ChatGPT for law firms, checked against OpenAI's own pages
ChatGPT is a capable drafting and summarizing assistant for lawyers, and the plan you buy decides whether you can put client files into it. Free, Go, Plus and Pro are consumer accounts. ChatGPT Business and Enterprise run on business terms, where OpenAI does not train on your content by default. Here is what each plan costs a law firm, what the courts have said, and when a tool built to read the case file is the better buy.
ChatGPT prices on this page are the ones OpenAI lists on its pricing and help pages. CaseClerk prices are the ones printed on ours.
Upload the documents for one matter and ask questions across all of them. Every answer names the document it came from. 25 pages on the house, no card.
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Yes, on a business plan and under a firm policy. ChatGPT Business costs $25 per seat per month, or $20 billed yearly, with a 2 seat minimum, and OpenAI does not train on business workspace content by default. Personal Plus and Pro accounts are consumer products, so they are the wrong place for client confidences.
ChatGPT is very good at first drafts, emails and summaries of a document you paste in. It is weaker at the job most litigators actually lose hours on: reading a 600 page matter file and telling you which exhibit says what. That is the job CaseClerk does, for a flat $99 to $499 a month.
Move client work off personal accounts
Buy ChatGPT Business seats for every lawyer and paralegal who will touch client files. Two seats is the minimum, so a solo pays for two. Put the ban on client names in personal Free, Plus or Pro accounts in writing.
Record the terms before the files go in
Keep a copy of the business terms, the data processing addendum and your retention setting in the firm's AI file. If you handle health records under a BAA, note that OpenAI offers a BAA only on Enterprise, not on Business.
Write the use policy and the client disclosure
Say who may use ChatGPT, for which tasks, and how outputs are checked. Update engagement letters where your state bar expects client consent for AI use on confidential information.
Give each job the right tool
Use ChatGPT for drafting and summarizing what you paste in. For finding facts across a whole matter file with the source document named, test a document reading tool on one real case before you buy more seats.
ChatGPT does far more than CaseClerk. This table is for deciding which job you are paying for, and plenty of firms will sensibly pay for both.
| ChatGPT (Business or Enterprise) | CaseClerk | |
|---|---|---|
| Price visibility | Business is published: $25 per seat monthly, $20 yearly. Enterprise is quote only | Published: $99, $249 and $499 per month. A fourth Enterprise tier is quoted, and we say so |
| Billing model | Per seat, 2 seat minimum on Business | Flat account price with a monthly page allowance, not per user |
| Drafting, email, memos | Yes, and very good at it | No. It answers questions about documents you upload |
| Legal research | General web knowledge. No Westlaw or Lexis citator, so every case needs checking | No. CaseClerk does not do case law research and does not claim to |
| Reading a whole matter | Within the files you add to a chat or project and your plan's limits | Yes, up to 1,000 documents per case in a matter vault, 18 file formats |
| Where an answer came from | Can cite files in the conversation when asked | Every answer names the document it came from |
| Training on your files | Not by default on Business and Enterprise | We do not use case documents to train any AI model of our own. Our privacy policy names the AI provider that processes the text |
| Try before you buy | Free plan, but on consumer terms | 25 pages and up to 5 documents, no card |
| Best for | Firms that want one general assistant for drafting and everyday writing | Firms whose daily pain is a case file too big to read before the deadline |
ChatGPT features and prices come from OpenAI's pricing page and help center. OpenAI changes plans often, so check its pricing page before you sign.
Buy ChatGPT Business if you write all day
Advisory and transactional lawyers who turn notes into client letters, rework clauses and draft first versions of routine documents get the most from a general assistant. At $20 to $25 a seat it is the cheapest safe way to do that.
Buy Enterprise if clients audit you
Firms that answer outside counsel guidelines, sign BAAs for health data, or need retention the firm sets itself have to talk to OpenAI sales. Expect an annual contract and a quote, not a checkout page.
Add CaseClerk if the bottleneck is the file
Litigators, family lawyers and personal injury firms that receive thousands of pages of records, discovery and correspondence per matter need answers across the whole file with the page named. That is a reading job, priced per page read, not per lawyer.
Skip both for case law research
If the job is finding and citing authority, a research platform with a citator is the right purchase. Neither ChatGPT nor CaseClerk replaces Westlaw or Lexis, and a sanctioned brief costs more than any subscription.
For a firm that will put client information into it, the realistic floor is ChatGPT Business: $25 per seat per month on monthly billing or $20 on a yearly plan, with a minimum of 2 seats. Heavy users can take Premium seats at $125 monthly or $100 yearly, which OpenAI says include five times the usage of a Standard seat. Enterprise has no list price, runs on an annual contract, and is quoted by OpenAI's sales team.
| ChatGPT plan | Price OpenAI lists | Terms and training | Fit for client files |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Consumer. Chats can be used to improve models unless the user turns that off | No. Keep client information out of it |
| Go | $8 a month | Consumer | No |
| Plus | $20 a month | Consumer. Training can be switched off per user, which the firm cannot enforce | Not for client confidences. Fine for public law, marketing copy and your own templates |
| Pro | From $100 a month | Consumer | Same as Plus, just more usage |
| Business | $25 per seat per month, or $20 billed yearly. 2 seat minimum. Premium seats $125, or $100 yearly | Business terms. Not used for training by default. SSO and an admin console | Yes, under a written firm policy. This is the realistic floor for a small firm |
| Enterprise | No list price. Sales quote | Business terms plus custom retention (90 day minimum), role based access, SCIM, enterprise key management | Yes. Needed for a BAA, zero data retention or firm set retention |
The consumer plans are cheaper, and that is exactly the trap. A lawyer paying $20 a month for Plus on a personal card gets a good tool on consumer terms, with no firm admin, no central record of what was uploaded, and a training setting nobody at the firm can see.
