Best AI Tools for Legal, Academic, and Business Summaries

By default, people involved in legal, academic, and business analysis must go through volumes of documents daily, and at times it can become overwhelming. Too much information, and after hours spent on sifting through them, one becomes fatigued and confused about what information is relevant and what to be discarded.

Also, manually summarizing complex legal passages, lengthy academic research papers, and extensive business reports is not only time consuming but also prone to mistakes and misinterpretations. AI summarization tools are taking on these laborious tasks involving document review, organization, and contract drafting, allowing you to focus on higher-value and more business-critical activities like strategizing, creative ideation and others.

Nevertheless, all these tools may not have the same capabilities. While one might be good at parsing market research papers, another would be better suited for condensing an act from a Shakespearean play into a one or two-page summary.

In this post, we will consider some of the AI tools most widely used by legal, academic and business professionals and how to choose the right AI summarization tool.

Best AI Summarization Tools for Legal Professionals

1. Spell Book

Touted as one among the best legal document AI tools, Spell book assists transactional lawyers in drafting, reviewing, and analyzing contracts efficiently. The best feature is that it suggests clauses as you draft, flags risks, and tracks edits in real time. That makes it especially handy for transactional work where precision is key.

Pros:

• Can be integrated directly into Microsoft Word, and hence you don’t need to switch platforms.
• Free trial and affordable subscription options.
• Tailored for transactional lawyers.
• Offers clause suggestions, redlines, and benchmarking tools.
• Saves significant time.
• Easy to implement, with minimal training required.

Cons:

• No predictive analytics or compliance monitoring.
• Post-signature contract management not supported.

2. Thomson Reuters – CaseText CoCounsel

Thomson Reuters has integrated CoCounsel with CaseText to give an AI-powered solution that can benefit large offices with many team members, extensive documentation, and complex workflows. It not only finds relevant case law but also interprets key documents, making it especially useful for strategy building. In short, it eliminates the need for multiple platforms by streamlining preparation.

Pros:

• Capabilities of deep legal research across extensive databases.
• Case preparation gets streamlined with document comparison.
• Enhanced accuracy and verification with inline citation checks.
• Team workflows made easier with organized dashboards and chat folders.
• Capability to draft customizable emails and letters.
• Enhanced case and contract clarity with auto-generated timelines.

Cons:

• Not suitable for contract drafting or transactional law.
• Not suitable for small firms or solo practitioners because of complexity.
• More suited for research-heavy legal work.
• Broader tool set calls for higher learning curve and cost.

3. Harvey AI

Hailed as “unprecedented legal AI,” Harvey AI optimizes workflows to improve efficiency in legal firms through its AI-powered features. It is particularly useful for tasks like drafting, summarizing, and reviewing large volumes of documents.

Pros:

• Well suited for litigation lawyers with precedent insights.
• Efficient document summarization at scale.
• Capabilities of deep legal research across multiple databases.
• Specialized support for international legislation and tax laws.

Cons:

• May not be suitable for small firms or individual litigators as its focus is on enterprise legal firms.
• It’s pricing and features are not very clear.
• Possibility of integration with common legal tools is unclear.
• Non-litigation lawyers might find the learning curve quite steep.

4. Diligen

A contract review automation platform designed to streamline legal workflows, Diligen is particularly useful for firms dealing with large volumes of contracts and compliance documents. It incorporates AI for legal documents, enabling lawyers to automate contract drafting and clause identification with greater accuracy. Also, its use of AI to identify, extract, and analyze key clauses, makes it valuable during due diligence processes and routine compliance checks.

Pros:

• Accelerates due diligence and large-scale contract reviews.
• Automatically extracts clauses, terms, and key data points.
• Enables compliance monitoring across high document volumes.
• Offers customizable review checklists for specific workflows.

Cons:

• Needs initial setup and training to optimize for firm-specific needs.
• Not suitable for smaller firms or lower document volumes.
• Not integrated directly into word processing environments like MS Word.
• Not suitable for contract drafting compared to review-focused tools.

Best AI Tools to Summarize Research Papers and Academic Texts

1. Glasp

Glasp acts like a digital highlighter that can be used to highlight and save key parts of research papers while browsing. You can later get an AI-generated summary of the same. It also lets you see what other researchers are highlighting and learn from their insights, making it feel like having a study group for research papers. Glasp is a free Chrome extension that can also transcribe and summarize video content from streaming platforms like YouTube.

Pros:

• Free to use..
• Works directly in browser.
• Supports YouTube content.
• Easy-to-use interface.
• Social learning capabilities.

Cons:

• Works only with web content.
• Cannot upload PDFs.
• It’s exclusive to Chrome browser.
• Requires internet connection.
• Doesn’t let you chat with documents.

2. QuillBot

It’s a popular AI tool for research paper summarization. It can shorten long research papers into smaller summaries. All you need to do is just paste the text, choose your preferred length, and hit the ‘summarize’ button. It also comes with a grammar checker, which comes in handy when you’re working with complex research text and want to ensure accuracy.

Pros:

• User-friendly interface
• Built-in grammar checker
• Multiple paraphrasing modes like formal, simple, creative etc.
• Includes citation generator.
• Chrome-extension enabled

Cons:

• Free edition has word-limit.
• Doesn’t let you upload PDFs.
• No interactive features.
• Can’t handle full papers at once.
• Contextual understanding is limited.
• Premium features are costly.

