Gemini for Legal and the Battle for Centrality

Google launching Gemini Enterprise for Legal (GEL) will have long-term ramifications for legal tech, however Artificial Lawyer can see one thing very clearly already: there is now a battle for centrality across the legal AI world.

If you look at the details of GEL, what they initially offer is a fairly solid, but quite limited range of skills. The real power of GEL is two-fold:

• For some companies (and some law firms, but not many) Google is a key platform inside the enterprise, thus where lawyers work is already intermeshed with this framework. I.e. it connects directly to their work location, giving GEL centrality.
• Second, they are bringing together a mass of partners across the legal tech world, from DMS providers, to legal data groups, to legal AI productivity platforms, and threading them into GEL. I.e. again a centrality move, but in this case it’s acting as a conduit, steering lawyers through those applications into Google / GEL so they can do their work.

The net result is that GEL becomes their home – it becomes the centre of their work environment. Their centrality overpowers everyone else’s.

Now, we have also seen a mass of partnerships recently, with point solutions forming connections with Harvey, Legora and others. Why?

It’s the same reason as GEL. The fast-growing platforms want to be the centre of work for lawyers. The point solutions see the direction of travel and so connect to where the action is.

It’s the same as above: the battle for centrality.

Every big player wants to ‘own the workspace’. Everyone wants to become ‘the natural home’ of where legal work is done. That is where you develop long-term buy-in and loyalty. And ultimately where you can lock-in revenue over many years.

Microsoft is also doing this with their legal agent. This giant already has most of the legal market under its wing – but adding legal AI tools could keep them there. (And it will be interesting to see if Google’s move lights a fire under Microsoft’s legal AI strategy.)

Claude for Legal may now have a ton of skills, but lawyers also need many other tools. They want you to operate those tools hand-in-hand with Claude, even if that takes place via Word. I.e. again, another battle for centrality. If you just dipped quickly into Claude for Legal, did one quick task and then spent the other 99% of your time elsewhere on your desktop, then that would not help Claude to grow in the legal vertical.

We don’t know exactly what OpenAI will do next with legal, but one can only guess they will do something similar to what Google and Anthropic have done.

And finally, the move toward AI sovereignty, whether at a national, or law firm level, is also connected to the idea of centrality. Kirkland, for example, wants to keep its know-how to itself, and thus is building AI applications that keep Kirkland’s lawyers at their own centre of things – and thus, by extension their clients as well.

To conclude: the path to market share here is likely not a ‘winner takes all’ approach. But, rather it’s about winning the centre, the place of work, the home of legal labour. Because, if you can become the centre, then you have taken hold of lasting value.

Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer – August 26.

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