A law firm keeps two kinds of written record. The first is client matter content: pleadings, advice letters, discovery, and the email thread with each client. The second is the firm's operating record, the part least tied to any one client: how a new matter is opened and conflicts are cleared, the precedent bank and checklists associates draft from, billing narratives and time-entry metadata, and the internal threads about who covers which deadline. Most of this page is about the second kind.
Buyers name the profession. Mercor lists legal among its eight target industries, and micro1 names legal and compliance. Lawyers are one of the 44 occupations in OpenAI's GDPval benchmark, and Invisible says it draws reinforcement learning tasks from legal and compliance work.
The line between those two records is where every law firm conversation starts. Endless says intake and matter workflows, templates and precedents, process documentation and billing metadata are in scope, and client matter content is out. Mercor's own legal examples (contracts, case files, discovery) sit on the other side of that line. Raise the difference with each buyer on the first call, and send every question about privilege, confidentiality and the ethics rules to the licensing company's review.
Worth
What a firm's data may be worth
Pre-set for a typical firm: 40 staff and 12 years of records. No buyer publishes pricing by industry, so industry does not move the band. Our estimate, not a buyer quote.
Buyers
Which buyers want this data
Each reason is the buyer's own published statement about the tools, data or industries it takes, matched to how law firms work.
Featured partners
micro1
Names legal and compliance, and lists SOPs, playbooks, templates and knowledge bases, which is where a firm's precedent bank and intake checklists live.8,13
- $100K to $2M+, micro1 says10
Watch out for: Says it removes personal details only "when relevant", so ask exactly how.14
Polyshares
Names professional services and says it excludes data held on behalf of clients, which fits a firm-only package.15,16
- $100K to $2M+, Polyshares says11
- None, Polyshares says17
- An offer in 1 to 2 weeks, then paid in 30 to 60 days18
Watch out for: Exclusive by default, and every deal it lists is exclusive with no end date.19,20
Everyone else we reviewed
By score, with full reviews. We have no referral agreement with these companies, so we do not link out to them.
Buyer demand
How buyers' own tools rate law firms
No buyer publishes a price list by industry. These are settings inside buyers' and brokers' own estimators and intake forms, read from their public pages on 2026-10-14. They show how each company sorts industries, not what any firm was paid. The category shown is the one a firm would most likely pick; that match is ours.
| Company | Its category | How it rates the industry |
|---|---|---|
| Troveo | Legal | Tier 2 of 4: "Your industry carries above-average buyer demand." Price factor 1.15 in its estimator.28 |
| Polyshares | Legal | Marked premium in its intake list29 |
| VMS | Law | Higher weight in its estimator (factor 1.30)30 |
| Ventra | Legal, healthcare, financial services or accounting | Says it cannot take these industries right now31 |
Size rules buyers publish
Checked against 40 staff, the typical firm size this page's calculator is set to. Ask each buyer whether contractors and part-time staff count.
Polyshares
No headcount rule; the length and texture of the record matter more32
Mercor
None stated33
Troveo
No minimum stated; its estimator starts at 2034
Nyne
20+ US W-2 employees and 3+ years35
Handshake AI
20+ full-time employees and 3+ years36
micro1
Pewter
20+ staff and 3+ years38
Endless
Roughly 30+ employees39
Ventra
30+ US employees and 3+ years of records40
Supersoniq
50+ employees and 5+ years41
What buyers value
What in a firm's records buyers value
The column on the right is not legal advice: it lists what to raise with the buyer before anything is exported.
| Data | Where it lives | Why a buyer values it | Raise with the buyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intake and conflict-check workflow | Clio, Lawmatics or web intake forms | The firm's sequence for screening a prospect, clearing conflicts and opening a matter, repeated on every new file. | Prospective client names and facts inside each intake record. |
| Precedent bank and drafting checklists | iManage, NetDocuments or a shared drive | Starting templates and checklists partners refined over years. Endless lists templates and precedents as in scope. | Any precedent that began as a client's own document. |
| Billing narratives and time-entry metadata | Clio, PCLaw or the firm's billing system | Task codes and narratives show how legal work breaks into steps and how long each step takes. | Client and matter names inside each narrative. |
| Internal process threads | Outlook, Teams or Slack | Docketing handoffs, deadline coverage and supervision notes between partners, associates and staff. | Any thread that discusses the substance of a client matter. |
| Firm SOPs and training guides | Intranet or KM wiki | How the firm onboards paralegals and new associates. SOPs and playbooks head micro1's list. | Nothing specific |
| Client-development records | CRM and email marketing tool | Referral sources, consult bookings and follow-up sequences that show how a practice grows. | Contact details of prospects and referral sources. |
A week of records
A week of data at a firm
- Monday: nine web inquiries screened, three conflict checks run, two engagement letters sent from the template.
- Tuesday: a partner rewrites the associate checklist for a filing type after a missed step on another matter.
- Wednesday: the docketing clerk's Teams thread reassigns four deadlines while an associate is in trial.
- Thursday: billing review, with 300 time entries re-coded and narratives tightened before invoices go out.
