Top 10 AI Tools Every Legal Professional in Ireland Should Know in 2025

For Irish solicitors and in‑house counsel in 2025, AI is now a strategic imperative: the Thomson Reuters 2025 Future of Professionals Report, based on input from 2,275 global professionals, warns of a “stark competitive divide” where firms with a clear AI plan are far more likely to capture benefits - professionals using AI may reclaim roughly five hours a week and firms with strategies see materially higher ROI (Thomson Reuters 2025 Future of Professionals Report on AI adoption).

In Ireland the surge is amplified by strong public policy and ethics-first guidance - IDA Ireland highlights a near‑nationwide jump in adoption and a national strategy that embeds ethics alongside the EU AI Act - so legal teams must pair tools with governance and upskilling (IDA Ireland national AI strategy and ethics guidance).

Practical workplace training matters: targeted courses like the Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp - workplace AI skills, promptcraft and risk controls teach promptcraft, tool use and risk controls lawyers need to turn compliance into competitive advantage rather than liability.

Program	Details
AI Essentials for Work	15 weeks; practical AI skills, prompt writing, job‑based AI applications; early bird $3,582; register: Register for Nucamp AI Essentials for Work

This transformation is happening now.

Selection of the Top 10 tools hinged on criteria that matter in Ireland today: legal/regulatory fit with the EU AI Act and Irish data‑protection enforcement, demonstrable performance in core legal workflows, vendor transparency on training data and retention, and practical upskilling paths for busy teams.

Tools were scored for compliance risk and governance (drawing on the detailed coverage of the AI Act and DPC activity in the Global Legal Insights Ireland chapter), proven courtroom or transactional pedigree - especially in e‑discovery and contract review where lawyer‑supervised systems like Continuous Active Learning proved they can

find the needle in a haystack

(see A&L Goodbody) - and real‑world adoptability based on practitioner feedback and pilot testing highlighted in sector roundtables and Law Society events.

Weighting favoured specialised, auditable models for contract analysis and litigation workflows, clear vendor commitments on data use, and low‑friction paths to meet the AI literacy obligations that Irish employers now face; these priorities reflect the practical, ethics‑first roadmap Irish firms need to deploy AI safely and effectively (Ireland AI Act and DPC guidance for legal professionals, AI adoption roadmap for in-house legal teams, Future of AI in Law: trends and real‑world legal AI use cases).

Casetext's CoCounsel - now folded into Thomson Reuters' offering - packages legal research, drafting and document analysis into a single, lawyer‑focused workflow that Irish solicitors can use to accelerate litigation and transactional work while keeping authority at hand: Thomson Reuters highlights features like Deep Research, agentic workflows, Word integration and links to Westlaw and Practical Law that it says can make document review and drafting markedly faster (reported time‑savings and higher hit‑rates are featured on the Thomson Reuters CoCounsel legal AI product page).

Independent, practitioner testing finds real strengths - rapid deposition outlines and transcript summaries, and speedy first drafts that can turn hours of tedious review into minutes - while cautioning that research memos still need human verification (a measured, first‑hand account is available in the Plaintiff Magazine first‑hand review of CoCounsel AI legal software).

Security and data controls are also highlighted by law‑library reviewers, who note private servers and contractual data protections as key selling points for firms mindful of DPC and GDPR obligations (King County Law Library security and data controls write‑up for CoCounsel).

For Irish practices the bottom line is practical: CoCounsel can shave routine work and surface insights quickly, but it works best as a supervised assistant within an AI governance and prompt‑verification workflow.

CoCounsel is primarily a drafting assistant. Think of it as Della Street on steroids.

For Irish firms weighing AI that must be both powerful and provably trustworthy, Thomson Reuters' CoCounsel is designed to bring primary‑source integration and enterprise controls to day‑to‑day legal work: CoCounsel Legal pairs Deep Research grounded in Westlaw and Practical Law with agentic, multi‑step workflows that can produce citation‑backed research plans and draft reports, while CoCounsel's Knowledge Search unifies content across HighQ, iManage, NetDocuments, SharePoint and OneDrive so teams can search institutional knowledge without downloading or stitching files together (Thomson Reuters CoCounsel Legal product page, Thomson Reuters CoCounsel Knowledge Search press release).

