Former lawyer Avaneesh Marwaha has led the global legal software specialist Litera for almost a decade. He tells The Brief about the latest developments in the sector, overcoming AI fatigue, and how a legal background provides great preparation for a corporate leadership role.

Avaneesh Marwaha, a former lawyer with experience in private practice and in-house, served as CEO of Litera from 2016 to 2022. He then transitioned to Chairman of the Board from 2022 to 2024, before returning to the CEO role in October 2024.

Litera’s comprehensive suite of AI-driven tools powers and unifies legal workflows across Legal Work & Drafting, Knowledge Management, Business Development, Legal Operations, and Security & Governance. The company’s core products focus on drafting documents, with tools that support creation, proofreading and comparison of documents, from negotiation all the way to completion of a matter, all within Microsoft 365.

I think the future of legal tech growth is going to be making partners much more productive, and that’s where we’re focusing a lot of our innovation and ideation today.

To complement these tools, Litera recently launched Lito, a new AI legal agent that acts as a virtual team member spanning both the practice and business of law, which the company describes as “game-changing”. Lito is integrated into the unified, AI-powered Litera One interface and is built to support legal workflows by aligning relevant capabilities with user intent, helping, in the company’s words, to “deliver informed outcomes through timely access to the right data in the right context”.

Lito includes a library of legal AI skills and integrates with the existing Litera ecosystem through a single interface embedded natively into legal professionals' most-used tools, with intelligent performance improvements over time as it learns.

Speaking to The Brief from his office in North Carolina, Marwaha says, “As a business, we have gone from being primarily focused on productivity tools for the first-through-fifth year attorney to now having a material impact on the things partners care about – business development, client engagement and client happiness.

“I think the future of legal tech growth is going to be making partners much more productive, and that’s where we’re focusing a lot of our innovation and ideation today.”

UK adoption

Lawyers in the UK tend to believe they are behind the curve when it comes to adopting technology. Marwaha, however, paints a very different picture.

He says, “For the last ten years, I have considered the UK legal tech market to be on the leading edge of innovation. I think the culture of UK legal firms is more inquisitive and there’s a desire to achieve really good client outcomes.

“The brand image of UK firms is very important to them and there is a natural tendency for lawyers to ask whether they could do whatever it is they are doing better. It is also a place where you are able to influence technology usage from the top down.”

In the UK, the firm wants to provide a good overall experience for the client, so we tend to see a lot more innovation in terms of the tools that are used.

He contrasts the UK, where firms are increasingly focused on building relationships with clients at a firm, as well as the individual lawyer, level with the US market, where “the partners really drive their book of business.”

“In the UK, the firm wants to provide a good overall experience for the client, so we tend to see a lot more innovation in terms of the tools that are used. There is also a lot more measurement of ROI, which then drives further adoption because it makes the business case clear,” he says.

“For the size of its market, the penetration for Litera’s tools is much greater in the UK than many other markets, including the US. I think that’s because the appetite for client service is so high among British firms.”

Overcoming AI fatigue

Artificial intelligence has, of course, been the topic of relentless debate in the legal sector, with commonly expressed views ranging from “a new dawn for productivity” to “Armageddon for juniors”. Although it can seem firms have been tripping over each other to embrace AI, Marwaha says much of this activity has not work out as hoped for.

He explains, “For the last two years, we have seen law firms piloting a lot of generative AI products from new start-ups. We are also seeing some fatigue as a result of all the testing they are involved in, the investments they have made, and products not living up to the promises made by their marketing.”

Key problems, he says, are that these products are not integrated into law firms’ established workflows and that the developers don’t understand the working practices of law firms and the rules and constraints under which they operate.

People are starting to say, ‘Let me get back to work, I don’t need to keep playing with your toys.’

By contrast, he continues, “At Litera, everything we have done with generative AI is native to Outlook or Word, or it’s a simple website. We are embedding it into our existing products to enhance them, rather than saying ‘here’s a net new product’, and we are seeing adoption at a much higher rate as a result because it’s already native to what they’re doing.”

“That, to me, is a pretty important vector of success. Can you make the job of a lawyer or partner easier because you’re not asking them to open new windows, you’re just embedding it into their workflows to give them good outcomes?

“I believe that our industry is one of those that’s most ripe for generative AI opportunities, but it’s still very early days. I get the sense that many firms are now getting tired of constantly piloting new vendors. People are starting to say, ‘Let me get back to work, I don’t need to keep playing with your toys.’

“We’ll see the enthusiasm come back, though, as we see new products come in that are embedded in the workflow.”

A moment to lean in

While adopting AI, and sorting the hype from the reality, can be daunting and frustrating in equal measure, Marwaha says lawyers – and everyone else in business – need to approach the latest developments with an open mind if they are to thrive in the long term.

You can’t just stick your head in the sand. This is a moment to lean in, get retooled, retrain and be inquisitive. 

He says, “Not everything works the first time you use it, the models keep improving, so give yourself the time and space to come back to it every 30, 60, 90 days, and you'll see the improvements over time.

“You can’t just stick your head in the sand. This is a moment to lean in, get retooled, retrain and be inquisitive. It’s also a moment to fail fast – make some mistakes, learn and move on.

“As I express to my employees and the lawyers we work with, don’t be afraid. I think this is an opportunity for our industry.

“With generative AI, we can all go back to being lawyers, which means being logical, being thoughtful, honouring and protecting the constitutions across the world, doing the job of a lawyer and not just managing documents all day.”

Empathy and passion

Marwaha’s background in law gives him an obvious advantage when it comes to understanding users of legal technology. He says, “We’re leveraging experience at Litera to really think about how we build software to be user-friendly, making sure it works in the ecosystem and drives the outcomes that attorneys worry about for their clients.

“Ultimately, we see ourselves making a material impact on the attorney-client relationship, not just on the attorney day-to-day.

“If I can get clients to have a better experience with their attorney, or be able to afford an attorney because their rates are so much cheaper, that to me feels like a win-win. I tell our team that our main goal is to help attorneys and partners file briefs on time, earn trust and file probate documents on time.

“We’re helping people start a business for the first time and supporting landlords and tenants in resolving their disputes. We’re actively involved in addressing these various challenges."

When you go to law school, you learn how to think. You learn how to evaluate data and have a point of view.

Beyond an instinctive understanding of clients’ needs and priorities, Marwaha says his background as a lawyer has served him well as a CEO, regardless of the sector in which he works.

“When you go to law school, you learn how to think. You learn how to evaluate data and have a point of view,” he explains.

“I think lawyers bring a lot of empathy to their clients and are extremely passionate about their clients – and, as a CEO, you have to have that same passion. You have to worry about your people and customers.

“You have a fiduciary duty to take care of your end users – that burden definitely feels real. I think that comes from being a lawyer.”

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