From Pilots to Partnerships: How Indian Law Firms Navigate AI Adoption in 2025

Admin ILTN
Sep 10
8 min read

The Indian legal industry stands at an inflection point. After years of cautious observation, major law firms are not just experimenting with artificial intelligence—they're embedding it into the core of their operations. However, the path from initial curiosity to strategic partnership varies dramatically across firms, revealing distinct approaches to AI adoption that reflect different risk appetites, strategic priorities, and visions for the future of legal practice.

As we analyze the landscape as of September 10, 2025, a clear pattern emerges: successful AI integration isn't about choosing the right technology—it's about choosing the right adoption strategy. Some firms conduct exhaustive multi-platform pilots before committing to a single partner, others make bold early bets on specific platforms, while a few choose to build proprietary solutions in-house. Each approach offers unique advantages and reveals critical lessons about managing technological transformation in professional services.

The Multi-Platform Pilot Approach: Learning Through Experimentation

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (CAM) exemplifies the most comprehensive pilot approach in the Indian market. Beginning in January 2025, CAM launched what they termed their "AI-first strategy," simultaneously piloting Harvey, Lucio, Microsoft Copilot, and ChatGPT Plus across legal and business functions. This wasn't a casual experiment—it involved 380 lawyers across all offices, creating one of the largest legal AI pilot programs in India.

The firm's methodical approach paid dividends. After six months of rigorous evaluation focusing on usability, interoperability, efficiency, accuracy, training, and responsiveness to real-world legal use cases, CAM selected Legora as their firm-wide platform partner in July 2025. This decision wasn't just about selecting technology; it represented a strategic choice to partner with a platform that emphasized co-creation and collaborative development.

"The decision to partner with Legora is not just about selecting a product—it is about building the future of legal services through deep collaboration, co-creation, and responsible innovation," noted Managing Partner Cyril Shroff.

CAM's approach demonstrates the value of comprehensive evaluation. By testing multiple platforms simultaneously, they could directly compare capabilities, assess integration challenges, and understand which solution best aligned with their specific workflows and culture. The firm's commitment to becoming an "AI-first organization" required confidence that their chosen platform could scale across diverse practice areas and client needs.

Single-Platform Commitment: The Strategic Bet Approach

In contrast, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (SAM) pursued what might be called a strategic bet approach. After conducting a year-long evaluation of both Indian and international AI solutions—including considering developing their own platform—SAM made a decisive commitment to Harvey AI in June 2025, becoming the first Indian law firm to deploy Harvey's full suite across all seven offices.

SAM's approach reflects a different philosophy: rather than maintaining optionality through multiple pilots, they conducted thorough due diligence before making a comprehensive commitment. Partner Naval Chopra explained their reasoning: "Following a year-long evaluation of both Indian and international AI solutions—including the possibility of developing our own—we are delighted to implement Harvey, the market-leading product".

The firm's strategic rationale was clear—Harvey had proven itself as the market leader among international legal AI platforms, with deployments across major global firms. By committing fully to Harvey, SAM positioned itself to benefit from the platform's continuous development while contributing to its evolution through their own use cases.

This approach has already yielded results. Within the first month of deployment, SAM lawyers used Harvey for tasks ranging from due diligence and drafting complex clauses to creating closing checklists and generating client pitches. The firm's comprehensive training program and governance protocols ensured responsible implementation while maximizing adoption across teams.

Strategic Partnerships After Targeted Pilots: The Hybrid Model

IndusLaw represents a hybrid approach that balances exploration with commitment. The firm conducted focused pilots with Jurisphere, testing the platform's capabilities for document analysis, due diligence processes, and litigation support before announcing a strategic partnership in May 2025.

What distinguishes IndusLaw's approach is their emphasis on customization and integration. Rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all solution, they worked with Jurisphere to build customized workflows for different practice areas, deployed the platform within their secure cloud infrastructure, and ensured all data processing met stringent confidentiality standards.

"We are confident in the tested and proven safety and security of this tool, and we appreciate and recognize the thoughtful collaboration and responsiveness of its founders and developers throughout the pilot phase and deployment process," stated Founding and Senior Partner Kartik Ganapathy.

