How to Calculate the ROI of Legal AI in Your Firm

How to Calculate the Return of Legal AI in Your Firm

This article does not publish savings measured on clients: we have not measured them, and a savings percentage without a source won't help you decide. What we can give you is a way to do the maths with your own numbers. All figures in the example are assumptions: replace them with yours.

The Formula

The return of a legal tool can be estimated like this:

Hours per month you no longer spend on mechanical work × your hourly rate, against the tool's monthly fee.

The hard part is not the multiplication but estimating the first figure honestly. To do that, it helps to split it by task.

Illustrative Example

Suppose a solo lawyer bills €150/hour (a figure chosen for the example, not a market average) and has a portfolio of active matters. Suppose also, for the example only, these times she no longer spends on mechanical tasks:

Task	Times per month (assumed)	Time no longer spent each time (assumed)	Hours per month
Case law and legislation search	10	30 min	5 h
First draft of briefs	4	1 h	4 h
First review of contracts	2	30 min	1 h
Deadline calculation	15	6 min	1.5 h
Total			11.5 h

With those assumptions, 11.5 hours at €150/hour come to €1,725 per month of time she can spend on something else.

Lexiel's Basic plan costs €52/month + VAT (annual billing). At €150/hour, that fee equals 0.35 hours of work per month: if your honest estimate of recovered hours is above that figure, the tool pays for itself; if it is below, it doesn't.

Run Your Own Calculation

1. Pick your real rate: what you bill, or the cost of your hour if you don't bill by the hour.
2. Track for one or two weeks how much time you spend searching case law, preparing first drafts of briefs, reviewing contracts, and calculating deadlines.
3. Separate the mechanical from the legal: AI can take over part of the mechanical work (searching, structuring, copying client data); the reasoning and the review remain yours.
4. Estimate conservatively what share of the mechanical work you would stop doing, and multiply by your rate.
5. Compare it with the fee of the plan you would need, and test the tool on your own matters during the 14-day free trial.

What the Calculation Leaves Out

Some benefits are hard to put in euros, and it is better not to inflate them with invented figures:

• Out-of-hours work: mechanical tasks are what usually lengthen the working day.
• Fewer mechanical errors: miscopied client data or unchecked citations have a real cost, even if it cannot be measured in advance.
• Capacity: time not spent on mechanical work can go to new matters or to existing clients.

How to Track It Afterwards

Lexiel's analytics dashboard includes an indicative estimate of hours saved based on what you have used (briefs generated, documents analyzed, queries). It is calculated with fixed assumptions per task type, not by measuring your time, so use it as a reference and compare it with your own records.

Conclusion

The return of legal AI is not the same for every firm: it depends on how much mechanical work you have and what your hour is worth. Do the maths with your own numbers before subscribing, and repeat it at the end of the trial.

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