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Wordsmith runs the work that stays in-house. PERSUIT prices what that work was worth. For the first time, in-house legal can show the business a number for the work it keeps, not just invoices for the work it sends out.
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Every in-house legal team makes the same decision hundreds of times a year. Does this piece of work stay in-house, or does it go to a firm? Most teams make that call on instinct, and find out what it costs when the invoice arrives.
Today PERSUIT and Wordsmith AI are announcing a partnership that puts evidence on both sides of that decision. Wordsmith is the system of action for the work in-house teams keep and complete themselves. PERSUIT is the system of intelligence for the work that goes to external providers, covering how it is scoped, sourced, priced, and paid. Connected, they let a legal leader see the real cost and capacity of both paths before choosing one, instead of reconstructing it afterwards.
This matters more now than it did two years ago. AI has changed what an in-house team can absorb, which means the make-or-buy line has moved and nobody has repriced it. The teams getting this right are not simply sending less work out. They are sending the right work out, properly scoped, to the providers best suited to it, at a price they can defend to a CFO. What none of them can do yet is put a number on the work they kept.
“Wordsmith helps us manage more work internally, while PERSUIT helps ensure the work we send to external counsel delivers value. Historically, those have been separate decisions. Connecting the two should give legal teams like ours a more joined-up view of what work is best kept in-house and what is best outsourced.” said Bruce Breckenridge, General Counsel at BT Group.
"For twenty years in-house legal has been measured by what it spends, never by what it delivers. Half the value a legal team creates is the work it decided not to send out, and nobody could ever put a number on it. Now we can, because we have ten years of data on what that work costs in the market. Wordsmith does the work. We price it. That is the difference between walking into a board meeting with a budget and walking in with a return." said Jim Delkousis, CEO and Founder of PERSUIT.
“Outside counsel decisions get made by default, not by design. Most legal teams don't have a front door for incoming work, so requests defaulted outside. Wordsmith is that front door: the capacity to take in more of what legal faces. We give legal teams the context to understand what the business actually needs, so they know what to send externally. PERSUIT prices what goes out. That's the difference between a business that waits on legal, and one that moves faster because of it.” says Ross McNairn, CEO and co-founder of Wordsmith.
The integration connects the two platforms across the life of a legal request. Wordsmith captures requests from across the business via email, Slack and Teams and turns them into structured legal work, resolving what it can against approved playbooks, for example, and bringing in a lawyer, with the groundwork done, when a matter needs judgment.
When a matter is a candidate for outside counsel, PERSUIT data informs the decision at the point it is made. Teams see benchmark pricing for the matter type and jurisdiction, the providers best placed to run it, and the fee structures comparable work has been priced on. From there they can open a direct engagement or a competitive request through PERSUIT. Persi by PERSUIT, the AI layer running across the PERSUIT workflow, supplies the commercial intelligence behind those answers.
Work that stays inside stays managed in Wordsmith. Work that goes out is managed in PERSUIT. For the first time, both sit in one connected picture.
Putting a value on the work that stays in-house
When Wordsmith resolves a matter inside the business, PERSUIT can price what that matter would have cost externally, drawn from comparable proposals for the same matter type and jurisdiction. The output is a dollar figure attached to work that has never carried one.
PERSUIT prices only work with genuine external comparables in its data, so the figure reflects a market price that firms actually quoted, not an assumed rate.
The same intelligence applies to any platform that changes where legal work gets done. Wordsmith is the first platform for in-house legal to have its efficiency claims priced against real market data, not just adoption metrics. PERSUIT is opening the same capability to others.
PERSUIT is the platform many of the world’s largest companies use to source, price and manage external legal spend, including SAP, IBM, BT Group, Heineken, UBS and Mastercard. Across more than $25 billion of real proposal data, teams running a first competitive process see average savings of 26% per matter. SAP reached a three-year savings target in nine months.
Wordsmith serves more than 500 in-house teams, including BT, Canva, Starling Bank, Sage and the Financial Times, and has raised more than $100 million to date. Revenue has grown more than 14x in the past year. A survey of Wordsmith customers found in-house teams reduced external counsel spend by more than 25% on average after adopting the platform. At Belron, VP Legal Operations Jessica Vander Ploeg reports over $400,000 saved in external counsel spend in the first three months.
PERSUIT is the system of intelligence for external legal spend. Five connected workflows, covering intake and routing, sourcing and scope, firm, panel and rate, unbilled spend management, and eBilling, with Persi by PERSUIT running across all of them as an AI layer. Underneath sits ten years of pricing intelligence: more than $25 billion of proposal data across 16,000 matters and 50,000 law firm proposals. Headquartered in New York, PERSUIT works with hundreds of enterprise legal teams and more than 4,800 law firms, including 100% of the AmLaw 200 and Global 200. Learn more at persuit.com.
Wordsmith is the system of action for in-house legal. It codifies a legal team’s judgment and carries work from request to resolution: taking in requests from across the business, routing them with context, resolving routine work with AI agents and approved playbooks, bringing in lawyers when judgement is needed, and recording every step as it happens. Wordsmith is backed by Index Ventures, Highland Europe, General Catalyst, Intact Private Capital and FT Ventures, has raised more than $100 million to date, and serves more than 500 in-house teams. Learn more at wordsmith.ai.
PERSUIT: andrew.nester@persuit.com
Wordsmith AI: josef@tellny.com
