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Building a two-sided view of the legal AI market through former vendor employees and current customers.
Generative AI is changing legal technology quickly. New platforms are emerging, established providers are adding AI capabilities, and law firms and corporate legal departments are deciding how these tools fit into their existing workflows.
There is strong confidence in the technology’s long-term importance, but its near-term commercial impact is more difficult to judge. The Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals Report 2025 found that 80% of surveyed professionals expected AI to have a high or transformational impact on their work over the following five years. Only 38% expected that level of change within the year.
For investors researching legal AI, this gap matters. Interest in a product does not necessarily translate into successful implementation, sustained usage or attractive commercial returns.
Vendor materials can explain features, intended use cases and target customers; while customer perspectives reveal what happens in practice, but do not always explain the vendor’s product and commercial strategy.
A US equities investor engaged Networks X to connect these two sides of the market. The research covered leading legal generative AI vendors across North America, the United Kingdom, EMEA and Australia, examining product capabilities, differentiation, go-to-market strategies, pricing and customer adoption.
We built the project around two complementary expert groups: recent former employees who understood how vendors developed and commercialised their products, and customer-side professionals who had evaluated, implemented or used legal AI platforms
In legal AI, vendor positioning is only half the picture. Networks X connected it with customer experience through 10 consultations with eight unique experts.
The brief covered several parts of the legal AI market at once. These included product capabilities, competitive differentiation, go-to-market strategy, commercial models, customer adoption and implementation.
No single expert type was well placed to cover every question.
For the vendor-side workstream, Networks X targeted recent former employees with experience across product management, artificial intelligence, engineering, sales, partnerships, strategy and go-to-market functions.
Current employees of the target vendors were excluded. Former employees generally needed to have left within the previous 18 months, helping the client access contemporary market knowledge while maintaining clear compliance boundaries.
These experts could provide context on questions such as:
The customer-side workstream required a different lens.
Networks X focused on legal operations leaders, knowledge management professionals, legal innovation teams, technology decision-makers, partners, procurement professionals and senior in-house lawyers. These experts worked across law firms, corporate legal departments and other legal environments.
Their experience could help the client understand how legal AI products were evaluated, what influenced purchasing decisions, how users perceived pricing and where implementation or change management created barriers.
Together, the two workstreams created a more complete view of the market.
What were vendors trying to build and sell?
What were customers actually willing to adopt and pay for?
For an equities investor, the value of this structure was the ability to test the same market through two different evidence bases.
Former vendor professionals could explain where a company believed it differentiated, which customer segments it was pursuing and how its commercial model was intended to work.
Customers approached the market from another angle. They compared products against internal workflows, existing technology, implementation requirements, user expectations and available budgets.
Those perspectives do not always align.
A capability presented as distinctive by a vendor may be seen as standard by customers. A commercially attractive customer segment may still face long procurement cycles or internal adoption barriers. A value proposition based on productivity may be judged against security, accuracy, integration and change management requirements.
Pricing also looks different from each side. A vendor may structure its contracts around expected usage or enterprise value. Buyers must determine whether the cost can be justified by the number of active users, the work being completed and the value created after implementation.
The purpose of the research was not to assume that either side held the complete answer. It was to build an expert cohort capable of identifying where the perspectives aligned and where they diverged.
That is the difference between finding people who know a technology category and building primary research around an investment question.
Across the two principal workstreams, Networks X submitted 20 distinct expert profiles: six from the former-vendor stream and 14 from the customer-side stream.
The profile mix was not forced into a 50:50 split.
The potential customer universe was naturally broader, with responsibility for legal technology spread across innovation, knowledge management, strategy, procurement, operations and technology functions.
The former-vendor universe became narrower once the client’s requirements were mapped against employment recency, target-company experience, functional responsibility and do-not-contact restrictions.
The objective was not symmetry. It was to give the client enough depth on each side to select the strongest expert for every part of the research.
The first relevant profile reached the client within 18 hours of project launch.
The engagement went on to support 10 completed consultations with eight unique experts. Three came from the former-vendor workstream and five from the customer-side workstream.
Two experts were re-engaged for follow-up interviews as the research progressed. This allowed the client to explore further questions with professionals who had already demonstrated valuable knowledge of the market.
The result was not one broad technology cohort. It was a deliberately constructed respondent base covering vendor strategy, technical development, commercial positioning, product evaluation and real-world adoption.
Legal AI products, customer expectations and competitive positions can change quickly. New capabilities are released, pricing models evolve and buyers become more demanding as they gain practical experience with the technology.
This makes it difficult to assess the market through product announcements or a single type of expert alone.
Vendor-side interviews can reveal how companies think about their products, customers and commercial opportunities. Customer-side interviews can test whether those strategies are translating into adoption, satisfaction and perceived value.
Bringing both perspectives into the same research program helps investors move beyond the question of whether legal AI will grow. It allows them to examine which products customers value, how platforms differentiate and what may determine long-term commercial success.
For this project, Networks X combined bespoke expert sourcing, structured screening and clear do-not-contact controls to support 10 consultations with eight unique experts.
The work gave the client access to people who understood the legal AI market from the inside, from those involved in building and commercialising the technology to those deciding whether it was worth adopting.
Networks X connects investors, consulting firms and corporates with relevant industry experts across technology and other specialist markets worldwide. Every engagement is supported by human-led screening, confidentiality protections and a robust compliance framework.
Evaluating legal AI or another rapidly evolving technology market? Submit a brief to Networks X and receive project-specific expert profiles within days, with no retainer or minimum commitment.