Security features and contractual controls - including zero‑retention LLM calls, AES‑256 data‑at‑rest encryption and region‑based hosting options now offered in the UK - make CoCounsel a practical choice for Irish practices that need both speed and auditable provenance; user stories even report tasks that once took an hour now done in five minutes, provided outputs are checked by a lawyer as part of governance and prompt‑verification workflows (Thomson Reuters CoCounsel Core security and testing details).

“Deep Research stands out for its ability to reason through legal questions rather than simply return search results.” - Colleen Nihill, Chief AI & KM Officer (quoted in Thomson Reuters)

OpenAI's ChatGPT has become a go-to versatile LLM for Irish practices that want fast drafting, plain‑language summaries and workflow boosts - use it to turn long depositions into concise outlines, draft client emails or generate first‑pass contracts - Clio's practical prompt guide shows how specific role, context and follow‑ups unlock reliable outputs (Clio guide: ChatGPT prompts for lawyers), while MyCase's review maps common law‑firm use cases (research, transcription, briefs and client comms) and the prompting discipline needed to reduce errors (MyCase guide: ChatGPT for lawyers use cases and prompting).

But power comes with responsibilities: courts and commentators warn that hallucinations and confidentiality leaks are real risks - filing work that cites fabricated cases has already resulted in sanctions - so outputs must be treated as supervised drafts, scrubbed for client data and fact‑checked before filing (see the risk overview from Purdue Global Law School for context) (Purdue Global Law School: Risks and benefits of ChatGPT in legal practice).

For Irish firms, the sweet spot is pragmatic: adopt ChatGPT for routine drafting and triage, pair it with guarded prompt workflows and verification checks, and reserve client‑sensitive or court‑bound work for professional‑grade, auditable processes.

Common ChatGPT Use	Key Caution
Drafting & summarising pleadings and contracts	Verify citations and legal reasoning
Transcribing and summarising depositions	Check accuracy and speaker attribution
Client communications and triage	Remove confidential details before prompting

"The opposing party wastes time and money in exposing the deception. The court's time is taken from other important endeavors. The client may be deprived of arguments based on authentic judicial precedents." - (quoted in Purdue Global Law School)

For Irish solicitors and in‑house teams needing rigorous brief analysis and courtroom intelligence, Lexis+ AI stitches together Shepard's citation power, litigation analytics and a private assistant (Protégé) to speed drafting and strengthen authority‑checking - think of its Shepard's Knowledge Graph as a legal GPS that helps point to the strongest precedents while the AI generates headnotes and side‑by‑side Brief Analysis summaries to cut research time without sacrificing provenance (Lexis+ AI legal research product page).

Practical for Ireland: Default Jurisdiction and DMS integrations (iManage, SharePoint) keep responses local to the legal context you select, Protégé Vaults let teams run document uploads and agreement analysis inside a private workspace, and the platform's multi‑model, Azure/AWS‑backed approach and privacy controls are designed to reduce the GDPR/DPC risk surface that firms are rightly watching.

The net result: faster first drafts, rich judicial analytics and citation verification - provided outputs are checked by a lawyer as part of an AI governance workflow.

Feature	Key detail
Shepard's & GraphRAG	Integrated citation verification and Knowledge Graph to surface authoritative case links
Protégé Vault	Create up to 50 Vaults (1–500 docs); uploads not vaulted purged at session end; results retained 90 days
Multi‑model & Cloud	Uses GPT‑4o, Claude models, fine‑tuned Mistral; hosted on Microsoft Azure & AWS Bedrock

“Lexis+ is my favorite tool - it is comprehensive, easy to use, and very helpful in its layout and functionality.”

RelativityOne positions itself as an enterprise-grade e‑discovery hub Irish firms can rely on for large, cross‑border matters: it ingests ESI from Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack and even ChatGPT Enterprise, speeds processing with an automatically scaling engine, and surface‑finds the conversations that matter - “emojis included” so message tone isn't lost - while built‑in translation and media transcription turn hours of audio and video into searchable evidence; see the platform overview for full capabilities (RelativityOne e-Discovery platform overview and capabilities).

