Agentic AI has caught fire with law firms and in-house legal departments investing in tools designed to save money and time. Notoriously risk-averse, resistant to change and reliant on precedent, the legal industry is pivoting to agentic AI, particularly following success stories and concerns that firms ignoring the technology will be left behind.
Venture capital investing in legal tech doubled to $5.54 billion globally in 2025, according to PitchBook data. More than half, $2.75 billion, went to U.S. companies, up from $1.1 billion in 2024.
“Absurd growth,” said Jake Jones, founder of Berlin-based Flank, which sells agentic AI services to legal departments at companies including Perk and tech training firm QA Group. He estimates that in 2025 the biggest companies, including Legora and GC AI, boosted their revenue tenfold.
“They’re jumping from like $1 million to $20 million within a 12-month period, and the rate is growing monthly,” said Jones. His company, formerly Legal OS, became Flank in 2024.
What “agentic” really means
But Jones cautioned that potential clients should verify what they are buying is truly agentic, and not just rebranded generative AI. Distinguishing between agentic and assistive chatbots remains challenging, and the big companies are picking up on “agentic” as a marketing buzzword.
In summer 2025, legal tech firms Harvey and Legora released what Jones characterized as workflow automation features marketed as agentic. “There is nothing truly agentic about” the features, he said. Harvey and Legora didn’t respond to requests for comment for this article.
An agentic AI system has a degree of freedom, according to Jones. "It needs to have a range of different tools, not just one kind of linear, single, rigid workflow to execute," he said. "We're talking about a library of functions that it can choose from."
Agentic AI nearing human-level performance
A study published in February 2025 by Vals AI compared human lawyers against AI tools on seven tasks, including data extraction, redlining and transcript analysis. The results were mixed: humans outperformed AI in some tasks, while AI matched or exceeded human performance in others.
Vecflow's Oliver was the only strictly agentic tool tested. It performed on par with or better than more established offerings across multiple tasks and was the best-performing AI tool in EDGAR research (EDGAR is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's corporate filing system.) "In the challenging EDGAR research task, Oliver, through its coordination of specialized AI agents, stood out as the sole offering capable of nearing human-level performance," the study said.
The study noted that Oliver was far slower than rivals, “likely due to its agentic workflow, which breaks tasks into multiple steps. This process runs in the background and can potentially improve reliability and thoroughness, despite the longer overall run time.”
Billion-dollar bets on agentic AI
Legal is a wealthy industry to mine for agentic firms. In the U.S. alone, the industry generated nearly $350 billion in 2022 (the most recent data available), according to the U.S. Federal Reserve. That represents 3.5% annual growth over two decades, doubling from $175 billion in 2002.
Legal AI firms raised significant venture capital in 2025: Andreessen Horowitz led a $160 million investment in Harvey in December that valued the firm at $8 billion. Legora scored $150 million led by Bessemer Venture Partners that valued the company at $1.8 billion and Noxtua pulled in $92 million in April led by C.H. Beck. For its part, Jones’ Flank won $10 million in June from investors including Insight Partners.
Companies are adopting agentic tools from vendors or building their own. Salesforce developed Agentforce, a tool the company estimates will cut 9,500 hours annually from compliance and risk tasks. Other companies, including Spanish energy firm Repsol and U.S. law firm Morgan Lewis, use tools from Harvey and Thomson Reuters' CoCounsel.
The success is about giving attorneys the tools to work faster and cheaper, which gets noticed by clients, said lawyer Arthur Rothrock, CEO and co-founder of agentic firm Legion Law. Demand is spurring hiring at his company.
“We're hearing from users that clients are thrilled with what AI-assisted workflows mean for their bills, and that's generating referrals,” Rothrock said. “Clients want those savings, which creates pressure on attorneys to adopt tools that deliver them.”
Jake Jones expects fast growth in 2026. In a recent LinkedIn post, he predicted “the agentic category will bloom” and that Legora and Harvey will start winning in-house deals “left, right, and centre.”
2026 will be the year of agentic AI, even if some of the terminology is poorly defined and marketed, Jones said.“I’m seeing that these agentic products are now possible to build and therefore are inevitable.“
