After triggering a trillion-dollar sell-off, Anthropic once again unveils its "legal weapon"! 12 plug-ins are deployed, accelerating the deployment of legal AI.

After sparking a global sell-off in technology stocks with a legal plugin in February this year, AI company Anthropic has once again increased its investment in the legal track. On Tuesday, Anthropic announced its largest legal workflow layout to date, releasing over 20 new integrations with existing law firm tools. This includes 12 AI plugins targeting specific roles such as lawyers, law school students, and legal professionals, covering the entire chain of scenarios from M&A due diligence to drafting employment handbooks. From "single breakthrough" to "full-line layout" Tuesday's product release transformed Anthropic's role from being a simple model provider hidden behind products like Harvey or Legora to being a direct participant in legal workflows. The 12 plugins released in this launch cover various niche legal scenarios, including "Commercial Legal Counsel" for reviewing vendor agreements, "Corporate Legal Counsel" focusing on M&A and corporate governance, "Regulatory Legal Counsel" for tracking regulatory changes and identifying compliance gaps, and "Law School Student" tools to assist lawyers in preparing for exams. Mark Pike, Deputy General Counsel at Anthropic, stated that since the tools went live in February, lawyers have become the most active professional group on the Claude platform, with a recent webinar focusing on Claude legal applications attracting over 20,000 legal professionals to sign up. These features will be available to paying customers through the AI intelligent body for office scenarios, "Claude Cowork," and third-party services developed based on Claude. It is worth noting that Anthropic also announced deep integrations with DocuSign, Thomson Reuters Westlaw database, and even legal AI competitor Harvey, trying to embed its technology into law firms' daily core workflows. This release is not Anthropic's first appearance in the legal field. In February of this year, the company quietly launched the Claude Cowork legal plugin, which covered contract reviews and legal briefing writing, but unexpectedly caused a major upheaval in global capital markets. On that day, legal software and data service companies were hit hard: Thomson Reuters shares plummeted by over 15%, marking the largest single-day drop in its history; LexisNexis' parent company RELX fell by 14%. The iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF tracking the tech software sector saw an intra-day drop of over 14% for the year, marking its worst single-month performance since 2008. Market panic then spread from the legal software sector to the entire software, semiconductor, AI infrastructure, and even private credit sectors, with the market value of related US stocks evaporating by over $1 trillion that week. Although the market generally believes that the sell-off was "overreacting," this event deeply revealed investors' fundamental anxiety about AI disrupting traditional software business models. Legal AI track heats up with challenges and prospects coexisting For Anthropic, this release has significant commercial value. The company disclosed that law has become the largest "super user" professional category in its Cowork platform. Tuesday's product release transformed Anthropic's role from being a simple model provider hidden behind products like Harvey or Legora to being a direct participant in legal workflows. Anthropic's entry into the field is pushing the competition in the legal tech sector to new heights. Several heavyweight players have emerged in this track. Valued at $11 billion, Harvey raised nearly $1 billion in just over a year, claiming to have around 100,000 lawyer users in about 1,300 institutions globally. Legora from Sweden closely follows with a valuation of $5.6 billion, covering over 1,000 law firms and legal teams in more than 50 markets worldwide. Both of these companies are built on top of large models, making them both customers and competitors of Anthropic to some extent. Meanwhile, industry giants are also actively seeking change. Thomson Reuters is integrating its AI platform CoCounsel with Claude to maintain its competitive edge in the era of large models. According to industry analysis, funding in the legal tech industry reached $2.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026, with Relativity, Harvey, and Legora dominating 63% of the industry. Capital is flocking to the legal AI sector at an unprecedented speed. However, the full penetration of AI into the legal industry still faces multiple challenges. A survey from Northwestern University in the US showed that over 60% of judges have used at least one AI tool in their judicial work, and AI "illusions" creating false cases could have serious consequences in practical legal settings. Some lawyers testing the tool found that it grabbed content from Wikipedia, sparking a new round of questioning about the reliability of general large models in high-risk legal scenarios. Anthropic revealed earlier that its iterative model Mythos has shown excellent capabilities in tasks such as network attacks and network security, and the company has limited this model to a few trusted partners. Furthermore, industry participants also face uncertainty from tech giants. Nvidia has invested in multiple model vendors including Anthropic and OpenAI, and for legal AI companies, the holders of the underlying large models they rely on could become direct competitors at any time. Nevertheless, the heat from capital and the market clearly indicates that the intersection of law and AI is gradually moving from concept validation to industrial deployment. For investors, Anthropic's ramping up of the legal track is not only a practical exercise in vertical industry penetration but also an indispensable piece of its pre-IPO commercial narrative. Valuation competition among giants and IPO countdown On the other end of the commercial narrative, Anthropic's valuation curve is equally astonishing. Following a Series G round in February 2026 with a valuation of $380 billion and raising $30 billion, the company is reportedly in talks for a new round of at least $30 billion, with a pre-investment valuation surpassing $900 billion, approaching the trillion-dollar mark. There are reports that Anthropic may launch an IPO as early as October this year, potentially surpassing OpenAI's latest valuation of around $852 billion. This comprehensive upgrade of legal tools is a crucial part of Anthropic's commercial deployment. According to industry analysis, foundational model providers are bypassing traditional software intermediaries to directly target professional users, putting immense pressure on the entire enterprise software market.