# Who Really Buys Legal Tech: Big Law vs. In-House

> At a large firm, a committee decides. In a legal department, legal ops evaluates and the business often signs. Four 2026 surveys show who holds the pen.

By The Circle Desk | The Room & Relationships | Published 2026-11-02
Source: https://legaltechcircle.com/insights/who-buys-legal-tech-big-law-in-house/

Vendors like to talk about "the buyer" as if one person signs every
legal tech deal. Four surveys and reports published this year suggest
that is rarely true. At a large law firm, the decision runs through
innovation leaders, a security review and firm management. In a
corporate legal department, legal operations increasingly runs the
evaluation, while the general counsel sets the priority and the wider
business may own the purchase. Knowing which room you are in changes
how a tool gets bought, and how fast.

## How Large Firms Decide

The [2026 ILTA Technology
Survey](https://www.lawnext.com/2026/09/which-ai-product-is-most-popular-among-law-firms-findings-of-iltas-tech-survey-may-surprise-you.html),
as reported by LawSites, covered more than 500 law firms representing
140,000 lawyers. It found 94% using or exploring generative AI, up
from 80% last year. The most common tool was not a legal product.
Microsoft 365 Copilot led at 76% of firms, followed by CoCounsel and
Claude at 44% each and Harvey at 43%.

Firm size changes the picture. Among firms with 700 or more lawyers,
Copilot was at 88% and Harvey at 84%, with Claude at 64%, Legora at
47% and CoCounsel at 43%. Among firms with fewer than 50 lawyers,
Harvey fell to 22% and Legora to 6%. Large firms tend to run several
tools at once, which means the real buying decision is less about
picking one product than about which ones survive a pilot and get
rolled out.

Who makes that call? A [Bloomberg Law
report](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/artificial-intelligence/law-firm-tech-budgets-drive-the-build-versus-buy-ai-debate)
on its Leading Law Firms survey describes it as a management question
as much as a technology one. Jane Rogers, a member of Ropes & Gray's
management committee, called build or buy a business decision. The
firm's chief information officer, Marsha Stein, explained why the firm
chose to buy.

> "The technology is changing so quickly now that it doesn't appear to us at this point that doing something proprietary makes sense," Stein told Bloomberg Law.

That line between building and buying is not fixed. On October 29,
OpenAI published a [case
study](https://openai.com/index/ropes-gray-ai-diligence) saying Ropes
& Gray is developing a proprietary transactional diligence tool in
partnership with OpenAI. A firm can buy platforms and still build on
top of them, which means the vendor in the room is often competing
with the firm's own engineers as well as with rivals.

Bloomberg Law's data also shows why large firm deals take time.
Roughly 67% of large firms reported spending under 2% of their 2025
budgets on building or buying new technology, while subscriptions and
recurring costs took far more. Nearly 30% of firms with fewer than 500
attorneys spent more than 5% on new technology. Firms categorized
their own spending, so treat the figures as rough.

Scale also changes who has leverage. Offit Kurman's chief innovation
officer, Alex Finkel, told Bloomberg Law that beyond the top 50 firms,
"the build-versus-buy selection or strategy is not applicable to
anyone." Large firms, by contrast, said they can shape products before
launch. For a mid-size firm, the practical buyer is usually a small
group choosing among subscriptions, not a committee weighing a custom
build.

## How Legal Departments Decide

In-house, the pattern is different. Thomson Reuters' [2026 Legal
Department Operations
Report](https://legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.co.uk/content/dam/ewp-m/documents/legal/en/pdf/reports/2026-legal-department-operations-index-report.pdf)
says 28% of general counsel named technology their top strategic
priority for 2026, twice the share in 2025. It describes legal
operations as the function that evaluates technology and now owns much
of the governance and shadow AI risk.

The report is candid that authority varies by company.

> "Some ops leaders reported that they are generally empowered to make AI purchasing and operational decisions, as long as they're accountable to the GC's office," the report says.

Others told Thomson Reuters that their department's AI use is tied to
the wider business, with the legal department handling procurement and
operational concerns. In practice that means a vendor selling to a
legal department may need three yeses: the general counsel's priority,
legal ops' evaluation and the company's own IT or procurement process.

Budget approval is getting easier. The [Legal Tech Pulse
survey](https://www.legalbusiness.co.uk/in-house/weve-gone-from-zero-to-hero-in-house-legal-teams-ramp-up-ai-investment-as-budgets-surge/)
of more than 250 senior in-house lawyers, run by Legal Business with
Thomson Reuters and focused on the UK and Continental Europe, found
62% had an approved legal tech budget for the next 12 months, up from
48%. The share calling business buy-in "quite" or "very" easy rose to
31% from under 20%, while those calling it "not very easy" or "almost
impossible" fell to 21% from 43%.

## Why the Two Rooms Meet

The two buyers are linked. Among corporate legal leaders responsible
for purchasing decisions, the Thomson Reuters report found 68% would
consider changing an outside law firm that was not delivering clear AI
value within five years, and 11% say they are already reconsidering
some relationships for that reason. A firm's tool choice is partly a
response to what its clients' legal ops teams are asking for.

For vendors, the lesson is to map the room early: who runs the pilot,
who signs the security review and who controls the budget line. For
buyers, it is to write down who decides before the demo, not after.

## Common Questions

**Who signs off on legal tech at a large law firm?**

Usually a group. The surveys point to innovation and IT leaders, firm
management and a security review, with tools tested in pilots before
any firm-wide decision.

**Does legal ops make the buying decision in-house?**

Sometimes. Thomson Reuters found some legal ops leaders are empowered
to buy AI tools while others work through the wider business's
procurement process.

**Is it getting easier to win budget for legal tech in-house?**

The Legal Tech Pulse survey says yes: 62% of respondents had an
approved budget, and fewer called buy-in hard than a year earlier.

## Verdict

**Partly Real.** The data shows a clear split: committees and security
reviews at large firms, legal ops plus the business in-house. The
surveys rely on self-reported answers, so test any claim about who
decides against the actual approval path at your organization.

---
Legal Tech Circle (https://legaltechcircle.com/). News and analysis, not legal advice.