Spellbook vs Legora: Word contract suite or enterprise legal platform

Spellbook, Legora and Gavel Exec side by side

Each row comes from the vendor's website, help center, terms or press releases as read on November 12, 2026, with Gavel Exec in the third column for reference.

Where the work happens: a Word add-in or an operating system

Spellbook lives inside the document. Its pricing page describes the product as the "Spellbook Suite (Word Add-In & Associate)," with the Word add-in covering Review, Draft, Ask, Benchmarks and Playbooks. Legora calls itself "The agentic operating system for legal work," and its Word add-in is one of 15 entries in its product menu.

Spellbook's integrations page lists iManage, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive and Slack, and Google Docs appears among the tools it works with. Its own brief, updated October 3, 2026, calls the product "intentionally narrower" than Legora and Harvey.

Legora's menu adds an Outlook add-in, an Editor, a mobile app, Tabular Review, Workflows, Legal Research, Portal, Monitors, Agent, Lists, Skills and Intake. In Word you can "draft, redline, or review without leaving your document" with "hundreds of saved prompts." The Outlook add-in summarizes threads, drafts replies and files emails into a Legora matter.

Legora is stronger for a firm that wants email, matters, research and review in one place. Spellbook is stronger for a lawyer whose work starts and ends in the document, and only Spellbook lists Google Docs.

One contract in Word, or thousands of documents in a table

Both redline one agreement in Word; the gap opens on volume. Legora's Tabular Review is "An AI-powered spreadsheet that extracts key insights from thousands of documents, each one cited to its source," while Spellbook's Associate handles contract sets and publishes no document count.

Spellbook's homepage promises to "Surgically redline contracts. Negotiate from your side, with every suggestion tracked." Associate, which Spellbook calls "The first AI agent for lawyers that plans and executes multi-document projects," "reviews datarooms, updates terms, and revises document sets."

Tabular Review imports documents from a document management system or a virtual data room, gives each document a row and each prompt a column, and lets a reviewer expand any cell to see the reasoning and source. The Legora Agent, announced June 4, 2026 and available to all customers, planned a review of a "100-document data room" in Legora's example, sent sub-agents across eight practice areas and delivered a draft report in about forty minutes.

Spellbook's own brief says it "does not try to be a firm-wide due diligence platform or a structured-review data tool." For diligence at that scale and litigation, Legora is stronger.

Playbooks: who writes the rules and where they run

Both vendors run playbooks inside Word with rules and fallbacks, and on playbooks alone they are close. Spellbook adds a build service for in-house teams; Legora pairs playbooks with Skills, which encode standards for its Agent.

Spellbook says you can "build a playbook with detailed rules and fallbacks" and that it "adds redlines directly to your contract, in your name." It also generates a playbook from a model document, and because the build service appears only on the In-House Teams plan, a law firm builds its own.

Legora describes playbooks as "customizable sets of rules designed to streamline the review of documents." You define "starting positions" and "non-negotiables and fallbacks" in Legora, then run the playbook in Word. Separately, Skills "encode your processes and standards as reusable instructions" for the Agent, and Legora says Skills live inside the Agent, including in Word and Outlook.

Research: public databases or publisher partnerships

Legora is the stronger research tool, judging by what each vendor publishes. Its Legal Research draws on "publisher partnerships and official sources" across "hundreds of jurisdictions," while Spellbook's Ask draws on public databases including CourtListener, CanLII and Justia.

Legora calls its approach "Ontological Legal Research": it maps how statutes and the cases interpreting them connect and weighs sources by authority, claims "Over 60 million legal documents" in the United States, and can "cite hundreds of sources in one shot." It does not name its publisher partners.

Spellbook lists Ask as "Quick answers to complex questions," with a Legal Data Sources connector on its integrations page. For a transactional lawyer that is often enough; a firm replacing a research subscription needs more. Neither names Westlaw or Lexis, so ask which databases sit behind an answer.

What each costs, and whether there is a minimum

Neither vendor publishes a price. Spellbook prices by the headcount on a license, and Gavel customers put its quotes at about $350 per user per month. Legora is about $3,000 per user per year with a $30,000 minimum, reported by Gavel customers, although Legora's own site now says it has no seat minimum.

Spellbook's help center says a monthly subscription can be canceled at any time and ends with the current billing period, while an annual subscription "will remain active until the end of that term."

Legora's answer on price is "we can work with you directly to find the best pricing package." Three accounts of the minimum exist. Gavel customers report $30,000. Spellbook's brief on Legora, last updated October 2, 2026, says "Pricing starts at $3,000 per user, per year" and "A minimum commitment of 10 seats is required." Legora's small and mid-sized firms page answers "Does Legora have a seat minimum?" with "No, we support all types of legal teams from in-house, to GCs, to law firms of all sizes" and says it sells "from 1 license to 5+." Get the minimum in writing.

Legora's United States terms renew the order-form term automatically unless the subscriber gives at least 30 days' written notice, and a subscriber who terminates without cause "must immediately pay the remaining fees for the remainder of the term."

For five lawyers over one year, the reported figures give about $21,000 for Spellbook, and for Legora either $15,000 or the reported $30,000 minimum. Gavel Exec at $1,740 per user per year comes to $8,700.

Trials and the sales process

Spellbook wins here. Its site offers "Start your 7-day free trial" next to "Book a Demo," and a website trial "will automatically expire after 7 days" with no automatic charge. We found no trial on Legora's site; every page ends in "Book a demo."

One distinction from Spellbook's help center: a sales-assisted trial "may automatically convert into a paid subscription at the end of the trial period," so contact your representative before it ends. Larger organizations may get longer trials.

