The AI Wave in Legal Technology Will Be Felt in Real Estate

Artificial intelligence (AI) among legal professionals has hit an inflection point, and the real estate industry will feel the aftereffects.

In 2024 alone, legal tech startups raised a record $4.98 billion, much of it driven by the rise of AI copilots for lawyers. From automating contract analysis to generating first drafts of legal arguments, AI is now embedded in the workflows of firms that once resisted even cloud storage.

But what is especially interesting is how these changes ripple outward.

Efficiency lowers the barrier for startups

As legal services become faster and potentially more affordable, the gates to incorporation, fundraising, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property protection open wider. 

A new permission structure

Lawyers move slowly. So their growing comfort with AI implicitly gives permission to the industries they serve—including finance, healthcare, and real estate—to do the same. If lawyers are using AI copilots, why can’t others?

What happens when AI reaches the bench? 

As legal professionals become fluent in AI tools, will this change how AI-enabled businesses are evaluated in court? Will judges respect AI-generated evidence? Will contract disputes hinge on what an AI system understood?

The real estate industry is already feeling the shift 

From lease abstraction to due diligence, title review to zoning compliance, legal AI is quietly transforming how deals get done. Faster legal workflows mean faster closings. AI-enabled legal tools could help streamline entitlement processes, REIT structuring, and cross-border acquisitions. As legal costs drop, so does the friction for mid-market players and real estate technology startups to scale.

For an industry long tied to paperwork and procedural inertia, the downstream effects on transaction velocity and deal complexity are hard to overstate. When legal systems evolve, others are likely to follow suit.

Photo by Jonah Pettrich on Unsplash