Irys alternatives: 7 legal AI tools compared

Irys alternatives at a glance

The table lines up Irys with seven alternatives on where each runs, what case-law research it includes, what it costs and how to try it.

Why lawyers look for Irys alternatives

Irys, a product of Iqidis, Inc., puts research, drafting, contract review, matters, intake and e-signature in one app, and says more than 300 legal teams use it. It has real strengths: a published price, unlimited professional use on Irys One, no seat minimum, a self-serve trial, SOC 2 Type II certification, and ISO 27001 listed on its security page. Lawyers who compare it with other tools usually have one of three reasons.

• They use one part of the bundle. Irys One folds research, intake, matters and e-signature into one $299 price. A lawyer whose week is mostly contract review may want a contract tool at a lower seat price, and a litigator may prefer research built on Westlaw or Clio's library. Irys Teams, at $329 per seat per month for 2 to 25 seats, is the plan with shared workspaces and firm-wide playbooks.
• Citation checking. Irys checks briefs against legal data sources and flags any authority it can't match to a real case. Litigators who also want to know whether authority is still good law look at StrongSuit's good-law analysis, Paxton's AI Citator, Clio Work's citator, Westlaw through CoCounsel and Shepard's Citations in Harvey's paid Ask LexisNexis add-on.
• Redlining in Word. Irys's Word add-in applies revisions as tracked changes, and Irys says its Document Editor currently supports "Accept All and Reject All for tracked changes." In the Irys app, the Drafting Assistant lets you accept or reject each change individually. Lawyers who negotiate clause by clause in Word test that workflow before committing.

1. Gavel Exec: best for contract-heavy practices that want Word redlines at a lower seat price

Best for: transactional lawyers, in-house counsel and small firms whose Irys hours go mostly to reviewing, negotiating and drafting agreements.

Gavel Exec is AI contract review and drafting software that runs inside Microsoft Word as an add-in and on the web. It marks up the whole agreement as tracked changes ranked by priority, gives the reason for each edit, adds margin comments and lists terms the draft leaves out. Martin Algie of MIA Contract Lawyers reports that a first-cut review now takes about 5 hours per contract, down from about 15.

• Price: $160 per user per month, or $1,740 per user per year, with 25 free queries per user and no credit card. That is $139 a month less per seat than Irys One. The monthly plan is billed month to month, with no long-term contract, and groups of 10 or more seats qualify for discounted team pricing.
• Shared playbooks: build a playbook from attorney-written defaults or from your own negotiation checklist, spreadsheet or signed deals (.docx, PDF or .csv), then give colleagues read-only or edit access.
• Market terms: the web app shows whether a provision is on-market or off-market, and flags what's missing, for the jurisdiction, industry and company size you pick.
• Drafting: precedent-based drafting in Word, plus Quick Actions for rewriting a clause.
• Security: Gavel is SOC 2 Type II certified. Its AI model providers, OpenAI among them, work under zero data retention agreements, and customer data, prompts and documents never train AI models. Gavel hosts data in the United States on Amazon Web Services unless you choose its European Union, Canadian or Australian hosting.

Limits: Gavel Exec doesn't include a case-law research database, and litigation and e-discovery sit outside its scope, so a firm that drafts briefs and checks citations in Irys would keep a research tool next to it. You need the Word add-in to redline a specific document or create a playbook, and Gavel Exec doesn't connect natively to iManage or NetDocuments yet.

For a two-way comparison, see Irys vs Gavel Exec.

2. StrongSuit: best for litigators who want research and cite checks for less

Best for: litigators at solo, small and mid-sized firms whose main needs are case research, litigation drafting and citation checks.

StrongSuit calls itself "The Legal AI platform for litigators," and LawNext reported on November 12, 2025 that the company rebranded from Callidus Legal AI. Its research covers more than 10 million precedential United States cases with good-law analysis, and the platform adds case timelines, litigation drafting, deposition preparation and an oral argument simulator with Case Coach. StrongSuit says more than 1,000 legal organizations use it.