The Jurisphere partnership exemplifies how Indian legal AI startups are competing with international platforms by offering greater customization and responsiveness to local market needs. For IndusLaw, this approach provided the benefits of cutting-edge AI capabilities while maintaining control over implementation and ensuring alignment with their specific operational requirements.

Incremental Scaling: From Practice to Platform

Trilegal pursued an incremental approach that began with practice-level pilots in 2024 before expanding to a firm-wide partnership with Lucio by November 2024. This strategy reflects a more conservative approach to AI adoption—testing capabilities in controlled environments before scaling across the organization.

Partner Nikhil Narendran emphasized their focus on security and client preferences: "Our partnership with Lucio is based on the key pillars of data security, confidentiality, and integrity, with confidential data never leaving the Trilegal cloud or being used to train the model".

Trilegal's approach demonstrates how firms can build confidence in AI capabilities while maintaining strict control over sensitive client data. By starting with specific use cases—document review, due diligence, and data room organization—they could measure tangible benefits before expanding deployment. The firm's Digital Innovation Group provided the infrastructure to systematically evaluate and integrate AI capabilities across different practice areas.

Direct Partnership: Speed Over Experimentation

Some firms chose to bypass extensive piloting in favor of direct partnerships. S&R Associates adopted Lucio in January 2025 as their AI legal assistant, focusing immediately on document analysis, team collaboration, and workflow optimization.

"Lucio's features, from document review to workflow optimization, along with its emphasis on security and confidentiality, provide us with a significant edge," explained Partner Sumit Bansal.

This approach reflects confidence in the vendor's capabilities and a willingness to learn through implementation rather than extended evaluation. For mid-sized firms like S&R Associates, the direct partnership model can provide faster time-to-value while avoiding the resource intensity of comprehensive pilot programs.

Economic Laws Practice (ELP) followed a similar path with VecFlow (now August), implementing their Oliver AI assistant in April 2025 after launching an internal initiative in Q1 2025 to explore AI transformation. The partnership delivered immediate results—ELP reported a 60% reduction in due diligence time, enabling more advisory work and optimized fee structures.

Proprietary Platform Development: Control and Customization

Two firms chose to develop proprietary AI platforms, reflecting a different strategic calculation about technology control and competitive advantage.

Khaitan & Co launched their KAI platform (Khaitan & Co AI) in 2024, featuring ask.KAI and DocInsight tools powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Services. The firm's approach emphasizes user-centric development, data-driven AI, and full strategic control. Their recognition in Microsoft's "AI First Movers" initiative alongside companies like TCS, Infosys, and HDFC Bank validates their innovation approach.

Chief Digital Officer Rohit Shukla explained their philosophy: "Our approach is built on three key core principles—user-centric development, data-driven AI and full control and strategic alignment".

Anagram Partners launched their Blueprint platform in April 2025, developed in collaboration with Olin.ai. Blueprint offers automated contract review, clause extraction, risk analysis, and legal research capabilities while maintaining firm-specific customization and security controls.

The proprietary approach offers maximum control over functionality, data handling, and competitive differentiation. However, it requires significant internal development resources and ongoing maintenance capabilities that may not be available to all firms.

The Platform Landscape: Choosing Partners

The AI platform choices reveal interesting patterns about how firms evaluate technology vendors:

Harvey AI has emerged as the preferred choice for firms seeking proven, international-grade capabilities. Its partnerships with SAM, S&A Law Offices, and most recently AZB & Partners (announced September 9, 2025) demonstrate appeal among India's top-tier firms. Harvey's focus on legal-specific capabilities and integration with existing workflows makes it attractive for comprehensive deployments.

Legora won CAM's competitive evaluation through its emphasis on co-creation and collaborative development. The platform's "agentic workflows" that orchestrate complex legal tasks provide differentiation in an increasingly crowded market.

Lucio, as an Indian platform, has found success with firms like Trilegal and S&R Associates through its focus on document review and local market understanding. Indian startups like Lucio offer advantages in customization, local compliance, and responsiveness to market-specific needs.

Jurisphere has built partnerships with IndusLaw and other firms by emphasizing custom workflow development and practice area specialization.

August (formerly VecFlow) represents the emerging trend toward specialized AI agents designed for specific legal tasks. Their $7 million funding round in August 2025 reflects investor confidence in purpose-built legal AI solutions.