Legora's path runs through a demo and a representative, and its small and mid-sized firms page says firms are running in days rather than quarters. For a five-lawyer group that wants to test a live agreement this week, that is slow. Gavel Exec, the third option here, opens with 25 free queries per user, no credit card and no sales call.

Security, hosting and data handling

Both vendors publish a SOC 2 Type II report. Legora adds ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certification, a bring-your-own-key option and semi-annual penetration tests. Spellbook names its model providers and has "negotiated agreements with both OpenAI and Anthropic for zero data retention (ZDR)," a phrase Legora's security page does not use.

Spellbook "uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the primary cloud provider," with data centers in Canada and the United States. It states compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and says it was assessed as low-risk under the European Union AI Act.

Legora encrypts data with Transport Layer Security (TLS) and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), "in transit using TLS 1.2 or higher, and at rest with AES-256 encryption," supports "all common Single-Sign-On protocols," and states that "Legora will not use your data to train or fine tune any AI models." It offers "flexible storage options" without naming a hosting provider or region, and once a contract ends all data "is permanently deleted," with an export available on request.

Legora leads on certifications and key control; Spellbook is more specific about which AI providers see your text. Our security questions for legal AI vendors cover both gaps.

Firm size: who each vendor says it sells to

Spellbook says it is "Designed for in-house teams and law firms," counts "5,000+ legal teams," and its signup form offers firm sizes from "1-10" to "200+." Legora's customer list is enterprise-shaped, with "more than 2,400 leading law firms and in-house legal teams" and "more than half of the AmLaw 50," though its site now also courts small and mid-sized firms under the heading "Small firm, big league."

Spellbook names Dropbox, Kennedys and Panasonic as customers, and its brief pitches boutique and mid-sized firms on avoiding "the overhead of an enterprise system." On G2, Spellbook shows 4.7 out of 5 from 29 reviews as of November 12, 2026.

Legora, called Leya until February 2025 and described by Artificial Lawyer as a Swedish company, announced a $550 million Series D at a $5.55 billion valuation on March 10, 2026, then a $550 million Series E at an $8.8 billion valuation on October 21, 2026, datelined New York and Stockholm, with "more than 140,000 legal professionals" in "over 80 markets." Named customers include White & Case, Cleary Gottlieb, Linklaters, Goodwin, Deloitte and Dentons, and in-house teams were "more than 40% of new customers in the third quarter" of 2026. On G2, the Legora product listing shows 4.3 out of 5 from 17 reviews as of November 12, 2026.

Which should you choose?

• Choose Spellbook if your lawyers negotiate contracts in Word or Google Docs, you want a 7-day trial before any sales call and monthly billing you can cancel, and your multi-document work is contract sets rather than litigation or firm-wide diligence.
• Choose Legora if you want research from publisher sources, Tabular Review across thousands of documents, an agent that runs multi-step work, Outlook and mobile access, and ISO 42001 and bring-your-own-key controls, and you have the budget for a negotiated term contract.
• Consider Gavel Exec if you want playbook-based redlining in Word at a listed $160 per user per month, benchmarking against market terms in a web app, and 25 free queries per user to test it on your own agreements without a credit card.

A third option for this shortlist: Gavel Exec

Some lawyers on this shortlist want neither a custom quote nor a platform contract. Gavel Exec is AI contract review and drafting software that runs as a Word add-in and a web app, and it publishes its price: $160 per user per month, or $1,740 per user per year, with no long-term contract.

• Redlining: it marks up the whole agreement in Word as tracked changes in priority order, with a reason attached to every edit, margin comments and a list of the terms the draft is missing.
• Playbooks: start from playbooks built with corporate and real estate attorneys, or turn your checklist, spreadsheet playbook or signed agreements into rules, then share them with read-only or edit permissions.
• Benchmarking: the web app rates each provision as on-market, off-market or missing and filters by jurisdiction, industry and company size; it also runs batch analysis across many documents.
• Trial and security: 25 free queries per user, no credit card, no sales call; SOC 2 Type II certified; Zero Data Retention agreements cover the AI model providers Gavel uses, including OpenAI; hosted in the United States unless you choose the European Union, Canada or Australia.

Martin Algie of MIA Contract Lawyers has cut a first-cut review from roughly 15 hours to roughly 5 hours per contract. Over 2,000 legal organizations in 28 countries use Gavel.

Limits: Gavel Exec includes no case-law research database and is built for transactional work, with litigation and e-discovery covered by Relativity, Gavel's parent company, so it does not replace Legora's Legal Research or Tabular Review for litigation. It has no native iManage or NetDocuments integration today, and redlining a specific document or creating playbooks requires the Word add-in. See Spellbook vs Gavel Exec and Legora vs Gavel Exec.

How to test Spellbook and Legora side by side

1. Count the work that happens outside Word. Tally a month of research questions, data room reviews and matter emails. If contract negotiation dominates, start the Spellbook trial; if research and bulk review dominate, book Legora first.
2. Start the Spellbook trial on the website. A trial started there expires after 7 days with no charge, while a sales-assisted trial can convert to a paid plan. Load a playbook on day one.
3. Ask Legora to run your documents in the demo. Bring a signed agreement and 20 to 50 related contracts, and ask to see a playbook run in Word and the set loaded into Tabular Review.
4. Compare redlines against a markup you already sent. Run the same agreement through each tool and check the tracked changes against the version your side delivered.
5. Put the money questions in writing. Ask Spellbook for the per-user price, the term and whether your trial is sales-assisted. Ask Legora for the per-user price, any seat or dollar minimum, the term, the renewal notice period and where data is stored.

More comparisons: Spellbook alternatives, Legora alternatives, AI contract review software pricing, our ranking of AI contract review tools and every Gavel comparison page.