Legal teams are adopting AI faster than the profession is establishing new rules around it. Thomson Reuters’ 2026 AI in Professional Services Report found that 41% of law firms and 47% of corporate legal departments now actively use generative AI, up from 28% and 23%, respectively, a year earlier.
That rapid adoption is also bringing greater scrutiny. In August, the UK’s Solicitors Regulation Authority issued a warning after receiving 42 reports of AI-related misconduct, including a High Court case involving fabricated citations.
The tension between faster processing and greater oversight is particularly visible in document review. Legal matters can generate thousands or even millions of files containing privileged communications, personal information, intellectual property and other sensitive data.
Keeping sensitive legal data under control
This is the problem Altorney is targeting. Founded by brothers Shimmy and Rachi Messing, the legal technology company has developed MARC, an AI system designed to operate within a customer’s own cloud environment rather than requiring sensitive legal data to be moved to a third-party platform.
MARC can assist with identifying responsiveness, privilege, PII, PHI and issue coding, while providing explanations and validation around AI-assisted classifications.
The opportunity is significant. IMARC Group estimates that the global eDiscovery market was worth around $15.4 billion in 2025 and could reach $28.5 billion by 2034 as data volumes and regulatory requirements continue to increase.
That creates a growing need for tools that can process large volumes of information without removing legal teams from the review process or compromising control over the data.
Bringing AI into the legal workflow
Altorney says one Fortune 500 customer tested MARC on a matter involving approximately 200,000 documents and reported a 62% reduction in review costs, a 78% reduction in hosting costs and an 86% faster turnaround.
For Messing, however, the value of AI is not simply about processing documents faster.
“Legal matters often create two constraints at once: more information than a team can analyze efficiently and more work than the available team can execute.”
That distinction is central to Altorney’s approach. Rather than positioning AI as a replacement for legal professionals, the company is using it to handle part of the information-heavy work so attorneys and reviewers can focus on material that requires human judgment.
The company also operates a legal talent platform that allows law firms, litigation service providers and corporate legal departments to source and manage vetted document reviewers.
“Each can be used independently, or together as one intelligence-and-execution system,” Messing said.
Altorney has also added ISO/IEC 27001 certification to its existing SOC 2 Type II compliance, reflecting the security requirements that come with deploying AI in legal environments.
For an industry where an incorrect classification can have consequences well beyond an inefficient workflow, trust may ultimately determine how deeply AI becomes embedded in legal operations.
The shift, then, may not be about replacing lawyers. It may be about changing where their time goes: less spent searching through enormous volumes of documents, and more spent understanding what the information means for the case.
Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.
