LegalScout
Also known as: Ask Scout, legalscout.com.au
Private legal AI for Australian SME law firms, hosted entirely in AWS Sydney, that drafts from firm precedents, reviews contracts against playbooks, researches Australian law and runs autonomous intake workflows, paid for in credits.
LegalScout is a legal AI platform for Australian law firms of one to about 100 users, sole practitioners and in house teams, run by NextAISolutions Pty Ltd, Australian owned and a member of NVIDIA's Inception program, with more than 100 law firms and 50,000 processed documents behind it. Every part of the stack, from compute and storage to AI inference, runs in AWS Sydney, the product's main point of difference from tools that send matter data overseas.
The work sits in three places on one credit pool, Ask Scout, Workspace and Workflow. Ask Scout answers legal questions from the firm's own documents first, then its library of past matter insights and precedent notes, then live Australian case law and government sources, with citations under each answer. Workspace questions run across uploaded matter documents. Contract review produces risk dashboards, missing clause gap analysis against the firm's playbook and redline comparison across versions, and a separate employment contract review maps job titles and pay against Fair Work Modern Awards, checks restraints and NES entitlements, and can audit hundreds of legacy agreements at once.
Drafting pairs a Planner, which interviews the user about parties, jurisdiction and terms, with a Composer that writes from the firm's own precedents, fills variables and flags clauses that need a partner's sign off. Family law financials classify the property pool, model split scenarios under the Family Law Act 1975 and superannuation splitting, and export a balance sheet to Word. Workflows run a firm defined intake, triage, conflict pre screening, onboarding or follow up process on their own, routing the matter, updating Clio or Actionstep and writing a summary.
The Free plan gives 10 credits a month. Credit packs cost A$150 for 50 credits and A$300 for 128, valid for 12 months, and Enterprise is A$350 per seat a month with unlimited Ask Scout and included workspace and agent credits. An Ask Scout query uses 1 credit, a workspace question 3 and an agent run 5, and unused credits are forfeited if the account closes.
Security covers AES 256 encryption with AWS KMS keys, TLS 1.2 or later, multi factor sign in through Auth0 for every user, an organization scoped role model, a tamper evident audit log and security scans on every code change, with ISO 27001 controls mapped and the certification still a target. Conversations and documents stay open for 90 days after their last activity, then move to an archive and are deleted 30 days later, and client content is never used to train models.
LegalScout suits Australian SME firms that want their data and AI inference to stay onshore, pay by the task with no seat contract, and get drafting, review, research and intake automation in one place. It fits less well for a firm outside Australia, one that needs a certified security program today, a choice of model, an API to build on, a review step before an automated intake updates its practice system, or long term document storage inside the AI tool.
Vendor details
Canonical URL
https://legalscout.com.au
Category
Enterprise operations agent
Subcategory
Australian legal AI platform with onshore hosting and agentic intake
Funding status
Australian owned, operated by NextAISolutions Pty Ltd; member of the NVIDIA Inception program.
Company status
independent
Use cases & customers
Primary use cases
Target customers
Deployment options
Integrations
Intake and triage workflows route matters into Clio and Actionstep, and LegalScout also connects to Smokeball. Drafts and family law balance sheets export as Word or PDF files, and documents stay in the firm's personal or firm document stores inside LegalScout, open for 90 days after their last activity.
In practice
A small firm loses new enquiries because intake forms sit unanswered overnight. A LegalScout workflow holds the first conversation with the prospective client, applies the firm's qualification rules, routes the matter to the right lawyer, updates Clio and writes a matter summary.
A commercial lawyer needs to know what is missing from a supplier's MSA before a call. LegalScout compares the contract with the firm's playbook, flags absent IP, termination and liability clauses, and shows a redline against the last version.
A family lawyer has to set out the property pool before a mediation. LegalScout classifies both parties' assets, liabilities and super into a balance sheet, models several split percentages side by side and exports the result to Word.
An employer client is merging two businesses with hundreds of old employment contracts. Employment contract review checks each one against the current Modern Award, the NES and restraint law and lists the amendments each contract needs.
