Claude for law firms, checked against Anthropic's own pages
Claude is a strong general assistant for lawyers, and since May 2026 Anthropic ships free legal plugins for it. The part that decides whether a firm can use it on client files is the plan, not the model: Free, Pro and Max run on consumer terms, while Team and Enterprise run on commercial terms with no training by default. Here is what each plan costs, what a federal court said about privilege, and when a matter-file tool is the better buy.
Claude prices on this page are read from Anthropic's pricing page. 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.
Yes, on the right plan and under a firm policy. Claude Team (from $20 per seat per month billed yearly, 2 seat minimum) and Claude Enterprise run under Anthropic's commercial terms, where customer content is not used to train models by default. Claude Free, Pro and Max run under consumer terms, and in United States v. Heppner (S.D.N.Y., February 2026) Judge Rakoff held that a defendant's own chats on consumer Claude were neither privileged nor work product.
Claude is excellent at drafting, summarizing and reasoning. It is a general assistant, so your team decides which documents go in, and checks where each answer came from. If the job you actually need done is reading a whole matter file and getting answers that cite the exact document, CaseClerk does that one job at a flat, published $99, $249 or $499 a month for the account.
Move client work off personal accounts
Buy Claude Team for every lawyer who will touch client files. Two seats is the minimum, so even a solo pays for two. Ban client names and documents in personal Free, Pro or Max accounts in writing.
Sign the paper before the files go in
Confirm you are on commercial terms, get the data processing addendum, and record the retention setting. On Enterprise, set the retention period yourself. Keep all three in the firm's AI file.
Write a counsel directed use policy
Say who may use Claude, on which matters, for which tasks, and who reviews the output. Tell clients not to run their own case through a consumer chatbot and send you the result. That is Heppner in one sentence.
Pick the tool per job
Use Claude for drafting and thinking. For questions across a whole production, deposition set or deal room, use a tool built to hold the matter and cite the document, so the verification Opinion 512 requires takes minutes, not an afternoon.
Claude 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.
| Claude (Team or Enterprise) | CaseClerk | |
|---|---|---|
| Price visibility | Published on Anthropic's pricing page. Team from $20 per seat per month yearly | 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 Team. Enterprise adds usage charges | 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 | Through plugins and connectors such as CourtListener and Westlaw, if you license them | No. CaseClerk does not do case law research and does not claim to |
| Reading a whole matter | Yes, within the files you add to a chat, project or Cowork folder and your plan's usage limits | Yes, up to 1,000 documents per case in a matter vault, 18 file formats |
| Where an answer came from | Cites what it read in the conversation | Every answer names the document it came from |
| Training on your files | Not by default on commercial terms | 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 a general assistant for drafting, research help and agents | Firms whose daily pain is a case file too big to read before the deadline |
Claude figures are from Anthropic's pricing page and help center. Plans and prices change, so check them the day you buy.
Buy Claude Team if you draft all day
Transactional and advisory lawyers who write first drafts, rework clauses and turn notes into client letters get the most from a general assistant. The Claude for Legal commercial and corporate plugins add NDA triage, vendor agreement review and closing checklists at no extra charge.
Buy Enterprise if the firm needs audit logs
Firms that answer outside counsel guidelines or client security questionnaires usually need role based access, audit logs and a retention period they set. Only Enterprise lists those.
Buy a matter-file tool if you litigate on documents
A plaintiff firm with 600 pages of medical records, a defense team inside a document production, or an associate prepping a deposition from 40 exhibits needs answers across one matter that point to the page. That is what CaseClerk is for.
Skip consumer plans for anything with a client in it
A personal Pro account is fine for public statutes, your own templates and marketing copy. It is the wrong tool for client names, strategy and privileged facts, whatever the price.
For a firm that will put client information into it, the realistic floor is Claude Team: $25 per seat per month on monthly billing or $20 on a yearly plan, with a minimum of 2 seats and a maximum of 150. Heavier users can take Premium seats at $125 monthly or $100 yearly. Enterprise is listed at $20 per seat per month billed yearly plus usage that scales with the model and the task, so the real Enterprise bill depends on how hard the firm uses it.
| Claude plan | Price Anthropic lists | Terms it runs under | Fit for client files |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Consumer terms | No. Keep client information out of it |
| Pro | $20 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly | Consumer terms | Not for client confidences. Fine for public law and your own templates |
| Max | From $100 a month, monthly billing only | Consumer terms | Same consumer terms as Pro, just more usage |
| Team, Standard seat | $25 per seat monthly, or $20 billed yearly. 2 to 150 seats | Commercial terms, no training by default, SSO, admin controls | Yes, with a firm policy and a signed DPA |
| Team, Premium seat | $125 per seat monthly, or $100 billed yearly | Commercial terms | Yes, for heavy users |
| Enterprise | Listed at $20 per seat per month billed yearly, plus usage that scales with model and task | Commercial terms, audit logs, SCIM, custom data retention | Yes. The only tier with firm-set retention and audit logs |
The Claude for Legal plugins cost nothing. They are open source under the Apache 2.0 license, and they run inside a paid Claude plan through Cowork or Claude Code. What the plugins connect to may not be free: a Westlaw or iManage connector still needs your own Westlaw or iManage license.
