In-house legal teams can be more productive and efficient with workflow automation tools that do more than basic task management. Checkbox gained traction as a no-code automation platform, but its drawbacks when handling complex tasks have pushed legal teams to look for better alternatives.
Although G2 reviews validate Checkbox's legacy in solving complex automation challenges, discussions on user forums reveal common frustrations when deployed specifically by legal teams.
These include steep learning curves for non-technical legal team members, limited legal-specific templates, and integration challenges with existing legal tech stacks. Legal teams need purpose-built solutions that can adapt to Legal’s unique workflows. Here are the top workflow automation tools for in-house legal teams in 2025.
The biggest challenge with legal operations isn't finding automation tools; it's finding tools legal professionals can adopt. Streamline AI has an intuitive interface that doesn't require IT support (for basic workflow modifications), coupled with automation capabilities.
Streamline AI is designed exclusively for workflow automation in in-house legal teams. Unlike horizontal workflow tools modified for legal use, Streamline AI is built from the ground up to handle the complexities of legal intake, triage, and matter management.
What sets Streamline AI apart is its understanding of how legal teams work. Founded by DoorDash’s former AGC, the platform recognizes that legal requests don't follow simple linear workflows; they require conditional routing based on request type, automatic escalation for high-priority matters, and seamless collaboration between legal and business stakeholders.
By capturing all requests, not just contracts, the platform can centralize all conversations and positions into a growing knowledge base, becoming the system of record and single source of truth for busy legal departments inside growing companies.
With a complete view of all intake, often integrated with other important legal systems, Streamline AI becomes the primary metrics, KPIs, and reporting interface for legal teams. It provides the data needed to optimize legal processes, unlock resources, and demonstrate the legal department's value to CFOs.
Streamline AI's core strengths are its ability to expedite legal requests and provide a transparent, comprehensive view of a legal team’s work to legal leaders.
The platform takes a comprehensive approach to legal workflow automation. It offers AI-powered email intake that automatically structures unorganized requests into proper legal workflows, eliminating the time-intensive manual sorting.
Further, the conditional workflow builder enables legal teams to create sophisticated routing rules without coding knowledge. For example, contract requests can automatically route to different team members based on contract value, vendor type, or business unit. This is the nuanced decision-making that generic automation tools struggle with.
Additionally, real-time collaboration features keep stakeholders informed throughout the request lifecycle. Business requesters receive automatic updates on their matters without flooding legal inboxes, while legal teams maintain complete visibility into bottlenecks and capacity issues across their department.
As the legal business hub for busy legal departments, Streamline AI transforms intake processes from scattered email chains into organized, trackable workflows. The platform's AI-powered email intake reads incoming requests and automatically creates structured matter records, reducing manual data entry by up to 70%. This eliminates requests often lost in email chains while establishing a centralized command center for all legal operations.
Streamline’s modern approach to legal workflow automation makes it one of the best in the market. It is often mentioned in user reviews as one of the platform's powerful features.
The intuitive UI helps legal teams build complex, multi-step workflows tailored and adapted to the legal processes. Dynamic forms with conditional logic can be configured to map to existing internal workflows, triggering various downstream actions.
Besides assignments and open tickets, Streamline AI can automatically create child requests, send notifications, request approvals, set statuses, initiate Ironclad workflows, enable follow-up features, and set reminders. The flexibility allows teams to design highly customized processes without engineering support.
Automated, AI-powered routing and approval workflows can reduce or eliminate the delays of manual processes. Response times can improve by 25%+, and average request completion times can decrease by 40-50% as requests no longer sit in email inboxes waiting for manual assignment.
Automatic assignment based on workload and expertise ensures optimal resource allocation, which can dramatically reduce the time the business wastes tracking down information and pointing people in the right direction.
The analytics dashboard shows exactly where bottlenecks occur in legal processes. This visibility allows teams to make informed decisions about resource allocation and demonstrate value to executive stakeholders through concrete metrics. As a result, process optimization becomes data-driven rather than assumption-based.
Unlike tools that force users to learn new systems, Streamline AI is designed with the rest of the business in mind and meets requesters where they are. Business stakeholders can submit requests through email, Slack, or Salesforce integration, while legal teams utilize the structured Streamline environment.
Streamline AI uses a consultation-based pricing system tailored to a team's size and needs. The platform includes white-glove onboarding with legal workflow specialists who understand the nuances of legal operations, along with customized workflows based on a team’s existing processes.
The investment is comparable to other legal tech tools for mid-size legal teams (10-50 lawyers). However, due to its legal-specific design, Streamline AI has significantly higher adoption rates and faster time-to-value. The pricing model includes ongoing support from legal experts and transparent costs with no hidden implementation fees.
Getting started with Streamline AI entails a consultation call during which we assess your current legal processes and then design workflows that suit your existing operations. The onboarding process usually takes 2-3 weeks and includes hands-on training and support to optimize the workflows as needs evolve.