• Price: the Individual plan is $249 a month per attorney, $50 below Irys One. The Firm plan is a custom quote and adds a team collaboration suite, user access management and a scaled document review solution.
• Trial: 5 days, per StrongSuit's help center, which also says a valid credit card must be on file during the trial.
• Contracts: Compare Contracts checks a counterparty draft against your reference agreement, shows inline redlines and supports playbook-guided review. In Word, the Negotiate tool reviews an agreement alongside a playbook you upload.
• Security: SOC 2 Type II, no model training on your inputs, and storage in the United States only.

Limits: StrongSuit reserves its discovery document review module for Enterprise customers (beta access for a limited number of documents is available on request), the Individual price covers one attorney, and its Word add-in page says it drafts and redlines contracts in the open document but doesn't say whether edits arrive as tracked changes.

3. Paxton: best for litigation teams drafting from large case files

Best for: litigation teams that want research and drafting grounded in the documents of each matter.

Paxton describes itself as "AI for Litigation Teams" and says it "brings the case files and legal research into one workspace." It drafts motions, briefs, discovery responses and deposition outlines from the record, looks for facts, gaps and contradictions across a case file, and builds case timelines and evidence summaries.

• Price: Individual is $499 per user per month, or $2,999 per user per year, which comes in just under Irys One's $3,049 annual price. Enterprise pricing comes from Paxton's sales team.
• Trial: 7 days on the Individual plan, which then continues on the monthly or annual billing you chose at sign-up.
• Research and files: the pricing page lists research across more than 30,000 legal sources and connections to Box, Dropbox, OneDrive and SharePoint. Paxton's AI Citator puts a treatment badge on each cited case, and a red negative-treatment badge means later authority has reversed, vacated or otherwise undercut it.
• Contracts: Paxton's help center shows its Assistant reviewing contracts and counterparty markups against your firm's playbook, which you describe in the prompt or attach as a document, and then drafting a redlined response in the same conversation.
• Security: Paxton says it adheres to SOC 2, ISO 27001 and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards, and its pricing page says your data never trains AI models.

Limits: the Word and Outlook plugins, iManage and NetDocuments connectors and a Claude integration come only with Enterprise. The Individual plan also costs more per month than Irys One ($499 against $299).

4. CoCounsel: best for firms that research on Westlaw

Best for: solo and small firms that already rely on Westlaw and Practical Law and want drafting and document analysis from the same vendor.

CoCounsel Legal is Thomson Reuters' legal AI. It reasons from Westlaw content and Practical Law guidance spanning more than 100 jurisdictions, turns a prompt into a draft with linked citations, and works inside Microsoft Word to "Draft, review, and refine legal documents." Tabular Analysis checks as many as 10,000 documents against 100 questions in one table.

• Price: CoCounsel Legal starts at $551.85 per month for solo and small firms. Thomson Reuters also lists Westlaw Advantage with CoCounsel from $415.35 per month.
• Trial: free trial on request; the solo and small firm page doesn't state a length.
• Security: SOC 2 and ISO 42001 certified, and Thomson Reuters commits to keeping customer data out of the training of its underlying models.

Limits: the CoCounsel Legal starting price sits above Irys One, and its research draws on Westlaw and Practical Law, so it fits best when the firm already wants Thomson Reuters content. Compare it with a contract-only tool in CoCounsel vs Gavel Exec.

5. Clio Work: best for firms that run their practice on Clio

Best for: solo, small and mid-sized firms that keep their matters in Clio Manage and want research and drafting tied to those matters.

Clio Work is Clio's AI workspace. It draws on a library of more than 1 billion legal documents, and its built-in citator, in Clio's words, "confirms every authority is current." It drafts motions and briefs from case facts, reviews contracts and extracts key terms, and Clio for Word brings redlines and track changes into Word. LawNext reported on April 21, 2026 that Clio Work no longer requires a Clio Manage subscription.

• Price: not published; Clio quotes plans through a demo.
• Trial: Clio's help center says eligible Clio Manage accounts in the United States are enrolled automatically in a free 30-day trial, and firms can opt in to a 14-day trial. HIPAA compliance is a separate add-on outside both trials.
• Security: Clio says Clio Work holds SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications, meets HIPAA and General Data Protection Regulation standards, and keeps client data out of AI model training.

