Align Research Launches Fixed-$100 Legal Research — A Direct Workflow Offer for Mid-Sized Firms

Align Research launched on August 3 with a pricing model that addresses the most common mid-sized firm objection to AI legal research: subscription lock-in and uncertain per-seat costs. At $100 per research job, no subscription, no seat minimum, and three jobs per month permanently free, Align's architecture is designed for firms that want to evaluate AI research quality on real matters before committing to an enterprise contract. The product retrieves real court opinions — it does not generate — making hallucination architecturally impossible: the output is a curated set of cases with marked passages, delivered by email. It is already trusted by Am Law 100 firms and is SOC 2 Type II certified. For mid-sized firm litigation and research practices, this is an immediately actionable capability test: assign three real research questions at zero cost, evaluate output quality against current associate research, and make a commercial decision based on actual matter performance rather than a vendor demo. The $100 per-job pricing also enables pay-as-you-go deployment for firms that do not have the volume to justify an enterprise research platform, and for specific practice areas where research intensity is seasonal or project-based.