GPT 5.1 has arrived and the overall response has been very positive, including from the legal AI world. Several companies have shared their views. Here is contract AI pioneer LegalOn’s report on the updated LLM’s performance, followed by an analysis by Harvey.
‘As part of a select group with early access, LegalOn evaluated GPT-5.1 against both GPT-5 and GPT-4.1 using our Contract Review Benchmark, a framework designed to test model performance on core legal tasks such as issue spotting, redlining, and contract Q&A.
‘In this evaluation of our English language Contract Review Benchmark, GPT-5.1 showed substantial improvements in contract revision accuracy, achieving:
- 67% win rate vs. GPT-5.0, which is more than double the likelihood of producing superior revisions
- 57% win rate vs. GPT-4.1 in direct redlining comparisons
These results signal tangible progress toward AI that produces more precise, lawyer-like contract edits.
While GPT-5.1’s improvements are strongest in redlining, we also saw roughly 30% faster processing speeds across all contracting tasks, creating a more efficient and responsive user experience overall.’
Harvey has also tested it out and is impressed, see the chart below. It’s available already on their platform (see here). Here’s what they said:
‘We’ve also observed improvements in instruction following, which makes GPT-5.1 particularly well-suited for workflows where models need to understand our clients’ exacting standards and their unique style. On our BigLaw Bench evaluation suite, GPT-5.1 achieved the highest score yet for the GPT family of models at 91.8%. This underscores its potential to handle the rigor and nuance of elite legal practice.’
In short: faster, more accurate, better. And that’s got to be a good thing. The ‘state of the art’ just keeps on improving when it comes to AI….and thus legal AI as well.
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Legal Innovators New York Conference – is next week, Nov 19 and 20
To help you get RSVP-ed for the landmark event in the heart of Midtown, and which will be packed with excellent speakers and tech companies from across the industry, we have created a special Express Registration for speedy boarding.
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Meanwhile, Harvey has also expanded its Law School Program to the UK, and will now include: Oxford University Faculty of Law, The University of Law, The Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London and BPP University Law School.
The legal AI company said: ‘Each represents a distinct pillar of the UK legal education landscape. Through these partnerships, Harvey will provide UK law schools with access to its generative AI platform and an academic engagement team to support faculty training and course integration.’
John Haddock, Chief Business Officer at Harvey, added: ‘The UK’s law schools have a rich history of shaping global legal practice, and their embrace of AI in education sets an exciting precedent for the profession worldwide.’
And in other university-related news, the ‘Frugal AI Hub’ has launched at Cambridge Judge Business School. It seeks to boost accessibility for AI in emerging markets and low-income countries. Housed in the Centre for India and Global Business at Cambridge Judge, the Frugal AI hub also promotes sustainable data centres that maximise energy efficiency.
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LexisNexis live webinar: ‘Creating an innovation culture: legal AI in practice’ – Dec 2
Speakers include:
- Shilpa Bhandarkar – AI & Innovation Consultant, Wild Ducks Advisory
- Nigel Lang – Chief Information Officer, Fieldfisher
- Isabel Parker – Chief Innovation Officer, White & Case
- Gavin Shaw – Director of Account Management, LexisNexis
- Chair – Richard Tromans – Founder of Artificial Lawyer
Overview: ‘Congratulations, you’ve just bought some legal AI tools. Now what? How do you make sure you get the most out of them? Much of this comes down to culture, which in turn supports lawyer behaviour. This panel discussion in partnership with Artificial Lawyer will consider:
- How much can you pre-plan what lawyers will do with certain tools?
- And how much do you need to encourage experimentation to allow lawyers to find out what they can and won’t to do with them?
- How do you reward experimentation?
- How do you – or should you – enforce AI tool use?
- How do you instil such a culture? Can old dogs learn new tricks? Is this just the young lawyers?
Register now and learn how to build a culture that empowers people to use AI confidently, creatively and effectively.
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And a bit of breaking news: Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory has signed an agreement to acquire Libra Technology GmbH (Libra), a Berlin-based provider of AI technology for legal professionals, for up to €90 million, of which €30 million is an upfront payment with the balance being deferred consideration contingent upon reaching certain performance targets.