Limits: no published price, and when the 14-day trial ends, users still assigned Clio Work licenses convert to paid users automatically. Irys also connects to Clio, so a Clio firm can test both on the same matters.

6. Harvey: best for large firms rolling out one platform across practice groups

Best for: Am Law firms, larger mid-size firms and corporate legal departments that buy AI centrally and roll it out under firm-wide controls.

Harvey reports more than 3,500 firms and legal departments as users, among them more than 80 Am Law 100 firms. A Vault project holds up to 100,000 files, and a single review table analyzes up to 10,000 of them. Knowledge handles legal, regulatory and tax research, and a paid Ask LexisNexis add-on grounds answers in LexisNexis federal and state case law, with Shepard's Citations to show whether a case is still good law. Harvey for Word records its edits as tracked changes.

• Price: not published; the path in is a demo request.
• Security: Harvey is audited every year for SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, requires zero data retention from its model providers, and doesn't train underlying models on inputs, outputs or uploaded documents. In-region processing is available in the United States, the European Union or Switzerland, or Australia.
• Firm size: Harvey's site has separate sections for law firms, in-house teams and mid-size firms.

Limits: no published price and no free trial listed on Harvey's site, which is the sales-led model Irys sets itself against with "Legal AI without the enterprise mystery." See Harvey vs Gavel Exec.

7. GC AI: best for in-house lawyers advising the whole business

Best for: in-house lawyers who want one assistant for contracts, research and the business's everyday legal questions.

GC AI says it is "built exclusively for in-house legal teams" and counts more than 2,100 legal teams and companies as users. Its Word add-in drafts, reviews and redlines, its playbooks run automated first-pass reviews against your standards, research reaches over 14 million court opinions from the United States, and it connects to 20+ apps such as Gmail, Slack, Drive and HubSpot.

• Price: Individual is $500 a month, aimed at solo or fractional general counsel, with United States case law and international law sold as add-ons. Team pricing is on request, billed yearly, with one legal database included.
• Trial: 14 days with no credit card, including the Word add-in and playbooks.
• Security: SOC 2 Type II, and OpenAI and Anthropic process its data under zero data retention agreements.

Limits: GC AI serves in-house teams only, so a law firm using Irys for client matters falls outside its audience. GC AI vs Gavel Exec sets the two side by side for contract work.

How to choose an Irys alternative

1. Sort a month of Irys work into buckets. Count the hours on research and briefs, on contract review and drafting, and on intake, matters and signatures. A contracts-heavy split points to a contract tool, a research-heavy split points to a litigation platform, and an even split may justify keeping an all-in-one.
2. Decide what your citation check has to prove. Irys flags citations it can't match to a real case. If you need to know whether authority is still good law, run a brief you've already filed through StrongSuit, Paxton, Clio Work or CoCounsel. Harvey users get Shepard's Citations through the paid Ask LexisNexis add-on.
3. Price the seats you'll actually buy. Irys Teams runs $329 per seat per month for 2 to 25 seats. Set that next to StrongSuit at $249 per attorney per month, Paxton at $499 per user per month or $2,999 a year, GC AI at $500 a month and Gavel Exec at $160 per user per month or $1,740 a year, and get written quotes from Harvey and Clio.
4. Open the same contract in Word in each tool. Check that edits land as tracked changes you can accept or reject one at a time, and that each tool applies your playbook positions the way you would.
5. Run the trials in the same week. No credit card is needed for GC AI's 14-day trial or for the free queries in Gavel Exec. Irys and Paxton run 7 days, and StrongSuit runs 5 days with a card on file.

Switching from Irys: what to bring with you

• Documents, drafts and research memos from your Irys matters and Library. Irys keeps your access through the end of the billing cycle after you cancel, so export before then.
• Executed copies of anything you sent for signature through Irys Sign.
• Your negotiation positions, preferred clauses and fallbacks, as a checklist or spreadsheet. Gavel Exec can turn that file into playbook rules.
• A few signed agreements and filed briefs, to check each new tool's redlines and citations against work you've already finished.

More comparisons: Harvey alternatives, CoCounsel alternatives, GC AI alternatives, a ranked list of AI contract review tools for lawyers, all Gavel comparisons and our guide to AI tools for solo lawyers.