Anthropic introduced a range of new chatbot features on Tuesday aimed at providing automated support for law firms. These additions expand Claude for Legal, which launched earlier this year, by offering new legal plugins and MCP connectors tailored for specific legal areas.
This development comes amidst intense competition in the legal AI sector. In March, the AI law firm Harvey, known for using agentic AI to automate legal tasks, raised $200 million, valuing it at $11 billion. Recently, another startup, Legora, secured $600 million in a series D round, accompanied by an ad campaign featuring Jude Law. Legora provides services similar to Harvey, focusing on streamlining complex legal processes traditionally handled by large human teams.
Anthropic’s new tools aim to help law firms automate clerical tasks, such as document search and review, case law resources, deposition preparation, document drafting, and more. The plugins, encompassing various automated functions, are applicable across legal domains such as commercial, privacy, corporate, employment, product, and AI governance.
Anthropic is also introducing a variety of model context protocol connectors, or MCPs, which link specific data sources and third-party systems to AI models for direct interaction. These MCP connectors integrate Claude into commonly used software by law firms, like document management systems including DocuSign, and search platforms like Box. Legal research platforms like Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw can also be linked.
The new connectors and plugins are available to all paying Claude customers. These features build upon other legal industry plugins launched by the company in February.
“The legal sector is facing increasing pressure to adopt AI, and early adopters in firms and in-house teams are advancing rapidly,” a company spokesperson commented, noting the legal sector as a rapidly growing industry for Claude.
As AI firms target law firms, AI-related errors have caused issues in court. Numerous lawyers have been exposed for using AI to draft flawed legal documents, including a prominent law firm. Last year, California fined an attorney for using ChatGPT to draft an appeal filled with fake quotes. Federal judges have faced criticism for using AI to produce flawed rulings, attracting Congressional attention. Simultaneously, AI-generated lawsuits are reportedly inundating courts, contributing to judicial congestion.