Insights for Your Legal Team

Your Legal Team Already Has an AI Problem. Here’s the Part Nobody’s Solving.

A practical look at why the AI tool you pick for contract review matters as much as whether you pick one at all.

Why manual contract review is holding legal teams back

Picture an in-house legal team at a large financial organisation. NDAs, lease agreements, and vendor contracts arrive from a dozen jurisdictions, and the definition of “confidential information” changes with everyone.

The average in-house lawyer now spends 3.1 hours reviewing a single contract. That’s assuming nobody gets pulled into “just a quick call” halfway through, and we all know there is no such thing as a quick call. 87% of legal teams say AI could meaningfully speed that up. AI adoption in contract review has nearly quadrupled since 2024, and 52% of in-house teams are already using or evaluating it.

So, the pressure to “just get an AI tool” is real, and it’s coming from every direction at once. Business wants things faster, IT wants things safer, and legal just wants to get through the NDA pile before lunch. Trouble is, getting an AI tool can be surprisingly tricky. Pick the wrong one and you’ve either handed your confidential documents to a stranger or signed a contract pricier than the ones you were trying to review.

There are three real options for legal AI today. Understanding the trade-offs between them is what determines whether you get a tool that actually works for your team.

How Ask iManage compares to other AI options for legal teams

Free versions of Copilot, Claude, and ChatGPT can all connect to iManage through an MCP connector today, in about a minute, for free. It’s the fast-food option: quick, satisfying, and open at 2am when you’re desperate. It’s also the wrong first move for anything confidential, since your document content is processed by whatever orchestrator sits behind it, under whatever policy that vendor has this quarter.

At the other end of the market sit platforms like Harvey, reported to run roughly $500 to $2,000 per seat per month with 25 to 50-seat minimums and six-figure annual contracts, built and priced for AmLaw 100 firms and Fortune 500 legal departments.

Ask iManage sits in the middle, and it’s a different trade-off entirely. It runs inside the platform your team already lives in, at a fraction of the cost, and none of your documents ever leave iManage to train or inform an outside model.

The goal isn’t “more AI.” It’s fewer hours spent finding the two or three clauses out of forty that actually need a lawyer’s judgement.

What Ask iManage actually does for contract review

Speed. Point Ask iManage at a stack of invoices, leases, or NDAs and get every answer back in a table in minutes instead of hours. Teams using AI this way report spending 79% less time on routine review tasks.

Coverage. Run one playbook across a single contract or your entire back catalogue at once. Update a standard clause and immediately find every document signed in the last 12 months that doesn’t match it.

Security. Every answer is scoped to what you already have permission to see in iManage. Documents never leave the platform to train or inform an outside model, unlike routing through a general-purpose AI connector.

Support. Coop configures your playbooks and question lists, from data protection clauses to lease terms, and stays on for ongoing tuning as your standards change.

Ask iManage results: what legal teams see after adoption

Results snapshot (industry benchmark data): Legal teams using AI for contract review report 79% less time spent on routine tasks, 67% faster response to the business, and 78% fewer contract errors, with a 41% drop in contract-related disputes over a two-year period.

Trust signals

  • Configured and supported by Coop’s legal technology consulting team
  • Runs inside your existing iManage environment, no new vendor, no new login
  • References and a guided pilot available on request

Getting Ask iManage up and running

Switching this on doesn’t require a migration or a procurement cycle. A simple engagement flow gets you from first conversation to a working pilot in weeks.

Recommended engagement flow

  • Discovery & alignment: Identify which document types (NDAs, leases, invoices, vendor contracts) create the most review time or risk today.
  • Playbook & question list design: No-code allows your team to configure your standards, clause definitions, and fallback positions inside Ask iManage.
  • Pilot & validate: Run a playbook against a real batch of contracts and measure the time saved and issues caught.
  • Scale rollout: Extend to more document types, more teams, and more playbooks across the organisation.

Getting started checklist

  • Identify 1-2 contract types to pilot: NDAs, Vendor MSAs
  • Confirm access and permissions align with your current iManage security model
  • Define success metrics: hours saved per week, clauses caught, turnaround time
  • Choose a rollout scope: Single team / Department-wide
  • Book a working session with Co-Operative Computing to scope the pilot

Ready to stop reviewing the same clause forty different ways?

If you’re already running iManage with Co-Operative Computing, this isn’t a new vendor to vet or a new login to remember. It’s a module switched on inside the platform your team already lives in every day. If you’re not on iManage yet, this is what the rest of the market is quietly moving toward.

Either way, reach out to Co-Operative Computing.

Book a demo to learn more about Ask iManage

Email: info@coop.co.za | Website: www.coop.co.za