Ready to see how Streamline AI can transform your legal workflows? Schedule a demo to learn how the platform can supercharge your legal operations.
LawVu is a comprehensive legal operations platform that combines matter management, spend management, and workflow automation. The platform serves legal departments in larger organizations seeking an all-in-one solution for legal operations.
LawVu's capabilities include configurable intake forms for various request types, approval routing with customizable decision trees, and integration capabilities with matter management systems. The platform offers comprehensive reporting features and spend tracking capabilities for financial oversight.
The matter management component provides case tracking, document storage, and collaboration tools. LawVu's approach combines workflow automation with legal management, making it attractive for teams seeking integrated solutions.
LawVu is an AI-powered workspace designed for in-house legal teams. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools to streamline legal operations. The platform provides a centralized legal workspace with integrated matter management capabilities, contract lifecycle, and spend management to control legal costs.
LawVu enhances efficiency through automated intake and self-service functionality, robust document management systems, and powerful insights and reporting features that deliver data-driven visibility into legal performance.
The platform's workspace intelligence leverages AI to optimize workflows and decision-making, enabling in-house legal teams to operate more strategically and efficiently while maintaining better oversight of their legal operations and resources.
The analytics suite provides detailed insights into performance, spend patterns, and workflow efficiency. Team leaders can leverage the executive-level dashboards for board and custom reporting for specific organizational needs to demonstrate value to stakeholders.
LawVu is tuned for enterprise requirements, offering robust security features and compliance certifications for data protection and regulatory compliance. The platform includes SOC 2 compliance, data encryption, secure access controls, and comprehensive audit trails for compliance documentation.
Tonkean focuses on process automation with applications across multiple departments, including legal. The platform offers sophisticated automation capabilities but requires more technical configuration than legal-specific tools.
Tonkean's strength is its process orchestration capabilities, which connect multiple business systems and automate complex multi-step workflows. The platform can integrate with various legal tools and business applications, creating unified workflows.
The no-code builder allows users to create complex automation rules, though legal teams often need technical support for the initial setup. Tonkean connects disparate systems and creates unified workflows across departments, which is particularly valuable for legal processes that span multiple business functions.
Tonkean excels at creating workflows that span multiple business functions, making it ideal for multi-department legal processes. This includes legal, procurement, and finance workflows for vendor management and cross-functional approval chains involving various departments.
The platform supports complex conditional logic and multi-system integrations that handle intricate business processes beyond simple workflow routing. Advanced decision trees with multiple branching paths and event-driven automation triggered by business systems provide top-tier automation capabilities.
Tonkean's architecture supports large-scale implementations across enterprise organizations with complex technical requirements. The platform offers enterprise-grade infrastructure for high-volume processing and professional support for complex deployments.
BRYTER offers no-code automation focused on decision trees and conditional logic. The platform is ideal for legal teams creating self-service tools and standardized decision-making processes.
BRYTER's selling point is building interactive decision trees that guide users through complex legal determinations. The platform excels at creating self-service tools for common legal questions and standardized processes.
Legal teams can use BRYTER to build intake questionnaires, compliance checklists, and decision support tools that reduce routine legal inquiries. The visual builder makes creating branching logic for legal workflows easier, with flexible deployment options across multiple platforms.
BRYTER offers a visual, drag-and-drop interface for building decision trees. This approach enables legal professionals to create self-service tools and guided questionnaires to reduce routine inquiries and standardize decision-making across similar legal scenarios. A template library enables quick setup for common legal use cases.
BRYTER applications can be embedded in websites as public-facing legal tools, shared as standalone applications for internal use, or integrated into existing business systems. Their mobile-responsive design ensures access across handheld devices.
Mitratech provides enterprise legal management software with workflow automation capabilities integrated into broader legal operations functionality. The platform targets large legal departments seeking comprehensive legal technology solutions.
Mitratech's workflow automation integrates with matter, contract lifecycle, and spend management within their legal platform. The solution includes configurable intake forms and approval workflows with extensive customization options.
The platform offers extensive customization options and integration capabilities with enterprise business systems. Mitratech's approach combines workflow automation with comprehensive management tools, creating unified legal operations across large organizations.
Mitratech integrates deeply with enterprise systems, including financial, procurement, and HR platforms, creating unified legal operations across large organizations. This enables financial connectivity for budget and spend management and procurement platform integration for vendor management workflows.
The platform addresses multiple legal operations needs, including matter management, contract lifecycle management, and spend tracking within integrated workflows. Teams benefit from unified reporting and a single source of truth across all operations.
Mitratech’s customizability allows legal teams to adapt the platform to their operational requirements. This includes workflow configuration for specific organizational processes and custom field creation for unique data requirements.
Onit offers process automation with a strong focus on the legal industry, particularly in matter management and workflow automation. The platform serves mid-market to enterprise teams seeking configurable solutions.
Onit supports complex legal processes, including matter intake, approval routing, and task automation. The platform includes form builders, conditional logic, and integration capabilities with standard legal tools.
