[PatentTroll]

Lowering prices on mid-top tier legal work won't attract more customers, demand is largely inelastic. And their customers, who are fortune X00 types, don't really care about the cost. Oh, sure, they bitch and moan about bills and write op eds about how law firms are terrible and the billable hour is bad. But, in the end, like OP says, companies routinely go back to the same crop of biglaw firms. There is no such thing as 'disruption' in this industry, it never has been disrupted.

[SmellTheGlove]

The only disruption that occurred was 2008-2011 or so, when the economy tanked and demand for legal services took a fall. Except most biglaw partners realized their labor model could change without consequence - they laid off tons of associates and when the demand came back, they replaced them with contract attorneys, paralegals, some offshore, some software and a small number of actual associate attorneys. It turns out what their 1st and 2nd year associates were doing was largely replaceable at a much lower cost.

That's the opportunity - but it's really hard when instead of software they can go get an actual living, breathing attorney to work on contract for $25-35 an hour. More in California because of their OT laws, so maybe that's where the opportunity exists initially for disruption.

Critically, though, I don't think anyone's figured out how to charge billable hours for what your software does. Since you can still bill contract attorneys out at 3x what you pay them, it's tough going.