The same vertical-specialist logic applies in legal tech. Law firms are drowning in contract review — NDA, MSAs, leases — and generic AI gives them vague answers with no accountability. The teams winning there aren't building 'AI for lawyers', they're building AI that cites every answer to a specific clause and pins professional liability to the output. That's a very different product than a chatbot.

What is needed there are custom harnesses that don’t let the LLM decide what to do when. Use their power of pattern matching on data, not on decision transcriptions.

The more interesting question is where the boundary is — AI can replace tasks, but not accountability. In legal tech especially, firms won't use AI for anything where the output requires professional liability. The vertical winners will be where AI reduces cost without reducing accountability.