A Spellbook alternative
that also researches the law.
Spellbook is a contract review and drafting tool that lives inside Microsoft Word. Gotham covers contracts too, and adds legal research across Indian law and 90+ other countries, litigation work and filing in the same workspace.
The short answer
Choose Gotham if you are a firm or legal team of any size, including a large multi-office firm, and you want contracts, research, disputes and filing in one workspace, with enterprise controls and your data stored in your own country.
Stay with Spellbook if your work is almost all contracts, your lawyers never want to leave Word, and you want to start today with a free trial.
Gotham vs Spellbook, side by side
| What to compare | Gotham | Spellbook |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A legal operating system: research, drafting, review and filing in one workspace. | AI contract review and drafting, mainly inside Microsoft Word. |
| Who it is for | Law firms of every size, from chambers to large multi-office firms, and in-house legal teams. Built India first, for US, UK and cross-border work too. | In-house teams and law firms doing transactional work. Spellbook says more than 5,000 teams in 80+ countries use it. |
| Legal research | Gotham AI answers with citations to the paragraph. An agentic citator shows how later judgments treated each point of a case. Deep Research with a plan you approve. 365 million Indian legal documents: the Supreme Court, all 25 High Courts, tribunals and regulators. Plus official court, legislation, regulator and tax sources from 90+ countries and territories, including US and UK case law and legislation. | Ask answers questions with citations from free public databases in the US, Canada, the UK and the EU, and the LII network. |
| Indian law | Built India first: Indian courts, tribunals, regulators and statutes, with Indian court formats. | Its published source list names no Indian court, India Code or Indian law reporter. |
| Contract review and drafting | Tabular Review across a whole data room, and contract review against your firm's playbook. Drafting in court formats, redlines and a Word add-in, on Gotham Pro. | Review, Draft, Playbooks and Benchmarks in Word. Redlines appear under your own name. |
| Many documents at once | Tabular Review: ask the same questions of every document in a data room and see each answer next to its source. | Associate, an agent that works across document sets, with exportable Review Tables. |
| Litigation and filing | Matters, chronologies, case tracking by CNR, a hearing diary, eSign and e-stamp in the same workspace. | Not a focus. Spellbook is built for transactional work. |
| Citator | An agentic citator built on a legal ontology: treatment point by point (followed, distinguished, doubted, overruled, referred to a larger bench), with the passage, and bench strength applied. | Not described. Ask answers questions with citations to public sources. |
| Security and data location | SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001. Data stored in your own country. Never used to train AI. SSO, SAML and SCIM. | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR. Zero data retention with OpenAI and Anthropic. Data stored in Canada and the US. |
| Pricing | Junior for one lawyer: ₹499 a month or ₹3,999 a year plus GST in India; $9 a month or $79 a year elsewhere. Gotham Pro: priced with your firm. | Per seat. Prices are not published; you book a demo for a quote. |
| Trying it | Searching and reading judgments and Acts, and opening the original court PDF, are free with an account. Firms can run a two-week pilot on one live matter. | A 7-day free trial for law firms. Free for academic institutions. |
Products change often. Ask both vendors to show each point in a live demo, and put anything important in the contract.
Why teams choose Gotham
An agentic citator for Indian law
India is the most complicated jurisdiction to get right. Gotham's legal ontology records each holding, bench and statute version. Its agents read every later judgment that cites a case and show, point by point and with the passage, whether it was followed, distinguished, doubted or overruled.
Research and contracts in one place
Gotham answers legal questions from 365 million Indian legal documents plus the law of 90+ countries, with every citation linked to the paragraph, then lets you draft and review in the same workspace.
Disputes as well as deals
Matters, chronologies, case tracking by CNR, court-format drafting, eSign and e-stamp sit next to contract review, so litigation and transactional teams share one tool.
Your data stays in your country
Gotham stores your data in your own country, India for Indian customers, and never uses it to train AI.
Built for large firms
Shared matters, roles and ethical walls. SSO, SAML and SCIM. Firm workflows, playbooks and a library of agent skills. SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and data stored in your own country. Gotham Pro is priced with your firm.
What Spellbook does well
It lives inside Word
Review, drafting, playbooks and benchmarks all run in the Word add-in, and redlines appear under your name. If your lawyers never want to leave Word, that matters.
Market benchmarks
Spellbook compares your terms against thousands of similar agreements, filtered by jurisdiction and deal type, and offers a library of more than 2,000 standards.
A fast, self-serve start
Any lawyer can start a 7-day free trial without a call, and academic institutions get free access.
How to test both fairly
- Pick one real, bounded piece of work, not a demo question.
- Give both products the same documents and the same question.
- Agree beforehand what a good answer needs: the right authorities, pinpoint citations, the right format.
- Have a qualified lawyer check every answer against the source.
- Time the corrections, not just the first draft.
- Check permissions, data deletion, exports and audit logs as well as output quality.
Use one of your own contracts with an Indian law question in it, for example stamp duty or enforceability under the Indian Contract Act, and check whether each answer cites an Indian source.
Which one should you pick?
Pick Gotham if
- You also research case law or run disputes.
- Indian law matters to your practice.
- You need enterprise controls and data stored in your own country.
- You want research, review, drafting and filing in one place.
Stay with Spellbook if
- Your work is almost all contracts.
- Your lawyers want to stay inside Word.
- You want a free trial today without a sales call.
- Market benchmarks for deal terms matter to you.
Questions
Does Spellbook cover Indian law?
Spellbook says it serves law firms in over 80 countries. The legal sources it publishes for its Ask feature do not name an Indian court, India Code or an Indian law reporter. Gotham is built India first, with 365 million Indian legal documents.
Where does Spellbook store data?
Spellbook's security page says it uses cloud providers with data centres in Canada and the US. Gotham stores data in the customer's own country, India for Indian customers.
How much does Spellbook cost?
Spellbook prices per seat and does not publish its prices. It offers a 7-day free trial. Gotham Junior has a published price: ₹499 a month in India or $9 a month elsewhere.
Does Gotham work in Microsoft Word?
Yes. Gotham Pro includes a Word add-in for drafting and redlines, alongside research and review in the Gotham workspace.
Sources and methodology
Checked 4 October 2026. Facts about Spellbook come from the pages below. Facts about Gotham come from Gotham’s own product, pricing and security pages.
- Spellbook home page
- Spellbook pricing
- Spellbook security
- Spellbook Ask (legal research)
- Spellbook legal data sources
- Spellbook Associate
- Spellbook market benchmarks
- Spellbook about
- Gotham security, corpus, workflows and pricing
More comparisons: all Gotham comparisons.
See it on your own work.
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