Success Factors: What Makes AI Adoption Work

Analyzing successful AI implementations across these firms reveals several critical success factors:

1. Clear Success Metrics and Governance: Successful firms established specific metrics for measuring AI impact. ELP's 60% reduction in due diligence time and SAM's documented improvements in contract drafting speed provide concrete evidence of value creation.

2. Comprehensive Training and Change Management: All successful implementations included extensive training programs. CAM's involvement of 380 lawyers in their pilot ensured broad organizational buy-in before selecting their final platform.

3. Security and Compliance Integration: Firms that successfully scaled AI deployment integrated security and compliance considerations from the beginning. Trilegal's requirement that client data never leave their cloud infrastructure exemplifies this approach.

4. Practice Area Alignment: The most successful implementations aligned AI capabilities with specific practice area needs rather than pursuing generic deployments. IndusLaw's custom workflows for different practice areas demonstrate this principle.

5. Vendor Partnership Quality: Firms that emphasized collaborative relationships with AI vendors achieved better customization and support. CAM's "co-creation" model with Legora represents the gold standard for vendor partnerships.

Emerging Trends and Future Directions

Several trends are shaping the next phase of AI adoption in Indian law firms:

Specialization Over Generalization: Firms are moving beyond general-purpose AI tools toward specialized solutions for specific legal tasks. August's focus on document-heavy processes and Jurisphere's practice area customization reflect this trend.

Integration Ecosystem Development: Platforms are building integration capabilities with existing legal technology stacks. Harvey's partnerships with LexisNexis and Microsoft demonstrate how AI vendors are creating comprehensive legal technology ecosystems.

Regulatory Compliance Focus: As firms gain experience with AI deployment, regulatory compliance and data governance are becoming key differentiators. The most successful implementations prioritize these considerations from the outset.

Indian Platform Maturation: Indian AI startups are proving they can compete with international platforms through local market understanding and customization capabilities. The success of Lucio, Jurisphere, and other Indian platforms demonstrates viable alternatives to international solutions.

Strategic Recommendations for Law Firms

Based on the experiences of these pioneering firms, several strategic recommendations emerge:

For Large Full-Service Firms: Consider the multi-platform pilot approach exemplified by CAM. The resource investment in comprehensive evaluation pays dividends in platform selection and organizational buy-in.

For Specialized Practices: Focus on platforms that offer deep customization for specific practice areas. IndusLaw's approach with Jurisphere demonstrates how targeted AI implementation can deliver significant value.

For Mid-Size Firms: The direct partnership model pursued by S&R Associates and ELP can provide faster time-to-value while avoiding the complexity of extended evaluation processes.

For Technology Leaders: Consider proprietary development only if you have significant internal technology capabilities and strategic reasons for maintaining full platform control.

Conclusion: The Path Forward

The Indian legal industry's AI adoption journey reveals that success depends less on choosing the "right" technology and more on choosing the right adoption strategy for your firm's specific circumstances, capabilities, and strategic objectives.

Firms like CAM demonstrate that comprehensive evaluation, while resource-intensive, can lead to better platform selection and stronger organizational commitment. SAM's strategic bet approach shows that decisive commitment to proven platforms can accelerate deployment and deliver rapid results. IndusLaw's hybrid model illustrates how targeted pilots can inform strategic partnerships, while Trilegal's incremental approach proves that careful scaling can maintain security while building capabilities.

The most important lesson from these diverse approaches is that AI adoption requires strategic intentionality. Whether choosing pilots or partnerships, firms must align their adoption strategy with their risk tolerance, resource capabilities, and competitive objectives. The firms that thrive in the AI-enabled legal landscape will be those that thoughtfully navigate this strategic choice rather than those that simply choose the most advanced technology.

As we move toward 2026, the question is no longer whether law firms will adopt AI, but how they will structure their adoption journey to maximize value while managing risk. The pioneering firms profiled here provide a roadmap for that journey, but each firm must ultimately chart its own course based on its unique circumstances and strategic vision.

The future belongs to firms that can effectively harness AI's capabilities while maintaining the human judgment and client relationships that define excellent legal service. The pilot-to-partnership journey is just the beginning of that transformation.