# Claude for Legal

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Claude for Legal and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Lawyers recommend it for redlines and spotting disadvantageous contract terms. Critics say don't rely on it for litigation, and warn of fabricated citations.

## Why people recommend it

- Redlining counterparty contracts (3 comments): "Both produced roughly the same output (redlines to fix the things that were disadvantageous to us)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48291762)) "I'd just have Claude legal make the redlines against the counterparty for me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48291194)) "Claude legal called out a few areas that were disadvantageous to us" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48291645))
- Spots disadvantageous contract terms (2 comments): "Both produced roughly the same output (redlines to fix the things that were disadvantageous to us)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48291762)) "Claude legal called out a few areas that were disadvantageous to us" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48291645))
- Lawyers intrigued by workflow potential (2 comments): "As a lawyer, I'm excited about this, but there are two roadblocks that I'm not sure how Anthropic will navigate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48141828)) "he was intrigued because he envisions his workflows to eventually be similar to mine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48150537))
- Could help non-lawyers with legal questions (2 comments): "this will finally help people in online forums write legal comments that make sense" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48146526)) "This would certainly help these people, if allowed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48150127))

## What people warn about

- Seen as marketing, not useful (3 comments): "This is only for PR. No one checks what's in those docs, or if these are real, valid or ethical." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48141855)) "Fake verticals created for no other purpose than to pad out a page in the IPO prospectus." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48148019)) "This looks more like a marketing use case category than anything useful." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48156459))
- Concerns about training on customer data (2 comments): "Are they entitled to build knowledge bases for every profession, topic and workflow in the world using customer data?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48142036)) "they are training on your business's data so that their AI can replace your business later" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48142162))
- Fabricated citations and invalid assumptions (2 comments): "getting fined and referred to the bar over filing non-existent citations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48150546)) "dismantling hallucinated quotations and invalid assumptions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48145958))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Mike legal AI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mike.md): 12 recommend
- [Astra for Law](https://hackerapproved.com/p/astra-for-law.md): 11 recommend
- [Harvey AI](https://hackerapproved.com/p/harvey.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Claude for Legal", https://hackerapproved.com/p/claude-for-legal/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).