A solo immigration attorney in Miami drafts 15-20 green card applications per month. Each application requires the same research: checking current USCIS processing times, finding relevant case law for edge situations, drafting supporting letters. She spends 3-4 hours per application on tasks that could be partially automated, limiting her to 20 clients when she could handle 40.
Harvey raised $80M to bring AI to Big Law, but their enterprise pricing ($50,000+/year) locks out the 400,000+ solo attorneys and small firms that make up 49% of US lawyers. Clio's AI assistant helps with practice management but doesn't draft legal documents. Spellbook ($99-400/mo) focuses on contract drafting. There's a massive gap for AI paralegal assistance at small firm pricing.
The opportunity is an AI assistant at $49-149/mo for solo and small firm attorneys: document drafting with jurisdiction-specific templates, case law research with reliable citations (no hallucinations), client intake summaries, and brief research memos. Start with 2-3 practice areas (immigration, family law, personal injury) where volume is high and documents are templated. The key differentiator is reliability — lawyers can't tolerate AI hallucinations, so citation verification and conservative confidence scoring are critical.
💰 Revenue Blueprint
Three-tier value ladder to monetize from day one
Case law research with citations, 50 queries/mo, basic document templates
Unlimited research, document drafting, client intake summaries, 3 practice areas
All practice areas, brief writing, team access, custom templates, API access
📊 Market Evidence
The Market Gap
Harvey is Big Law only ($50k+/year). CoCounsel starts at $250/mo. Spellbook is contracts-only. No affordable AI paralegal for solo/small firms at $49-149/mo covering drafting, research, and citations.
🏆 Competitor Landscape
How existing players stack up in this market
| Competitor | Pricing | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Harvey | Contact sales (Enterprise) | AI for Big Law, $2B+ valuation |
| CoCounsel (Casetext) | $250+/mo | Legal research AI, Thomson Reuters |
| Spellbook | $99-400/mo | AI contract drafting in Word |
| Clio Duo | Part of Clio ($49-99/mo) | AI assistant in Clio |
| Lexis+ AI | Contact sales | LexisNexis AI features |
AI for Big Law, $2B+ valuation
Legal research AI, Thomson Reuters
AI contract drafting in Word
AI assistant in Clio
LexisNexis AI features
🛠️ Recommended Tech Stack
Suggested tools and technologies to build this idea
Why this stack: RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) for reliable citations from legal databases. Pinecone for vector search over case law. Focus on preventing hallucinations.
Score Breakdown
Good market signals with room for growth
Market (20%) + Revenue (20%) + Trend (15%) + Competition (15%) + Build (15%) + Pricing (15%)
🚀 Start Building
Copy a prompt into your favorite AI coding tool and start building this idea right now.
Build a SaaS product called "AI Paralegal Assistant". ## Product Overview Draft motions and contracts with pinned sources ## Problem Draft motions and contracts with pinned sources ## Solution Build AI Paralegal Assistant ## Target Audience indie hackers, small businesses, and solopreneurs ## Tech Stack - Next.js 15 (App Router) with TypeScript - Tailwind CSS v4 for styling - Supabase for auth, database, and storage - Vercel for deployment - shadcn/ui for UI components - Framer Motion for animations ## MVP Features to Build 1. Landing page with clear value proposition 2. User authentication (sign up, sign in, forgot password) 3. Core product functionality based on the solution above 4. Dashboard for users to manage their data 5. Pricing page with at least 2 tiers (free + paid) 6. Basic settings/profile page ## Known Competitors Harvey, CoCounsel (Casetext), Spellbook, Clio Duo, Lexis+ AI ## Key Risks to Address Standard market entry risks ## Deployment 1. Set up Supabase project and configure environment variables 2. Deploy to Vercel with `npx vercel --prod` 3. Set up custom domain 4. Configure Supabase RLS policies for security ## Instructions Start by creating the project structure, then build the landing page first. Use server components where possible. Make it mobile-responsive from the start. Focus on getting the core value loop working before adding polish.