Libra has developed the Libra AI assistant, ‘an intuitive, best-in-class legal platform designed to help law firms and legal departments streamline broad research, drafting, review, and analytics use cases with accuracy and efficiency in a secure collaboration environment’. Libra serves a substantial and rapidly growing customer base of law firms and corporate legal departments in Germany and other European countries.
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James Tuke, CEO of the AI Futures Forum has published a free e-book: ‘A Short Walk in AI – An Essential Guide to the AI Revolution for the Curious Mind’. It can be downloaded here.
It will be of interest:
- ‘If you are in business: understand the economic ‘Great Unbundling’ and its impact on professional services.
- If you are a general reader: explore the philosophical frontiers of AI, from machine consciousness to our place in the cosmos.
- For everyone: navigate the complex ethical and societal challenges of the AI age with clarity and confidence.’
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Theo AI the litigation outcome prediction startup has raised more money, in fact they’ve raised quite a lot so early on. AL asked if they could break it down. They explained:
Nov ’24: $2.2m
May ’25: approx. $4.4m (originally announced as $4.2m, later expanded to over $4.4m later through SAFEs, so, a total of ~$6.6m total funding to date at that point in early summer.)
Nov ’25: $3.4m (so, total is now over $10m)
In short, they’ve raised $10m in 12 months across three rounds and some add-ons along the way. That’s rapid progress and clearly investors like their take on outcome prediction.
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And I absolutely had to include this news about GitLaw, that has just raised $3m. Their press release was tagged with the legendary locations – ‘San Francisco, CA / Birmingham, UK’. As far as I know this is the first Brummie-California legal tech startup I’ve ever encountered.
But, what do they do? They explained that: ‘The AI company, founded by entrepreneur Nick Holzherr.… helps teams draft, review, and negotiate contracts in minutes, for free. Unlike generic AI tools, GitLaw’s agent is powered by a library of more than 1,000 lawyer-approved templates contributed and vetted by verified legal experts across the US and UK. This ensures that every document is grounded in trusted legal standards, not generic AI outputs.’
More about Gitlaw here.
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MAGIC Research, a ‘collaborative research program, virtual incubator, and service centre for AI’ has launched an enterprise AI platform that ‘runs on law firm-controlled infrastructure’ (i.e. on-premises or private cloud).
It is shipped with pre-built or custom-built agentic systems, and the ‘production-ready orchestrated AI agents’ perform legal tasks such as discovery, drafting, advanced research, contract review, and deposition prep, they explained.
This means that ‘client data, documents, logs, and model execution remain fully within the organization’s infrastructure’, they added.
And,
- Greenshoe, an AI platform built to automate and improve SEC disclosures, has raised $3m in seed funding, led by AIX Ventures.
- Legal knowledge service FromCounsel is to launch new Restructuring & Insolvency Knowledge Content in Q1 2026.
- Litera’s Kira contract analysis capability will now directly connect with its transaction management software, Litera Transact. The move creates ‘a single, unified source of truth for deal progress, easing operational friction and risk caused by fragmented legal workflows’.
- Callidus has become StrongSuit, and emphasized that it will really focus on AI-powered litigation skills, including ‘automated case validation, commonly known in the legal profession as ‘shepardizing’,’. Previously it had taken a multi-practice approach. Justin McCallon, CEO of StrongSuit, said: ‘This rebrand marks a significant shift for our business.’
- Tradespace has bought Paragon, a patent-drafting startup. This will help it to provide for the ‘complete IP lifecycle – from initial invention disclosure through patent drafting, prosecution, portfolio management and commercialization’.
- Epiq has sold its Global Business Transformation Solutions (Epiq GBTS) division to K2 Services, a leading managed services provider.
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And now some videos:
LawVu shows how it handles Matter Intake.
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And Oz Benamram at Skills tells us in this Law Punx blast that law firms really need to share their knowledge with clients in this AI era, or risk losing them.
And, as noted, it’s Legal Innovators New York next week, Wed and Thursday – Nov 19 and 20.
AL will be chairing the event across both days, and zooming around town, and travelling, so there won’t be too many news stories next week, but back to ‘normal’ the week after. That said, there’s an interesting M&A deal to be announced in the next few days that AL will cover. More on that soon.
Have a great weekend and if you’re coming to New York, or are already there, I hope to see you in the Big Apple! I get in Monday early evening and heading out Friday afternoon.
Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer, and conference creator and Chair.
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