For defensible remote collection and faster preservation, the RelativityOne Collect + X1 integration can shrink collection timelines from months to hours or days, an operational shift that matters when investigations must meet tight DPC/GDPR deadlines (Relativity and X1 preservation and collection integration details).

Add Relativity aiR for Review and Privilege to prioritise high‑impact docs, Calder7 security and Azure hosting for proven controls, and a strong partner ecosystem (consulting, managed review and accelerators) and Irish in‑house teams get a scalable, auditable workflow for even the messiest data estates.

Feature	Benefit for Irish practices
Integrations (M365, Slack, Google Workspace, ChatGPT Enterprise)	Collect and index data in‑place for defensible preservation
Relativity aiR (Review & Privilege)	Prioritise impactful documents and reduce disclosure risk
RelativityOne Collect + X1	Remote collection reduces timelines from months to hours/days

"It's the best Review platform and analytics tool that I have used, with full customization capabilities. Love it."

Everlaw's cloud‑native e‑discovery platform is built for the scale and pace Irish firms now face: industry‑leading ingestion and review speeds (Everlaw can process roughly 900K documents per hour), near‑instant search and AI‑driven summaries, and collaborative story‑building tools that let litigation teams turn messy data into courtroom narratives without juggling multiple silos - see the Everlaw e‑discovery overview for details (Everlaw e‑discovery platform).

Its Everlaw AI Assistant and predictive‑coding features surface likely relevant documents and provide defensible performance metrics, while Storybuilder pulls review insights into timelines and trial prep on the same platform (Everlaw product and Storybuilder), which is especially useful for Irish in‑house teams juggling GDPR/DPC deadlines and cross‑border evidence requests (practical guidance on Irish AI, GDPR and DPC risks is summarised in this Nucamp primer: Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus).

With built‑in transcription, multi‑language support, a collaborative workspace and enterprise security (SOC 2 Type II, FedRAMP), Everlaw can slash review time - but outputs still require lawyer supervision and governance to meet Irish regulatory and ethical expectations.

Feature	Detail
Processing speed	≈900K documents/hour; fast uploads and automatic OCR/transcription
AI & review	Everlaw AI Assistant, predictive coding, instant summaries and Storybuilder for trial narratives
Security & compliance	SOC 2 Type II; FedRAMP Moderate; enterprise‑grade cloud controls

“Everlaw is easily the most intuitive attorney-friendly coding platform I've ever used.”

Clio Duo brings embedded, practice‑grade AI to Irish firms by living inside Clio Manage so lawyers can pull case facts, generate matter summaries, and create time entries or calendar events without leaving the file - think of turning a stack of filings into a concise, cited one‑page brief in seconds.

Designed for small and mid‑size practices, Duo summarises and extracts key dates and dollar amounts from documents, drafts polished client messages, and offers smart task prioritisation that helps busy teams focus on high‑value work; see the Clio Duo legal AI features and capabilities (Clio Duo legal AI features and capabilities).

For Ireland the practical advantages are balanced with regulatory care: Duo operates within Clio's security framework (it won't train external models on your data), surfaces only what a user is permitted to see, and records actions in an audit log - but firms should check Clio's regional data handling notes and consult internal compliance before enabling Duo to align with GDPR and DPC expectations (Clio Duo regional data handling and GDPR guidance).

Used as a supervised assistant inside an AI governance workflow, Duo can shave routine administrative hours while keeping lawyers firmly in control of legal judgment and client privacy.

“Clio Duo has really improved how we communicate with our clients. Its ability to suggest and draft responses right from Clio Manage has made our job less stressful and much more efficient.”

Smith.ai offers 24/7 live‑staffed reception, AI receptionist options and predictable per‑call pricing that can make sense for busy Irish practices that need dependable intake and faster speed‑to‑lead - plans start at $292.50 for 30 calls, rising to $2,025 for 300 calls, and include lead screening, new‑client intake, call recording/transcription and one free CRM integration (Clio, HubSpot, Salesforce and Zapier are supported), so matter data and appointments can flow straight into existing workflows (Smith.ai receptionist plans and pricing for legal practices).

