Spellbook, Infodash, Money!, Sweden, Agents + – Artificial Lawyer

Spellbook has rolled out its Academic Partnership Program to give free, direct access of its genAI-driven contracting software to law students and faculty across North America. This covers more than 50 law schools, from Harvard to Miami and everything in between.

Scott Stevenson, CEO and Co-founder of Spellbook, commented: ‘In just a year, we’ve gone from a pilot to more than 50 schools using Spellbook to prepare their students for the next evolution of practice. We’re proud to support students with free access.’

‘By introducing AI into coursework, they’re preparing graduates who can move quickly, think strategically, and use technology responsibly from day one. We’re proud to share free access with law school students and faculty to experience the same AI trusted by more than 3,600 leading legal teams worldwide.’

The program offers:  

‍For students: Spellbook offers résumé-ready experience drafting, redlining, and reviewing contracts with AI – skills that set graduates apart in interviews and on the job.

‍For professors: Spellbook makes it easy to integrate AI into courses and clinics. Our team can support curriculum creation to ensure students tackle real-world workflows they’ll encounter in practice.

Direct access: Spellbook licenses delivered straight to your inbox.

Self-serve setup: Clear, simple onboarding instructions.

Thorough training: Walkthroughs of core features, available anytime.

If you’d like to know more please see here.

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Legal tech company Infodash, the legal collaboration platform, has been recognized by Forbes and Bessemer Venture Partners as being among the top 20 tech companies in the world having raised less than $30m but are still making a big impact. It was part of the Rising Stars group, connected to their Cloud 100 table of who’s who in SaaS.

The Rising Stars are the top 20 startups in all of SaaS which have taken a relatively small amount of external capital yet have the most potential. Also mentioned was Crosby, the hybrid ‘AI law firm’.

‘Forbes evaluated tech companies from across all industries and chose just us and Crosby from legal,’ explained co-founder and CEO Ted Theodoropoulos.

‘This isn’t just a win for us and Crosby…it’s a win for the industry,’ he added.

Congrats to both!

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New data from Wolters Kluwer shows that despite survey after survey telling us that ‘inhouse legal teams have never been under so much pressure to do more with less, and therefore need to save money’…..that the US law firm market, at least among the top 100, are putting rates up by big leaps and presumably because the clients are more than accepting it. (If the clients were 100% against any rate rises then law firms could not be doing the below….)

For example, partner rates went up by 9% in the AmLaw top 25 in 2024 and even in the 50 to 100 group rates still rose by 6.9% – which is way above inflation.

In short, there are two very different narratives here:

‘Clients want to save money on legal work so you need X, Y and Z strategy to handle this.’

‘Clients appear more than happy to pay whatever their external firms ask for, at least at a partner level.’

But, if you look at all ‘time-keepers’….(wow, what a phrase, and one which exemplifies Big Law in so many ways….), i.e. associates and partners, then the rise in rates from 2024 to the start of 2025 is between 7% and 8% depending on where you are in the AmLaw 100. I.e. they seem happy to accept higher associate rates as well…..

Again, this suggests that this twin narrative is very, very real.

Do clients actually want to ‘save money on legal fees’? That is the question, and this data – which gives the same message every year – just keeps on raising the same point.

In short, we are still very much in a sellers’ market and ‘peak Big Law’ is nowhere in sight.

One last point: if AI’s arrival is reducing what law firms can charge…..er…..then, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of it….yet.

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OK, moving on from that philosophical point, Artificial Lawyer’s founder, er….me, Richard Tromans, will be giving the keynote on where legal AI has got to, and chairing two key panels, at the Nordic Legal Tech Day in Stockholm, Sweden on October 15.

As you know, Sweden has become a hotbed of AI innovation – think Legora and Lovable for example, and it will be great to be back in Scandinavia. Looking forward to catching up with old friends (Hi Fred Svard!) and new. If you’d like to attend, here is more information and tickets.

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Now onto the video section. First up is the latest AL TV product walk through: MagNet.

And finally, here’s this week’s Law Punx with Jake Jones from Flank on why your agent may not be an agent. If you’ve not listened to this yet, then it’s strongly recommended if you want to get up to speed on the whole agentic area.

This episode and four other Law Punx podcasts are on Spotify, which also features Electra Japonas, Horace Wu, Todd Smithline, and Richard Mabey.

The Spotify current episode is here – on agents. 

The Spotify Law Punx site with all episodes is here – where you can listen/watch all of the episodes in one place.

And the same, but just an audio version, is available on Apple Podcasts.

Also lined up are speakers such as Oz Benamram from Skills, Jerry Levine from ContractPodAi, Thomas Pfennig from GOLT, and Feargus McDeaid from Definely.

Note: Law Punx is an open platform, if you’ve really got something you’d like to say and can say it in 5 minutes, then drop AL a line, even if it’s to say you can’t stand AI…Freedom of Speech matters.

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That’s all folks, have a great weekend. Looks like the sun has come out in London too, which is nice.

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Oh, one last thing…

Legal Innovators Conferences in London and New York – November ’25

If you’d like to stay ahead of the legal AI curve then come along to Legal Innovators New York, Nov 19 + 20 and also, Legal Innovators UK – Nov 4 + 5 + 6, where the brightest minds will be sharing their insights on where we are now and where we are heading. 

Legal Innovators UK arrives first, with: Law Firm Day on Nov 4th, then Inhouse Day, on the 5th, and then our new Litigation Day on the 6th. 

Both events, as always, are organised by the awesome Cosmonauts team! 

Please get in contact with them if you’d like to take part.