Claude's per seat pricing is low. The table below runs it for common firm sizes, using the Team plan because that is the cheapest tier on commercial terms. The CaseClerk column is the flat account price for the page volume a firm that size usually reads in a month. They buy different things, so read this as a budget line, not a like for like comparison.
| Firm size | Claude, cheapest tier on commercial terms | Claude with Premium seats | CaseClerk, published |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 lawyer | Team needs 2 seats: $40 to $50 a month | $200 to $250 a month for 2 seats | $99 a month (Solo, 2,500 pages) |
| 3 lawyers | $60 to $75 a month | $300 to $375 a month | $99 or $249 a month for the account |
| 5 lawyers | $100 to $125 a month | $500 to $625 a month | $249 a month (Professional, 10,000 pages) |
| 10 lawyers | $200 to $250 a month | $1,000 to $1,250 a month | $249 or $499 a month for the account |
| 20 lawyers | $400 to $500 a month | $2,000 to $2,500 a month | $499 a month (Firm, 30,000 pages) |
Two things the per seat math hides. First, a solo pays for two Team seats. Second, many firms end up paying for Claude and a legal tool anyway, because the general assistant does not hold a matter's documents together the way a case file tool does. Our CoCounsel pricing breakdown and Harvey AI pricing and seat minimums pages show what the legal-specific alternatives cost when they do not publish a price at all.
In United States v. Heppner, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York ruled from the bench on February 10, 2026, and explained the ruling in a written opinion on February 17, 2026. The defendant had used consumer Claude on his own to prepare reports on his defense strategy and later shared them with his lawyers. The court held those exchanges were not protected by attorney client privilege or the work product doctrine.
The reasoning had three parts. Claude is not an attorney. The communications were not confidential, because the consumer privacy policy let Anthropic log prompts and outputs and disclose them to third parties. And counsel had not directed the use. Anthropic's own help center article on legal work points out that the case involved a consumer account used without a lawyer's involvement, not an enterprise tool used at an attorney's direction.
For a firm, the practical reading is narrow and useful: keep client work on commercial terms, direct the use in writing, and tell clients not to run their own case through a consumer chatbot. We covered the plan by plan data controls in more depth in our review of Claude Enterprise data retention and admin controls for law firms.
Harvey publishes no price. Buyers report about $1,200 per seat per month with a minimum of roughly 20 to 25 seats, which Harvey has not confirmed. Claude Team is $20 to $25 per seat with a 2 seat minimum. That is a gap of roughly 50 to 60 times per seat, and at a 5 lawyer firm the minimum alone decides it.
What the difference buys is a legal platform: research content partnerships, Vault for large document sets, workflows built for firm practice, and a vendor whose whole business is law firms. Claude gives you a stronger general assistant and the free plugins, and asks you to assemble the rest. For small firms comparing the two, our list of Harvey AI alternatives a small firm can actually buy sets out the published prices side by side.
Claude is safe enough for client work on a commercial plan, meaning Team or Enterprise, under a written firm policy. Those plans run on Anthropic's commercial terms, where customer content is not used for training by default and admins control settings. Free, Pro and Max are consumer accounts, and a federal court has held consumer Claude chats were not privileged.
Yes. No bar rule prohibits it, and ABA Formal Opinion 512 (July 2024) allows generative AI if the lawyer meets the duties of competence, confidentiality, communication, supervision and reasonable fees. In practice that means a commercial plan for client data, informed client consent where the risk warrants it, and a lawyer checking every output before it is relied on.
Claude is very good at drafting, summarizing long documents and reasoning through a fact pattern, and many lawyers prefer its writing style to other assistants. It is weaker where legal work needs verified authority or a complete view of a large file, so pair it with a research service and check citations. It is a general assistant, not a system of record for a matter.
Claude on its own is not a legal research database. It can reason about law it is given and draft research memos, but case law answers need checking against primary sources. The Claude for Legal plugins can connect to CourtListener and, with your own license, Westlaw, which improves grounding. Treat any citation it produces as unverified until you have read the case.
Cowork lets Claude work directly on files in a folder on your computer, which is convenient and also means it reads whatever is in that folder. On a Team or Enterprise account it runs under commercial terms. Point it at a folder that holds only the matter you are working on, and never at a drive that mixes clients.
Anthropic does not charge lawyers differently. Pro is $20 a month, Max starts at $100, and Team is $25 per seat monthly or $20 per seat billed yearly with a 2 seat minimum. Enterprise is listed at $20 per seat per month billed yearly plus usage. The Claude for Legal plugins are free, but they need a paid plan to run.
Both work for legal drafting, and the safety question is the same for each: use the business tier, not a personal account. Claude is often preferred for long documents and writing that reads like a lawyer wrote it. ChatGPT has a larger third party ecosystem. Pick the one your firm will actually govern, then pick a matter tool for reading case files.
Not on commercial plans by default. Anthropic states that content from Claude for Work, the Claude Platform and the API is not used to train its models by default. Consumer accounts are different: users choose whether their chats can be used for training, and opted in data can be kept for up to five years. Check the setting on every account a lawyer uses.
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 trialHarvey 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.
CoCounsel pricing
Thomson Reuters prints no CoCounsel price. What sets the quote and the term discounts it does state.
AI contract review software
Find every clause, obligation and deadline across a deal file, with the source document named.
CaseClerk pricing
Three published tiers with page allowances printed next to each. A year costs six months.
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