Open-source LLMs for legal services
Law firms and legal departments use open models for contract review, due diligence, research memos and e-discovery with privilege protected on-premises.
Where legal services teams use language models
- Contract review & clause extractionmedium risk
Risk flags against a playbook
- Due-diligence document summarisationmedium risk
Data-room summaries
- Legal research memosmedium risk
Case-law and statute summaries with citations
- E-discovery review supporthigh risk
Relevance and privilege first pass
- Drafting from precedentsmedium risk
First drafts of agreements and letters
- Client intake & conflict checksmedium risk
Structured capture and screening
- Time-entry & billing narrativeslow risk
Clean narratives from notes
- Regulatory-change monitoringlow risk
Summarise new rules and impact
- Legal translation supportmedium risk
Draft translations for lawyer review
Privilege and confidentiality dominate; the playbook keeps client documents on-premises and asks whether outputs are work product.
Frequently asked
Does using an LLM waive privilege?
Sending client documents to a third-party cloud service can raise waiver arguments. An open model on the firm's own hardware keeps the documents within the firm, which is why on-premises is the default for privileged matters.