Sources & related URLs
Related / legacy domains
Research sources
Agentic Index coverage score
6.5 / 14 capabilities · 46%
| Integrations & Tool Calling | Partial |
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An intake or triage workflow can route a qualified matter to the right team member, update the matter in Clio or Actionstep and write a matter summary without anyone stepping in, and LegalScout also connects to Smokeball. Drafts and family law balance sheets leave as Word or PDF files. Integration stops at those practice systems, and firms cannot add other tools for the AI to use. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/features/ai-law-agentsread 2026-10-13 |
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| Workflow Orchestration | Full |
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A firm maps a process once, with its intake questions, qualification criteria, triage logic and routing rules, and the Planner AI stores it as a reusable workflow template that runs end to end on every trigger. Each run qualifies the matter, makes the routing decision, updates the practice system and writes the summary, and a single agent run can take a drafting task from start to a finished, reviewed draft. Drafting itself splits the work between two agents, a Planner that gathers the facts through a structured conversation and a Composer that writes from the firm's precedents. Each agent run costs 5 credits. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/features/ai-law-agentsread 2026-10-13 |
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| Knowledge Grounding & RAG | Full |
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LegalScout indexes the firm's uploaded precedents, past contracts and approved clauses in My Firm Documents and searches personal and firm documents semantically, with @mentions to point at a specific file. Ask Scout reads the matter's documents first, then the firm's library of pattern pages, past matter insights and synthesized precedent notes, and only then live Australian case law, legislation and government sources, with citations under every answer. Retrieval augmented generation keeps each answer tied to those sources across 17 Australian practice areas. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/features/ai-legal-research-australiaread 2026-10-13 |
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| Human Oversight & Guardrails | Partial |
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Drafts come back for a lawyer to review, with clauses that need a partner's sign off flagged and the places where human judgement is still required marked, since LegalScout treats every output as a draft, not a decision. Review happens at the output rather than at each step, so intake and triage workflows run from the client conversation through routing and the practice system update with no lawyer in the loop, and there is no step to approve a routing decision or a record change before it lands. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/features/ai-legal-document-draftingread 2026-10-13 |
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| Security, Identity & Governance | Partial |
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Every user signs in through Auth0 with multi factor authentication enforced, and LegalScout holds no password hashes. Role based access scopes each user to their own organization, with permissions enforced at the API layer. Data is encrypted with AES 256 under AWS KMS keys and TLS 1.2 or later, every sign in, document access, AI query and admin action lands in a tamper evident audit log, security scans run on every code change, and a defined incident response plan sets escalation procedures. Practices are mapped to the Australian Privacy Principles, with data export and account deletion on request. No certification is in place yet, since ISO 27001 controls are mapped with a gap analysis in progress and ISO 42001 and IRAP are targets, and there is no single sign on through a firm's own identity provider. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/trust-centre/enterprise-securityread 2026-10-13 |
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| Observability & Auditability | Partial |
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Each draft carries a trail of who ran it, when and from which precedent, and every draft is kept in the user's or the firm's document store. Answers show their sources, and LegalScout keeps a tamper evident log of sign ins, document access, AI queries and admin actions on its side. A firm gets no step by step view of what a workflow or agent run did, such as the questions asked, the routing decision and the practice system change. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/features/ai-legal-document-draftingread 2026-10-13 |
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| Memory & State Persistence | Partial |
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Research conversations run over several turns with their history saved in each workspace, workflow templates stay in the firm's account, and a firm library of pattern pages and past matter insights grows with use, so later answers draw on earlier work. Conversations and documents stay open for 90 days after their last activity, then move to an archive for compliance and legal hold, and are permanently deleted 30 days after that. Prompts and uploads are kept only when a user saves them. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/features/ai-legal-research-australiaread 2026-10-13 |
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| Deployment & Data Residency | Not documented |
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Compute, the PostgreSQL database, document storage, caching, queues and AI inference all run in AWS Sydney, ap-southeast-2, and data never moves to US, EU or other AWS regions, with inference on AWS Bedrock inside the Australian boundary. Every customer runs in that one region by design, which suits Australian firms and rules LegalScout out for a firm that must keep data in another country or in its own cloud. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/trust-centre/australian-cloud-hostingread 2026-10-13 |
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| Prebuilt Agents / Templates / Packs | Partial |
