In this issue: Big Tech steps into the legal AI game, a rise in reports of non-lawyers providing legal services, and the Business Court starts charging document fees.

Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Big Tech is pressing deeper into legal AI, with Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Amazon, SpaceX, and Microsoft all making moves in legal technology over the last four months, Evan Ochsner reports. The products vary — from Microsoft’s legal agent for Word to Anthropic’s practice-specific Claude tools — but together they signal that legal work is becoming a serious commercial target for the companies building the underlying AI models.

That matters because the fight may be shifting from the model layer to the application layer — in other words, from building the underlying AI engines to controlling the tools lawyers actually use. Big Tech already powers many legal AI startups behind the scenes, and now some of the same companies are starting to deliver tools directly to lawyers. “There’s no question that Anthropic and OpenAI are going after the application layer,” Tom Martin of LawDroid said.

The push comes as AI companies look for clearer returns on the billions they’ve spent building large language models. Legal tech specialists may still have an edge in knowing what lawyers actually want, but the bigger players control the infrastructure, the budgets, and increasingly the direct relationship with users.

Also Read: Microsoft Gives Salespeople Tips to Knock Down Anthropic

Each year, a Supreme Court of Texas-appointed committee fields about 300 reports of unauthorized practice of law — complaints about people who aren’t attorneys giving legal advice or representation for profit. That number jumped last year to about 455, according to the Unauthorized Practice of Law Committee, Sameea Kamal reports. Immigration-related reports made up 23% of the total —up from 16% in 2016.

Providing legal services without a license can be punished as a third-degree felony, and it can also harm people seeking help. Rehan Alimohammad, an immigration attorney and former chair of the State Bar of Texas board, said he wasn’t surprised immigration-related reports were driving the increase: Stricter enforcement has made it easier for bad actors to exploit people’s fears about their status by charging sometimes hefty fees for advice or paperwork.

“Nowadays, what happens is if you make even a little bit of a mistake, you’re going to probably end up in removal or deportation — so it’s important that they go to a reputable attorney,” he said.

Some of the increase may also stem from the committee’s stepped-up enforcement efforts. It hired its first full-time program director last May to oversee investigations.

What about AI? It’s still early days, according to committee Chair Ann Hennis, but it’s very much a concern. Complaints involving AI-generated legal documents have ticked up this year, mostly against smaller businesses advertising services to prepare and file legal documents for clients without an attorney.

Texas’ online case management system has been something of a scofflaw for nearly two years — though court watchers won’t be offended once they learn why.

In a change we first noticed this week, re:SearchTX is now charging for case documents in the Texas Business Court, ending the no-fee downloads users have enjoyed since the court opened in September 2024.

But don’t be too upset: Users should’ve been paying all along.

Fee collection, per a 2021 state legislative change, is required for an electronic copy of an electronic court document — the format used by re:SearchTX. Until now, the statewide system had charged for documents in other courts, but not the Business Court.

The legislative change set the rates: $1 for a document up to 10 pages, plus 10 cents for each additional page.

“It was recently discovered that copy fees were not pulling up correctly in re:SearchTX for the Business Court,” Megan LaVoie, administrative director for the courts, told Bloomberg Law on Wednesday. “That has since been resolved.”

Fees will go to covering costs to administer the Business Court. And there’s no grandfathering rule: The roughly 475 cases filed before the fee change, which had been available for free, now come with filings marked by a shopping cart icon.

Still, before you start brewing your own coffee to save up for documents, let us offer solutions. Business Court opinionsremain available at no charge on the court’s website. And Bloomberg Law docket users will continue to get documents for free (after your subscription fee, of course). — Ryan Autullo

The DOJ’s attempt to depose the leaders of the nine law firms that settled with the White House reignites a chief criticism of the firms’ dealmaking: failure to account for counterparty risk, Roy Strom writes in his latest Big Law Business column.

The firms had hoped they would do their pro bono work and put the episode in the rear-view mirror. But the dust-up with the DOJ, which the New York Times reported centers around the role Trump’s personal lawyer played brokering the deals, has dimmed that optimism.

“When you take a settlement with Donald Trump, you are not actually buying a legal peace and you are not actually buying certainty as to your obligations,” Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, told Roy.