The solution offers pre-built legal templates for common workflows and extensive customization features for specific organizational needs. Onit balances ease of use with wide-ranging automation capabilities suitable for mid-market to enterprise-size legal departments.
Onit understands legal operations and provides templates and features designed explicitly for legal workflows and compliance needs. The platform includes templates for common workflows and processes, with industry expertise in legal operations and process optimization.
The platform allows significant customization without requiring coding knowledge, enabling legal teams to adapt workflows as requirements evolve. This includes workflow modification capabilities and custom field creation for specific organizational needs, all through a user-friendly interface designed for legal professionals.
Onit connects with major legal technology platforms and business systems, creating unified workflows across the legal technology stack. The integration capabilities include connections with CLM, document management, and e-signature platforms, along with API capabilities for custom connections.
Xakia combines matter management with workflow automation for in-house legal teams. The platform provides legal teams with tools for matter tracking, workflow automation, and collaboration.
Xakia's workflow capabilities integrate with matter management. The platform includes intake automation with customizable forms and routing, task assignment and automated workflow progression, and approval routing with conditional logic for different matter types.
The solution offers collaboration features that keep legal teams and business stakeholders aligned throughout matter lifecycles. Xakia includes time tracking, document management, and reporting capabilities for team communication and workflow analyses.
Xakia helps legal teams stay organized and aligned on matters, with clear task assignment, deadline tracking, and communication tools built for legal operations. The platform provides stakeholder visibility into matter progress and status with automated notifications.
The platform centers workflows around matters rather than generic tasks, aligning with how legal professionals naturally organize their work. This includes integrated document management for matter-related files and matter history for reference and compliance.
Although Jira isn't explicitly designed for legal teams, many organizations adapt it for legal workflow automation due to enterprise licenses and IT familiarity. However, this often creates more complexity than value for legal operations.
Jira's project management and issue tracking capabilities can be configured to manage legal intake and workflow. The platform offers extensive customization options and integration capabilities with business systems.
However, adapting Jira for many legal use cases requires significant IT expertise and ongoing technical maintenance. Lacking the legal-specific metrics that Legal teams need, many teams often struggle with the platform's complexity and project management focus rather than a legal operations enabler.
Further, Jira’s product portfolio may need to be combined or upgraded as the team adds new use cases. For example, teams that only need basic legal approvals might only need the Jira product. However, teams that need a centralized content repository would add the Confluence product, and teams with complex request needs may need the Jira Service Management product.
Jira offers integration capabilities across departments and reduces vendor management complexity. This includes existing license utilization, which reduces incremental software costs and the need for IT knowledge with platform administration and support.
The platform supports highly configurable workflows for unique organizational needs and custom field creation for specific legal data requirements. However, Jira often requires dedicated internal or external resources to support complex workflow requirements.
Existing enterprise licenses reduce incremental costs for workflow automation. Organizations achieving their desired use cases with Jira can benefit from shared administrative resources across multiple departments and volume licensing.
Streamline AI offers legal-specific functionality, ease of implementation, and comprehensive automation capabilities for in-house legal teams. The platform's focus on legal operations eliminates the usual pain points of generic business tools.
Choosing the right Checkbox alternative depends on understanding your legal team's automation needs and technical capabilities. While Checkbox offers general workflow automation, in-house legal teams with specific needs achieve better results with platforms designed for their unique operations.
Streamline AI suits in-house legal teams because it combines purpose-built functionality with ease of implementation. It supports onboarding and strong business stakeholder adoption. The intuitive user interface empowers legal teams to create complex, multi-step workflows that align with their legal processes.
Its dynamic forms can be customized to mirror existing internal workflows and trigger downstream actions. In addition to managing assignments and open tickets, Streamline AI can do much more: send notifications, request approvals, update statuses, launch workflows, enable follow-up tasks, and set reminders. This flexibility allows teams to build highly customized processes.
Upgrade from generic workflow tools to legal-specific automation today. Schedule a consultation to see how Streamline AI can transform your legal operations.
Legal-specific workflow automation should handle complex approval chains, maintain confidentiality requirements, integrate with existing legal technology stacks, and be flexible enough to adapt to changing legal processes. Generic business tools lack the routing and security features that legal operations require.
Implementation timelines vary based on platform complexity and customization requirements. However, Streamline AI can be implemented within 2-3 weeks, while enterprise platforms like Jira, Mitratech or LawVu may require 3-6 months for full deployment and adoption.
Modern legal workflow platforms can integrate with standard legal tools. Streamline AI's integration capabilities include connections with email systems, Slack, Teams, Salesforce, Ironclad, and major legal technology platforms.
Legal workflow automation addresses requirements like attorney-client privilege, complex approval hierarchies, matter-based organization, and integration with legal-specific tools. General business automation tools often require significant customization and internal or external support from technical experts to handle these legal-specific requirements effectively.
Scale your legal team's efficiency and effectiveness with modern workflow automation tools designed for in-house legal.