If your firm is on NetDocuments, you may already have access to AI. The question isn't whether to use it — it's which layer fits where your firm is today. There are three primary places AI shows up in the ND ecosystem — this guide is to help you decide where to begin.
1. The Legal Assistant — a great starting point
The Legal Assistant is built directly into NetDocuments and is the fastest way to put AI in front of your attorneys. Setup is minimal, the learning curve is gentle, and it works right where your documents already live.
- What it does well: summarizing documents, answering questions about a matter, drafting text-based responses grounded in your own content.
- What to know: output is text only. It won't generate documents, populate forms, or run multi-step workflows.
- Best fit: firms early in their AI journey that want a low-risk, low-lift way to build attorney confidence and prove value before investing further.
- Getting it right: make sure your firm understands AI's limitations, teach people how to prompt effectively, and focus training on your firm's actual use cases — not generic demos.
2. ND MAX Apps (PatternBuilder MAX) — structured automation
ND MAX apps go beyond text. They can take structured inputs, run defined AI workflows, and produce real outputs — populated documents, extracted data, formatted deliverables.
- What it does well: repeatable, defined tasks — think document review checklists, data extraction, first-draft generation from templates.
- What to know: more capability means more configuration. We recommend starting with NetDocuments' out-of-the-box apps rather than building custom — custom apps take real design and maintenance effort, and for most firms the pre-built library covers the high-value use cases.
- Best fit: firms with specific, repeatable workflows to automate, and the appetite to configure and roll them out properly.
- Getting it right: understand which use cases these apps handle well, pick the right app for the job, and make sure your team knows where to find the apps and how to use them. Adoption is where most MAX rollouts fall short.
3. MCP Connector — the best of both worlds
The newest layer, and where the most forward-leaning firms are heading. An MCP (Model Context Protocol) connector links NetDocuments to the AI platform of your choice — such as Claude — so you keep everything ND does best while unlocking a much larger AI toolkit.
NetDocuments stays the system of record: your documents, security model, ethical walls, and governance don't move, and each individual's access to documents via MCP is still governed by NetDocs.
Your AI platform does the heavy lifting: advanced reasoning, multi-step research, cross-system workflows, and capabilities that update on the AI vendor's release cycle — measured in weeks, not annual product cycles.
- Best fit: firms that want to be on the leading edge of legal AI without compromising on where their data lives or how it's protected.
- Getting it right: be on the right plan with the right AI provider, make sure you're plugged into the relevant data sources, and invest in building and rolling out skills and training the team. In our experience, this is where firms save the most time — an MCP connection with a properly rolled-out AI toolset.
Which layer is right for your firm?
These aren't mutually exclusive — many firms run all three. A common path we recommend: start with the Legal Assistant to begin building your firm's AI muscle in a safe and easy environment, then go from there.
One caveat: the AI landscape is changing fast. NetDocuments is shipping new functionality often, and the leading AI providers are adding capability weekly — sometimes daily. The firms that get the most out of AI won't be the ones that picked perfectly on day one; they'll be the ones that built an AI competency and adapted as more and more use cases were unlocked.
At L2, we've helped over 50 law firms build their AI competency from the ground up. We help firms at every stage — from enabling the Legal Assistant to designing a secure MCP rollout. If you're weighing your next step, reach out.
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