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Vendor & Procurement
“Which vendors are credible, and where should I procure?”
The vendor and procurement view of legal AI. The Quarterly Vendor Radar, the Vendor Index methodology, Defensibility-anchored vendor evaluation, consolidation risk, AI Tool Sprawl, and the procurement discipline that institutional legal functions require.
Strategic Signals to watch
Vendor Consolidation Risk
The structural risk emerging from M&A and bundling moves in the legal AI vendor landscape. Function-level exposure: single-vendor lock-in, capability gap on vendor exit, procurement diligence falling behind structural moves.
AI Tool Sprawl
The accumulation of AI tooling across a legal function without a coherent operating model — vendor-, capability-, and use-case sprawl outpacing the function's ability to govern, evaluate, or rationalise the stack. The cousin of Shadow AI; the precursor to consolidation.
Shadow AI Prevalence
The persistent use of AI tooling outside the function's sanctioned stack — personal accounts, browser plug-ins, consumer-grade LLMs handling matter-grade work. Shadow AI is the canonical Pillar 6 / Pillar 4 risk vector.