- Friday: a lunch-and-learn deck on a new court rule saved to the KM wiki.
Narrower
Kinds of law firms
- IP and patent prosecution firmsInvisible says it draws reinforcement learning tasks from legal and compliance work, and patent prosecution is legal reasoning written at length against a technical record.
- Personal injury firmsPolyshares names CRM data and call recordings among the data it buys, and a plaintiff firm's intake desk produces both every day.
- Real estate closing attorneysMercor names both legal and real estate as target industries, and a closing firm's files sit in both.
- Immigration law firmsmicro1 says it looks for well defined workflows that employees execute repeatedly, and an immigration practice runs the same petition steps on every case.
- Estate planning and probate firmsmicro1 lists templates, playbooks and knowledge bases among the data it buys, and an estate planning practice drafts almost every document from a template set built over years.
- Corporate and M&A law firmsMercor's legal examples start with contracts, and Troveo's financial guide leaves out deal materials received under a confidentiality agreement.
Software
Software law firms run on
- Clio dataClio's own bulk export gives an administrator ten CSV files, from matter notes to time entries, and a broker already names Clio in its ads to law firms.
- MyCase dataMyCase's Full Backup leaves out only two things, documents and invoices, and 8am's terms say the firm owns its Customer Content.
- Filevine dataFilevine's Activity Feed collects every note, email, task and text on a project, and its DataBridge export can deliver notes and documents to a firm's own Snowflake account.
Process
How it works with each buyer
In each buyer's own published words. Where a buyer publishes nothing, we say so rather than guess.
micro1
- Internal docs, SOPs and playbooks, knowledge bases, project management workflows, internal comms, templates, CRM and workflow metadata, task histories13
- 30 to 200 employees37
- $100K-$2M+ per data package; over $1M for unique data10
- PII removed "when relevant"14
- The company keeps ownership of its data and reviews samples before release42
- Not published
Polyshares
Selling or closing
Selling or closing your firm? License its data first
Lawyers retire, firms merge and practices are sold, and the closed-file room usually outlives the partnership. Buyers already approach companies at the moment of a deal: Mercor went to Warmly about its archives after HubSpot bought it. Pewter takes firms that are winding down or closed, as long as the records still exist. If a sale, merger or retirement is coming, ask each licensing company whether the firm's templates, SOPs and billing metadata can be licensed first, and leave every question about client files to its review.3,4
FAQ
Law firms: questions, answered
Firms are being asked for it. Mercor names legal as a target industry and micro1 names legal and compliance. The usual starting point is the records least tied to any one client: Endless lists intake workflows, templates, process documentation and billing metadata as in scope, and keeps client matter content out.1,8,2
Two lists, and they point in different directions. micro1 asks for SOPs, playbooks, knowledge bases, templates, CRM and workflow metadata and task histories, which describe how a firm works rather than any one client. Mercor's legal examples are contracts, case files and discovery docs, which sit inside client matters. Raise the second list with the buyer before anything is exported.13,21
You can ask for exactly that, and two companies describe it. Endless keeps client matter content out of law firm deals, and Polyshares says it excludes data held on behalf of clients. Put the package in writing on the first call (templates, SOPs, intake workflow, billing metadata) so the offer prices what you are actually offering.2,16
No buyer prices law firms on their own. Published ranges mostly run $100K to $2M, as the buyers' own claims: micro1 states $100K-$2M+, Cognor Labs $100K-$2M, and Ventra $100K-$2M as potential deals rather than a promise. Endless says privileged matter content lowers its range, so price a firm-only package as exactly that.10,49,50,51
Most buyers describe a review step before release. Goldmined.ai says nothing sells without the owner's approval, Nyne says data is de-identified and tested against an agreed standard before release, and micro1 says the company reviews samples first. Ask each buyer to show you that step with a sample of your own files.53,54,42
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company: their team reviews this with you before anything is signed.
Before you sign
Legal questions go to the licensing company
We do not answer legal questions. Ask the licensing company before you sign: their team reviews these with you.
Questions for this kind of business
- How does your review treat ABA Formal Opinion 512 and Model Rule 1.6 for this package?
- Who removes privileged material and work product, and do we see the result before release?
- Do client engagement letters or outside counsel guidelines restrict any of these records?
- Do the bar rules in the states where we practise add anything to your review?
- Who owns this data: the company, an estate, or someone else?
- Do customer, vendor or platform contracts, NDAs or API terms restrict this?
- Could the data include privileged material or trade secrets?
- Do professional rules apply (AICPA, IRC 7216, HIPAA, ABA Model Rule 1.17, insurance agency contracts, adviser rules, state boards)?
- How do CCPA, GDPR, UK GDPR and state privacy laws apply, and is de-identified data still personal information?
Questions for any buyer
- Is the license exclusive, and for how long?
- Can you sublicense the data, and to whom?
- Which AI labs will receive it, and will you tell us?
- How long do you keep it, and how is it deleted?
- What is your liability cap, and who indemnifies whom?
- Will the contract ban re-identification of people in the data?
- Who removes personal data, by what method, and do we approve it first?