3. Scholarcy

Scholarcy is an academic summarization software tailor-made for researchers and students. As a great tool for working with academic texts, it’s adept at summarizing research papers and extracting key information, making literature reviews and research more efficient. The tool is quite accurate in effectively identifying and summarizing key elements like methodology, results, and conclusions.

Pros:

• Tailor-made for academic and research papers.
• It integrates well with tools like Notion.
• Capability to produce study aides like flash cards.
• Highlights key findings and methodologies.
• Bulk processing of multiple documents.

Cons:

• Not very user-friendly for un-trained users.
• Free plan has restrictions on number of uses and length of the paper.

4. Claude

When it comes to academic papers, Claude stands out as a powerful AI tool that excels at not just summarizing but understanding and breaking down complex research papers. You can also ask follow-up questions, request clarifications, or dive deeper into specific topics. Also, Claude can handle various formats – from plain text to PDFs. In addition, you can even discuss multiple papers in the same conversation, and have in-depth analysis of specific paper sections.

Pros:

• Claude understands the context of the paper.
• Can handle complex topics.
• Natural dialogue flow.
• Multiple language support.
• Detailed and in-depth analysis.

Cons:

• Visualization options are limited.
• Learning curve for beginners is steep.
• Requires paid subscription.
• Built-in citation tools absent.
• Varied response time for documents.

Best AI-powered Tools for Summarizing Business Reports

1. Jasper AI

Jasper AI is a powerful tool that offers AI-generated content that can save time on copywriting, and marketing materials. It can generate tailored outputs based on industry and style. It also comes packed with a built-in SEO optimization tools, and templates for faster content creation.

Pros:

• Other than summarizing, it can also generate content.
• Has a suite of advanced features.
• Built-in SEO optimization tools.
• Best suited for businesses and individuals who need large volumes of content, as well as summarization features for efficient workflows.

Cons:

• Learning curve for new users is steep.
• May face challenges while dealing with more technical texts.
• Expensive compared to other such tools.

2. Frase

Tailor-made for content marketers and SEO professionals, Frase is an AI-powered summarization tool with other capabilities including content research and optimization. Unlike other AI writing assistants that focus on generating content, Frase excels at analyzing search intent and optimizing articles to improve rankings. It automates content research by analyzing top-ranking pages for any keyword and suggesting structure, topics, and questions to include in your writing.

Pros:

• Best suited for SEO content research and article creation.
• Helps streamline research and content planning.

Cons:

• Learning curve is steep.
• More focused on research than content creation.

3. TheGist

Best suited for email and Slack message summarizations, TheGist is an AI summarization tool that helps users stay on top of conversations without information overload. It’s particularly useful for busy professionals who need quick insights from long email threads or Slack channels.

Pros:

• Integrates seamlessly with Slack and email platforms.
• Highlights most important Slack conversations.
• Alerts users about important messages with smart notifications.
• Helps with managing information overload.

Cons:

• Has limited support for other platforms other than Slack and emails.
• Complex discussions can lead to summaries missing the context.

4. Fireflies.ai

Fireflies.ai is an AI-powered meeting assistant that helps teams improve meeting efficiency and assures key points aren’t lost. It efficiently transcribes conversations, summarizes discussions, and highlights action items, key decisions and takeaways. It integrates well with platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, and also assigns follow-ups based on meeting discussions.

Pros:

• Saves a lot of time by automating meeting notes and summaries.
• Integrates with popular video conferencing tools.
• Improves collaboration with searchable meeting transcripts.

Cons:

• The AI-generated texts may require manual corrections.
• Only paid plans provide some of the advanced features.

How to Choose the Right AI Summarization Tool?

Here are 5 key parameters to consider while choosing the ideal AI summarization tool:
Ease of Use: The primary function of an AI summarization tool is to save time you otherwise would spend sifting through large-volume documents, and hence if you’re spending more time to figure out how the tool works than reading summaries, you’re not using the right tool. Look for a tool that has a simplified and user-friendly interface and also integrates well with your current workflows.

• Input Options: Different AI summarization tools accept input of different types. While there are the ones that handle formats like documents, website URLs, and even videos, there are others that can only process pasted texts. Choose the tool that deals with the input types you use most often.

• Accuracy: Accuracy is of utmost importance while choosing the right tool for your needs. Not all tools guarantee the same level of accuracy and hence look for tools with positive customer reviews or the ones that let you test their summaries.

• Features: Majority of AI summarization tools go beyond basic summarization and offer a variety of other useful features like summary history, output customization, multiple language support, and more. Consider which of these features are more important to you before choosing the right tool.

• Pricing: Last but not the least thing to consider is its pricing. Compare the prices of different tools and see which ones offer a free trial or a fee tier. You might be able to accomplish your task with a free tool if your summarization requirement is limited. However, a paid version would provide better accuracy and features which would come handy if you plan to use it extensively.

Conclusion

The above mentioned are just some of the AI summarization tools widely used in the respective industries. There are others which are equally competent and produce results specific to the industry they cater to. There are also industry agnostic AI tools like ChatGPT by OpenAI, Gemini by Google and others, which can be used for document summarization tasks, but their accuracy may not be as reliable as the industry-specific ones.

Besides, which tool you need depends on your specific requirements, and DeepKnit AI, with vast experience in catering to the AI needs of enterprises across industries can guide you in this quest to find and implement the right AI tool for your business.