Spellbook

Not another platform—just superpowers where you already work.

When you ask lawyers where they draft, negotiate, and redline, most will say one word: Word. That’s not a habit—it’s the operating system of transactional lawyering. And that’s exactly why Spellbook chose to build its AI contract assistant inside it.

Unlike many legal tech startups chasing “horizontal” use cases, Spellbook has stayed relentlessly vertical: contracts, Word, lawyers. It now powers over 4,000 legal teams in 80+ countries and has reviewed more than 10 million contracts since launch. And with its new agent, Spellbook Associate, the platform isn’t just helping—you might say it’s doing the job of a junior associate, without the burnout.

We caught up with co-founder Scott Stevenson to learn how Spellbook went from clever drafting helper to something much deeper: an AI that learns your style, scales your capacity, and never asks for coffee.

Why Word, Not a New Platform?

Spellbook started with a deceptively simple idea: lawyers don’t want to switch tools. They want smarter ones where they already are.

“Using GitHub Copilot as an engineer felt like getting an electric bike,” Scott said. “I was still steering and pedaling, but suddenly going uphill was 10x easier. That’s what we wanted for lawyers—no new platform, no tab-switching. Just speed and assistance where they already live.”

Embedded directly inside Word, Spellbook doesn’t require retraining teams or migrating workflows. It watches as you draft and redline, learns from your edits, and adapts in real time. Rather than hallucinating generic legalese, it learns tone, deal context, clause types, and risk preferences.

Not a Bot. A Contract Collaborator.

Spellbook’s new AI agent, Associate, isn’t another chatbot. It connects multi-document workflows, updates terms across bundles, handles disclosure schedules, and understands your deal structure like a real junior.

So who’s actually using it?

“We’re seeing adoption across the spectrum,” said Scott. “Fortune 1000 legal departments are using Associate to speed up package drafting. Big law firms are applying it to M&A workflows. And small firms are using it to get more done without needing extra headcount.”

Associate isn’t just a speed hack. It’s about leverage—reducing low-value busywork so lawyers can focus on strategy and negotiation. And it keeps improving with use.

Learning Your Redlines

One of Spellbook’s most unique features is Preference Learning. The more you edit its suggestions, the smarter it gets—picking up your preferred phrasing, your risk thresholds, even how aggressively you redline.

“The biggest surprise?” Scott told us. “Just how individual lawyer preferences are. There’s no universal ‘market standard.’ Every lawyer edits differently. Spellbook learns that.”

Pair this with clause libraries, benchmarking tools, and Practical Law integrations, and you’ve got an AI that not only drafts—but drafts like you would.

Real-Time Benchmarks That Cite Real Sources

Spellbook Benchmarks compares your clause to over 2,300 contract types, showing how “market” your language really is. But it doesn’t stop there—it explains why differences matter and offers legally sound fixes. And thanks to integrations with Practical Law, the AI isn’t pulling from hallucinated text—it’s grounded in precedent.

“Grounded generation is everything,” Scott emphasized. “We’ve designed Spellbook so that every output can be inspected and reviewed. Users should see the trail of reasoning. Nothing’s a black box.”

Enterprise-Grade. Startup Simple.

With enterprise clients now making up half of Spellbook’s revenue, the platform has invested in serious infrastructure: SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, CCPA, zero data retention, and deep CLM integrations. It’s also added richer admin tools, document storage, and custom deployment paths.

But simplicity remains the north star.

“We’re obsessed with low time-to-value,” Scott said. “New features don’t mean new UI complexity. They’re hidden behind better models, smarter data retrieval, and seamless integrations.”

Where Does AI Stop and Lawyering Begin?

Despite the power under the hood, Spellbook insists that its role is assistant—not decision-maker.

“AI will eat up the busywork. But lawyers still have to review the work,” Scott explained. “Everything we output is a suggestion. We don’t replace judgment—we augment it.”

That philosophy is evident across the platform: Associate doesn’t finalize deals; it assembles drafts. Benchmarking doesn’t declare compliance; it suggests edits. The human lawyer remains in the loop—and in charge.

From Time Saver to Trust Builder

Legal AI is evolving, but Spellbook has avoided the “wow, but not useful” problem that plagues many tools. Its success lies in the ordinary: writing, redlining, tracking, checking. It does the boring stuff exceptionally well—so lawyers can focus on outcomes, not formatting.

With a $50M Series B and a $350M valuation, Spellbook’s future looks ambitious—but focused. The team isn’t chasing hype. They’re doubling down on contracts, and on making lawyers faster, smarter, and more confident in the work they already do every day.

Because the real magic isn’t in replacing lawyers.

It’s in making lawyering feel a little more magical.