In courtrooms, the formal principle states that the law is the same for everyone, but in the day-to-day practice of a law firm, the real distinguishing factor lies in the availability of time. Faced with a complex case file, two lawyers with identical methodological rigour may find themselves in profoundly different working situations. Some spend the entire morning before a hearing cross-checking case law precedents, navigating conflicting legal trends and recent reforms, while others have already completed their research and can devote themselves entirely to the defence strategy.
This disparity does not stem from a difference in legal aptitude, but rather from a disproportion in resources. In large, well-structured firms, there are entire teams of trainees and associates dedicated to preparatory work, whilst in small practices or in-house legal departments with few staff, every single task falls on the shoulders of the partner or a very small number of colleagues. The economic paradox is clear: highly skilled professionals end up spending much of their day on administrative tasks with little added value, rather than focusing on substantive analysis and their relationship with the client.
Beyond the sector’s scepticism
Until now, much of the independent legal profession has viewed advanced digital tools with a mixture of caution and detachment. On the one hand, there are reports from the international news: according to data cited by the company, there are over 1,300 court documents containing errors generated by artificial intelligence, which in several cases have led lawyers to have to justify themselves before the courts.
On the other hand, there is a prevailing impression that certain solutions are designed exclusively for large overseas law firms, which differ in terms of budget and approach from continental civil law systems.
To overcome these barriers, a change of perspective is needed: technology must not aim to replace intuition, professional ethics or a lawyer’s signature – elements that are, by their very nature, irreplaceable. Its primary function is to take on the repetitive tasks that erode daily profitability.
This is the direction taken by Lexroom, a scale-up founded in Milan in 2023 within Exor’s venture builder Vento and now active in various European markets with 30 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue) and over twenty thousand clients, including law firms and corporate legal departments. The platform has developed a vertical operating system for European law, engineered on a local basis to address the specific characteristics of individual codified legal systems. The infrastructure is underpinned by over 13 million verified and constantly updated legal sources, with a methodological requirement to anchor every response to the original, encrypted document, whilst excluding user data from model training.
A multiplier of operational efficiency
For a lean organisation, these tools can reduce the time spent on preparatory tasks. Being able to delegate the initial stages of regulatory research, the summarising of legal documents and the first draft of a legal opinion is equivalent to providing the professional with a virtual team of dedicated assistants, capable of working simultaneously on multiple fronts.
“Clones highlight something every lawyer knows: in a single day, you’d need a researcher, a drafter and someone to check every source. With Lexroom, these functions work in parallel and the lawyer remains the sole decision-maker,” said Gianfranco Bellino, the company’s head of marketing. This is precisely the balance: whilst text processing, source verification and integration with the Electronic Civil Procedure system take place within a single operating environment, the lawyer remains in control of the dispute without wasting energy.
It is not a question of extending working hours, but of eliminating the downtime associated with preparatory research to free up time for the interpretation of legislation, negotiation and high-profile consultancy. For smaller firms, where financial sustainability depends on the ability to manage increasing workloads without increasing fixed costs, access to these tools can help bridge the organisational gap with more established firms.
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