2025 felt like a watershed year for legaltech. It took only the first three quarters of the year for investment into the sector to smash previous records – hitting $2.4bn by the end of Q3 according to Crunchbase. Much of this of course is being driven by the growing maturity of AI solutions in the sector, which have moved from being disruptive to increasingly ubiquitous. In the UK, 2025 even saw the SRA approve its first ‘AI law firm’, while AI platform Lawhive turned the tables and actually bought a law firm itself. In the US, Crosby an ‘actual law firm’ (according to Tech Crunch) hit the market after a $5.8m seed funding round. But probably one of the biggest signals of growing maturity of the market is the consolidation we saw last year. Clio's £1bn acquisition of Vlex, and LexisNexis’ strategic alliance with Harvey were major milestones – pairing legacy legal information platforms with cutting edge AI providers. Legaltech hitting the headlines All of this has of course played out in the media. Coverage of legaltech stories hit new heights in 2025 alongside those recording funding levels. According to our analysis, coverage of legaltech stories in the professional and sector press (legal and legaltech media) increased by around a third in 2025 compared to 2024, and almost doubled compared to 2023. Probably even more of a signal of the market’s development is that this media interest has also been echoed in the US and UK ‘mainstream’ and technology press. Looking at the major titles – such as the BBC, Wall Street Journal, Wired etc. – coverage of legaltech grew by 41% in 2025 year on year, and by around 70% compared to 2023. The biggest legaltech stories of 2025 By applying AI analysis to our legaltech media data set we extracted the ‘top’ stories from 2025. These have been broadly defined as being the stories which had been covered by more than one outlet, and which were then ordered first by total audience reach and then by total shares on social media (according to data in Cision One). We found the top five legaltech stories of 2025 were:
- Harvey’s $8bn valuation, this following a funding round earlier in 2025 which valued the legaltech leader at $5bn and coming on the back of CMS announcing one of the largest roll outs of the platform by a law firm to date
- Harvey again, but this time its partnership with LexisNexis – bringing together two legaltech behemoths
- The Robin AI ‘collapse’ and acquisition by Scissero – a challenging year for the company which former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak once lauded, and which had featured in the top 10 of the The Sunday Times 100 Tech 2025 list
- Clio’s $1bn acquisition of Vlex which, according to Business Insider was not just the “largest in legaltech history” but also a case of a “dinosaur” buying “a seat at the Big Law table”…
- We had an AI company buying a law firm, we had an AI business becoming a law firm, but trumping those into 5th place was the “rare” move of a law firm buying an AI company itself. Cleary acquired UK startup Springbok AI in a major signal of how law firms continue to grapple with, and come up with new solutions to, the buy vs build conundrum
In terms of brand mentions in the professional and legaltech media, its overall footprint was second only to Harvey according to our analysis of a range of legaltech company names.
If 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that we can expect to see more disruption, probably more consolidation, and new innovations – and even symbioses - as the tech platforms look to stay ahead. Equally, law firms will seek to retain competitive advantage through technology and bring new offerings forward to clients who increasingly expect more – faster, and often cheaper. This all brings risk of course but, looking ahead to 2026, and in spite of widespread debate about an “AI bubble”, legaltech is all set to continue going from strength to strength.
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