The right legal AI tool should handle complicated documents, work where lawyers already work, and apply your firm's institutional knowledge consistently.

Most don't.

This guide shows you how to identify the difference. It provides evaluation criteria across five categories: accuracy and reliability, firm knowledge integration, platform fit, advanced capabilities, and vendor partnership. For each category, you'll learn what good looks like, what evidence to collect during a pilot, and what red flags should give you pause.

The framework includes a scoring rubric that converts your findings into defensible recommendations. Whether you're running a first pilot, conducting a vendor bake-off, or reviewing an existing tool for renewal, this approach gives you the structure to make decisions any partner can trust.

What's inside:

• A five-category evaluation framework with weighted scoring across accuracy, integration, workflow fit, advanced capabilities, and vendor partnership

• Specific tests to run during a 2-4 week pilot, including what documents to use and what questions to ask

• Red flags that predict adoption problems before you sign a contract

• A one-page decision memo template that converts pilot findings into clear recommendations

• ROI calculation methods that answer the questions procurement and leadership actually ask