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Six capabilities come built in, contract review, drafting, legal research, family law financials, employment contract review and agentic workflows. Intake, triage, conflict pre screening, KYC onboarding and follow up are the suggested uses for workflows, but each workflow template is one the firm defines with the Planner's help, and contract review runs against the firm's own playbook. LegalScout has no catalog of ready made agents or workflows to switch on. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/features/ai-law-agentsread 2026-10-13 |
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| Triggers & Channel Coverage | Full |
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Intake workflows run overnight on the enquiries a firm would otherwise leave unanswered, holding the first conversation with the prospective client and routing the matter, incoming work is classified and sent to the right person as it arrives, and post matter follow ups go out on a schedule. Everything else starts from the web app, where users ask Ask Scout, query a workspace or launch a drafting run. The trigger behind each workflow run, whether a web form, an inbox or a rule, is not spelled out. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/resources/blog/rise-of-agentic-ai-digital-associateread 2026-10-13 |
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| Model Flexibility & Routing | Not documented |
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All inference runs on AWS Bedrock in Sydney, and no request goes to OpenAI, Anthropic or other outside AI APIs, but buyers are not told which models run there. LegalScout trains and fine tunes its own models in Australia and never trains them on client content. The Pro pack's custom model presets hold a firm's own research instructions, research offers an enhanced reasoning mode for harder questions, and Enterprise adds custom fine tuning, but a buyer cannot choose a model maker. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/resources/glossary/aws-bedrockread 2026-10-13 |
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| APIs / SDKs / MCP Extensibility | Partial |
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LegalScout runs as a web app and offers open APIs, by its own account, for updating client matters in Clio and Actionstep, but a developer finds no API reference, keys or SDK to build against and no MCP server. A separate attorney directory under the same name offers an API and an MCP server with no link to LegalScout's Australian platform, so those tools say nothing about this product. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/resources/faqsread 2026-10-13 |
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| Testing, Debugging & Optimization | Not documented |
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Contract review checks the documents a firm uploads against its playbook, and LegalScout refines its own models from practitioner feedback. A firm cannot test a workflow against sample enquiries before it runs on live ones, or check a changed template before it goes out. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/features/ai-contract-reviewread 2026-10-13 |
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| Browser / Computer-use | Not documented |
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Ask Scout runs live web searches across Australian case law registries, government sources and legal commentary when no documents are loaded, and workflows reach practice systems through their integrations. It never drives a browser or another application on the user's behalf. Sourcelegalscout.com.au/features/ai-legal-research-australiaread 2026-10-13 |
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The Agentic Index coverage score grades every vendor Full, Partial or Not documented against the same 14 buyer facing capabilities, from public evidence only. Each capability links to how all vendors in the index score on it. How this evidence is graded
Pricing
Free plan with 10 credits a month; credit packs from A$150; Enterprise A$350 per seat a month
Prepaid credits from one firm wide pool, or Enterprise seats billed monthly with included credits.
Included quota
Free carries 10 credits a month, one agent run and one active workspace. Starter carries 50 credits with 10 agent runs and three active workspaces, and Pro 128 credits with unlimited workspaces and custom model presets, each valid for 12 months. Enterprise includes unlimited Ask Scout queries plus workspace and agent credits, an SLA backed processing pipeline, a dedicated onboarding specialist and custom model fine tuning.
What is public
Every plan and pack price, the credits each includes, the credit cost of each task, the top up prices and the cancellation terms.
Billing mechanics
Credit packs are one time purchases valid for 12 months and draw from one pool shared by the whole firm. Enterprise is billed per seat each month and renews automatically until cancelled from account settings or through support.
Cost watchouts
Unused credits, including top ups, are forfeited without refund if the account is cancelled or terminated, and credit packs expire after 12 months. Heavy agent use draws 5 credits a run.
Variable cost rationale
Spend follows the work run, at 1 credit per research query, 3 per workspace question and 5 per agent run, from a firm wide pool. Enterprise seats add a fixed monthly charge with unlimited research.
Additional watchouts
Credits have no cash value and are not refundable. A price increase can be avoided only by cancelling before it takes effect.
Overage / add-ons
Top ups add credits to the same pool at A$150 for 50, A$275 for 100 or A$400 for 150, following the current renewal timeline. A fair use policy lets LegalScout limit accounts or charge for excessive use.
Sales call required
No, self serve available
Free / trial
Free plan with 10 credits a month, no card required
Lowest paid plan
Starter Package, A$150 for 50 credits valid for 12 months
Commercial notes
LegalScout prices by the task, with no lock in and a free self serve start, against the seat licenses and annual contracts common in legal software.
Key ambiguities
Prices are in Australian dollars, and the US figure is an approximate conversion of the Starter pack. The size of Enterprise's included workspace and agent credits is not given, and other LegalScout pages advertise a free trial of 14 days, one month or 30 free credits while the pricing page shows only the Free plan.
Missing data
The number of workspace and agent credits included with Enterprise is not public.
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