Test AI Legal Assistant on one small matter first

Three lifetime entries sit on the published list: Personal lifetime, Professional lifetime and BYO key lifetime. Read them as one-off purchases rather than recurring subscriptions, then ask which of them matches the volume of drafting your small test will actually produce. A startup sending its first few outreach messages does not need the widest tier to learn whether the workflow helps.

Begin by counting the documents your test involves. Each outreach push may need a short agreement, a demand letter or a checklist of deadlines, and the Personal tier is where a low count usually lands. If your test grows into repeat drafting across several matters, the Professional tier becomes the one worth comparing against what you already pay for admin time.

The BYO key entry is the option for a team that already holds its own model key and prefers to keep that arrangement. Treat all three as one-time decisions you can make without signing an annual contract, which is the objection most early founders raise before the first reply arrives.

For a first honest test, the Personal lifetime tier is usually the sensible starting point. It lets you put one real matter through the assistant, see the action plan it produces and judge whether the drafted document and the deadline list are usable without committing your small team to a wider plan.

Move up to Professional lifetime only when the test shows repeat use. That means several matters running at once, more than one person drafting, and a routine where evidence checklists and escalation routes get reviewed each week. Until that pattern appears, the extra scope has nothing to work on.

The BYO key lifetime tier suits a startup that already runs its own model access and wants the assistant to sit on top of it. If you have no such key, ignore that tier during the test and revisit it later. Choosing between the three is about your own drafting rhythm, not about which label sounds more serious.

The main thing to check is what the output is not. The assistant prepares an action plan, a draft and a checklist, and it maps the escalation route, but it does not stand in for a law firm, so nothing it writes represents your company or counts as formal advice. Plan who reviews each draft before it leaves your hands.

The second check is currency. Local rules and agency steps move, so a deadline or a form that looked right when the plan was generated may not match the current official position. Build a step into your test where someone opens the official source and confirms each date and document format before you rely on it.

The third check is scope. Where a matter carries real stakes, a dispute, a regulatory exposure or a sum you cannot absorb, the honest move is to route it to a qualified lawyer and use the assistant only to prepare the ground. Decide that boundary before the test starts, not after a draft looks convincing.

Compare Personal lifetime with Professional lifetime on one question: how many matters will you run at the same time? If the answer is one, the Personal tier covers the test and the comparison ends there. If several matters need drafts, deadlines and evidence lists in the same week, work out whether the Professional tier's wider scope saves you real admin hours.

Compare Professional lifetime with BYO key lifetime on a different question: who holds the model access? A startup without its own key has no reason to pick the BYO entry during a first test. A startup that already pays for model access separately should weigh whether keeping that arrangement is simpler than moving everything into one plan.

Write the comparison down before you buy. List the matters in your test, the documents each needs and the person who reviews them. That list tells you which tier fits now, and it gives you a baseline to judge the test against once the first replies come back.