Indian legal AI firms are increasingly attracting global interest. Last week,in an epochal event,home-grown legal technology company CaseMine, joined a select group of international AI leaders that have crossed OpenAI’s 10 billion token usage milestone, making it one of just 141 organisations worldwide to do so. This is equivalent to the system processing over 12 million pages of legal text, illustrating how intensively domestic legal-AI tools are being used.
Legal technology in India is expanding rapidly, with several startups, rising investments and experimentation in AI models built for Indian legal requirements. According to Tracxn, India has 954 legaltech companies including 87 funded ventures which have raised around $ 800 million thus far.
What do legal experts say?
Legal experts note that AI has strong relevance to India’s legal context and that local firms are increasingly building tools tuned to Indian law. According to this view, the number of legal-tech startups has grown, with a notable subset working on AI and attracting interest from law firms. Experts believe that home-grown companies are becoming central to domestic legal workflows.
Professor Dr. Ashish Bharadwaj, Founding Dean, BITS Law School, identifies unique Indian conditions as a major catalyst for innovation. “Indian AI legal tech companies are successfully using generative AI, deep learning and natural language programming based solutions to challenges that are unique to India. These include huge case backlogs, abysmally low number of judges and an estimated pendency of 5.5 years for a high court case. English being the official language for the Supreme Court, 25 High Courts and authoritative legislative texts enables Indian tech companies to scale globally,” he says.
What do lawyers say?
Affordability is another differentiator highlighted by experts. According to a top lawyer, “Because Indian legal-AI firms are typically developed in India and tuned to Indian law, they may offer cost efficiencies and legal-system alignment that foreign players can struggle with, especially if foreign tools are oriented toward US, UK or European jurisdictions.” He notes that Indian offerings are often economical. For example, top foreign providers can reportedly charge up to Rs 1.4 crore for 100 annual subscriptions, while Manupatra, among the most widely used domestic platforms, offers annual access at about Rs 18,000.
Hands-on adoption support is another point that Indian companies emphasise. Shreshth Singh Tomar, founding member of Jurisphere, which works with top law firms including Veritas and CMS Indus Law, says that adoption is supported by close user training. “Customers are directly being handheld and trained by us. Usage of our platform is reducing litigation and even in-house AI teams of top-;isted companies have adopted Jurisphere.” He also claims that several Indian and global firms have migrated to from Western tools to Jurisphere, and that pilots are underway with more than 300 organisations globally. Tomar estimates that Jurisphere has a majority market share within its current operating segment. He attributes this to affordability, customisation and real-time support. “We are going global in a big way and are currently working across nine jurisdictions already by going really deep into output and real time testing. We are proud to be a Made in India solution built by lawyers for lawyers.”
Lucio, another Indian legal AI company with over 200 clients across 11 jurisdictions, positions itself differently. Co-founder Vasu Aggarwal says the firm’s competitive focus is international rather than domestic. “We are not competing directly with Indian AI players. As a leading legal AI company, our competition is the major global players, Harvey and Legora. Lucio is already deeply established here and so our current priority is global expansion, particularly across the US and UK.” He adds that the firm’s advantage lies in staying close to users, solving real problems and encouraging rapid adoption.
Trilegal, one of India’s top law firms, works with Lucio in combination with several other legal specific tools. Nikhil Narendran, Partner, TMT at Trilegal, explains the choice. “The kind of sector specific service level AI talent available in India is as good as anywhere in the world. Further tools are tailor made to our requirements apart from the very obvious cost advantage, not to mention the dedicated on-ground help available to us at all times. That said, we are not shut to using foreign service providers as well.”
Lex Consult founding partner Majid Afsar Siddiqi also endorses the domestic ecosystem. “The fact that legal tech tools are not expensive in India is leading to a burgeoning number of legal tech firms. A lot of thought is going behind Indian AI products. While Harvey is a brand Big Law can brag about, its customisation still needs to be tested given it works on a global template.
Large firms are nonetheless experimenting with foreign platforms. Top tier law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas has reportedly deployed Harvey across the firm. Naval Chopra, Partner at SAM, who led the selection process, explains, “Our selection of Harvey is not a comment on Indian AI talent, which is very good, but on Harvey’s suitability for SAM. It has been tested globally across top law firms and has the architecture we need for accuracy, privacy and integration.”
Legal biggie Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) has adopted a multi-tool approach. Komal Gupta, Chief Innovation Officer at CAM, says: “Tools like Legora and Microsoft Copilot have been rolled out across the firm, while CaseMine supports our lawyers with advanced research capabilities. Our evaluation criteria have never been about whether a solution is global or Indian. It is about whether it effectively addresses our use cases, improves efficiency and meets our quality and security standards.”
Specialised vertical platforms are emerging. Sakaar Yadav, founder of LexLegis AI, says his company now offers comprehensive case-law research across all areas of Indian law and has also expanded into U.S. laws. In addition to its research capabilities, LexLegis AI provides deep document interaction, enabling users to closely analyse and navigate their own legal documents. Its drafting features further allow users to create petitions, agreements, and replies to legal notices with ease. The company emphasises no hallucination across its ai inference model that is crucial in legal contexts, where inaccuracies in statutes or case citations can misrepresent legal positions, agreements and replies to legal notices.
Adoption, however, remains uneven. According to Suhas Baliga, founder of legal tech firm Axara AI, India is still in the early stage of the adoption cycle. “ In my opinion, nobody even has one percent of the market.” He observes that many legal practitioners are also sceptical about AI effectiveness. Smaller practices are slower to adopt and users often struggle with clarity, evaluation and consistent usage. Baliga adds: “Foreign players like Harvey and Legora have vanity value. Ultimately, the best judges of tools would be the mid and junior level lawyers who are using them. The jury is still out on that.”
With strong domestic capability and evolving user expectations, Indian legal AI has opened a significant new chapter. Its long-term impact will depend on trust, accuracy and the everyday lawyer’s comfort with the technology.