ChatGPT Business scales with headcount. CaseClerk scales with how many pages you actually read, so a five lawyer firm with light volume can stay on the $99 plan. The two are not substitutes, but here is what each costs at common firm sizes, using the prices each company publishes.
| Firm size | ChatGPT Business, yearly (Standard seats) | ChatGPT Business, monthly | CaseClerk (flat, not per user) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo (2 seat minimum) | $480 a year | $600 a year | Solo $99 a month, or $594 a year on annual billing |
| 5 lawyers | $1,200 a year | $1,500 a year | Solo or Professional, sized by pages read, not by headcount |
| 10 lawyers | $2,400 a year | $3,000 a year | Professional $249 a month, 10,000 pages |
| 25 lawyers | $6,000 a year | $7,500 a year | Firm $499 a month, 30,000 pages |
CaseClerk annual billing is priced at six months, so a year of Solo is $594. Firms that need both a drafting assistant and a matter reading tool usually find the combined bill is still well under one seat of the enterprise legal platforms that refuse to publish a price, such as Harvey or CoCounsel.
Two cases frame the risk. In Mata v. Avianca (S.D.N.Y. 2023), lawyers filed a brief citing cases ChatGPT had invented and were sanctioned $5,000. The lesson is not that ChatGPT is banned. It is that the signing lawyer owns every citation, which ABA Formal Opinion 512 (July 2024) now spells out as part of competence and candor.
In United States v. Heppner (S.D.N.Y., February 2026), Judge Rakoff held that documents a defendant generated on his own with a consumer AI tool were not protected by privilege or the work product doctrine. The tool was not a lawyer, the consumer terms undercut any expectation of confidentiality, and the work was not done at counsel's direction. A court in the Eastern District of Michigan reached a different result on work product the same month in Warner v. Gilbarco, so the law is unsettled. The safe setup for a firm is the one that answers all three Heppner facts: business terms, a written policy, and use directed by counsel.
Harvey and Thomson Reuters CoCounsel are legal specific platforms sold by quote, with seat minimums that reportedly put small firms well into five figures a year. CoCounsel's advantage is Westlaw and Practical Law content behind every research answer. Harvey sells workflow and firm wide agents. ChatGPT Business is a general assistant with a published $20 to $25 seat price and no legal content of its own.
For a 2 to 20 lawyer firm, the honest split is usually this: ChatGPT for writing, a research platform you probably already license for case law, and a document reading tool for the matter file. Our Harvey alternatives for small firms compares the legal platforms that do publish prices.
ChatGPT is safe enough for client work on ChatGPT Business or Enterprise under a written firm policy. Those plans run on OpenAI's business terms, where workspace content is not used for training by default and an admin controls the account. Free, Go, Plus and Pro are consumer plans and should not hold client confidences.
Yes. No bar rule prohibits it. ABA Formal Opinion 512 allows generative AI if the lawyer meets the duties of competence, confidentiality, communication, candor and reasonable fees, and verifies the output. Several state bars have issued similar guidance, and some courts require a certification when AI helped draft a filing.
For most firms of 2 to 50 lawyers, ChatGPT Business at $20 per seat per month billed yearly is the right plan. It is the cheapest plan on business terms with SSO and admin controls. Move to Enterprise only if you need a BAA, a retention period you set yourself, SCIM or enterprise key management.
A lawyer on ChatGPT Business pays $25 a month on monthly billing or $20 a month billed yearly, with a 2 seat minimum per workspace. Premium seats cost $125 monthly or $100 yearly. ChatGPT Enterprise has no published price and is sold on an annual contract through OpenAI's sales team.
Not on ChatGPT Business or Enterprise by default, according to OpenAI. On consumer plans, chats can be used to improve models unless the user turns that setting off in data controls. Because a firm cannot enforce a setting on a personal account, client work belongs on a business workspace.
Not automatically. OpenAI's CEO has said ChatGPT conversations carry no legal confidentiality, and in Heppner a court held a defendant's own consumer AI chats were not privileged. Using a business plan, at counsel's direction, under a written policy is the setup most likely to preserve privilege and work product.
It can summarize and flag issues in documents you upload to a chat, within file and usage limits. It is not built to hold a whole matter of hundreds of files and tell you which exhibit said what. For that, a matter file tool such as CaseClerk answers across up to 1,000 documents and names the source.
Both are strong writers, and the privacy question is the same for each: use the business plan, not a personal one. ChatGPT Business and Claude Team are priced within a few dollars of each other per seat. Our Claude for lawyers page covers the Claude plans in the same detail.
Upload one real matter, ask the questions you would ask an associate, and see which document each answer came from. 25 pages, no card, published prices from $99 a month.
Start free trialClaude for lawyers
Which Claude plan a firm needs, what it costs per seat, and what Heppner means for privilege.
CoCounsel pricing
Thomson Reuters prints no CoCounsel price. What sets the quote and the term discounts it does state.
Harvey AI alternatives for small firms
Legal AI tools a 1 to 20 lawyer firm can buy, with published prices and seat minimums side by side.
CaseClerk pricing
Three published tiers with page allowances printed next to each. A year costs six months.
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