Per‑call billing (not per‑minute) removes surprises - “calls at 2 pm and 2 am cost the same” - and add‑ons cover bookings, conflict checks and payment collection, letting small teams scale without hiring a full‑time receptionist.

Irish firms should note Clio integration for matter continuity and confirm regional availability and data‑handling expectations before rollout (Smith.ai Clio app listing for law firms); for guidance on GDPR, DPC and AI risks in Ireland, consult local primers when assessing any vendor (Guidance on GDPR, DPC enforcement and AI risks for Irish legal practices).

Plan	Calls/mo	Price (USD)
Starter	30	$292.50
Basic	90	$787.50
Pro	300	$2,025.00

“All of my clients were super impressed at the professional way they answered the phone. Always kind and polite. Highly recommended.”

HarveyAI markets itself as a “legal copilot” built for firm‑trained workflows, offering domain‑specific models, firm Vaults and Azure deployment so Irish firms can fine‑tune models on their own precedents while keeping enterprise controls in place - see Harvey AI professional class overview for features and security claims (Harvey AI professional class overview).

The platform already has real Irish traction: McCann FitzGerald announced a partnership and ongoing roll‑out with Harvey after a careful pilot and governance review (McCann FitzGerald announces partnership with Harvey AI), and Harvey has recently established an Irish entity - Harvey Ai Ireland Limited - incorporated 16 July 2025 with a Dublin 1 address, signalling a local footprint that matters for GDPR, data residency and firm due diligence (Harvey Ai Ireland Limited company registration details).

For Irish solicitors the practical point is simple: Harvey's value is strongest when used as a supervised, firm‑trained assistant that accelerates contract review, due diligence and research while governance, prompt‑verification and human judgment remain front and centre - imagine a virtual trainee that learns your templates and never tires of redlining, but still hands the pen back to a partner for filing.

Company	Key Irish details
Harvey Ai Ireland Limited	Incorporated 16/07/2025; Company No: 793070; Registered: 1st Floor, Liffey Trust Centre, 117-126 Sheriff St Upper, Dublin 1; Status: NORMAL

“Generative AI will transform how we deliver legal services, but it will never replace our lawyers.”

Spellbook is a Word‑centric contract assistant that quietly slots into the drafting workflow Irish solicitors already use, offering clause suggestions, on‑the‑fly redlines and quick answers to “what does this clause mean?” so teams can turn a blank page into a usable first draft for NDAs, MSAs and routine vendor deals without leaving Word; practitioners praise its ability to point out risky language and propose alternative wording, which makes it particularly appealing to solo and small firms looking for low‑friction gains (MyCase guide to AI for legal contracts, Gavel list of best AI contract review tools for lawyers in 2025).

The practical trade‑off for Irish practice managers is familiar: faster first drafts and cleaner redlines, but always under a lawyer's supervision and with GDPR/DPC checks in place before uploading client data - think of Spellbook as a tireless junior associate that flags the nastiest clauses while the partner keeps the pen for final sign‑off.

The practical path for Irish legal teams in 2025 is straightforward: treat AI as a tool that must be governed, trained for, and piloted - not a silver bullet. Start with narrow, auditable pilots (modern drafting stacks are already trimming first‑draft times from days to hours), assign clear ownership and governance to bridge the

“who's responsible?”

gap many organisations still face, and map each use case to the EU AI Act and DPC expectations so deployers meet Article 4's new AI‑literacy obligations and data‑protection requirements (EU AI Act guidance for Ireland).

Keep humans firmly in the loop - follow the Law Society's warning that lawyers must verify AI outputs and never file work they haven't checked (Law Society warning that AI doesn't replace professional duty).

Finally, invest in practical, role‑based training so teams learn promptcraft, verification workflows and vendor due diligence; short, focused programmes such as the Nucamp AI Essentials for Work bootcamp give busy solicitors hands‑on skills to capture efficiency gains while protecting clients and preserving professional judgment - the real competitive advantage in a regulated, post‑AI Act Ireland.

Bootcamp	Key details
AI Essentials for Work	15 weeks; practical AI skills, prompt writing and job‑based AI applications; early bird $3,582; syllabus: AI Essentials for Work syllabus; register: AI Essentials for Work registration