charge your legal research.
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