They solve different problems, so this guide treats them separately and then compares them. The common question for a firm is the same: what do you let an agent answer, from which sources, and when must a lawyer step in?
August for Agents: a legal service an agent can call
In its announcement, August describes a client's agent, say a procurement agent renewing a vendor agreement, that hits a clause it can't safely resolve. Instead of guessing or stopping, it sends the clause and the proposed action to a service run by the company's law firm. The firm's agent checks the agreement against the firm's playbook and returns a sourced answer if the issue is within its mandate. If the question requires judgment, the matter goes to a lawyer.
The post says the client's system receives a usable answer along with a record of what was asked, what sources were consulted and what happened next. It also says the firm's agents run on August, the lawyers stay responsible for the legal work, and August provides the infrastructure that makes the service available, governed and auditable.
August lists four controls it designs around: scoped authority (only approved tools, recipients and data sources), verifiable work (statements tied to supporting documents, actions recorded), deliberate escalation (the firm decides which questions an agent may answer) and governed access (identity, permissions and retention set outside the model).
August is explicit about what it is not: "not a substitute law firm," and it does not ask a client to trust an anonymous answer from the open internet. It also says questions of privilege, identity and authority need care, and that calling something an "agent" conversation does not determine whether it is privileged.
Artificial Lawyer's coverage adds an observation that is not in August's post: the same pattern could route to an in-house team, not only to an outside firm. It also notes that August describes firms packaging repeatable work as a service with defined inputs, a clear scope and a fixed price. August's separate August Products announcement of October 21 covers fixed-fee, client-facing services built by firms; it is a different product.
Draftwise Ontonomi: the firm's knowledge as an owned asset
Draftwise first announced Legal Ontology on August 24, 2026. Its release says that unlike search, which retrieves language from individual documents, a legal ontology captures the relationships between the things documents describe: clients, agreements, clauses, rights, obligations and negotiated positions. The example it gives is a fund practice identifying which limited partners hold a particular right, tracing how it was negotiated and amended, and checking whether extending it to another LP could create obligations elsewhere.
On September 29, 2026, Draftwise introduced Ontonomi as a standalone identity for that platform, with Ropes & Gray as founding legal ontology partner. Per the release, Ropes & Gray will deploy it in its private funds practice, structuring fund formation work including partnership agreements, side letters and MFN provisions, as the first application of a broader partnership.
Draftwise states that Ontonomi is SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and GDPR compliant, that ethical walls are enforced on every query, and that access mirrors a firm's existing document management permissions. It also says the platform does not use a firm's data to train a tool sold to another firm. These are Draftwise's statements.
One limit on our reading: Ropes & Gray's own page about the partnership returned a 403 to our fetch. Everything about the partnership here comes from Draftwise's release, not from the firm.
How they differ
| August for Agents | Draftwise Ontonomi | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A channel: a firm's supervised legal service that a client's agent can call | A knowledge layer: a firm's deals, clients and positions modeled as an ontology |
| Who the user is | The client's AI agent, with a lawyer behind it | The firm's lawyers and AI working inside the firm |
| Where the firm's knowledge lives | In the firm's playbooks and materials the firm authorizes for each service | In a structured model of the firm's own documents and history |
| Escalation | The firm decides which questions an agent answers and which go to a lawyer | Not described in the release; access follows document management permissions |
| Announced | September 23, 2026 | August 24, 2026 (Legal Ontology); September 29, 2026 (Ontonomi) |
| Source we read | August's own blog post | Draftwise's own two press releases |
They could, in principle, sit in the same stack: an ontology as a source behind a service an agent calls. Neither company says it does that, and we haven't seen it.
Questions to ask before a pilot
- Which questions may an agent answer without a lawyer, and who signs off on that list?
- Which sources can the service use, and can you see the record of what it consulted?
- How are identity and authority checked when an agent, not a person, makes the request?
- How do your engagement terms treat privilege and confidentiality for an agent's request?
- For an ontology: who owns the model, can you export it, and what happens to it if you leave?
- How do ethical walls work when an agent asks, not a lawyer?
What this connects to on our site
These launches sit next to the plumbing we already cover. Legal AI MCP connectors for Harvey, Legora and iManage and what MCP means for legal teams explain how tools connect. AI agent permissions in law firms covers the scoping problem August describes. Agent-to-agent transactions and attorney supervision and should firms bill for AI-agent-supervised work cover the supervision and billing side. For building your own agents, see the Harvey agent builder guide.
Sources
- August: Your Clients' Agents Need a Lawyer, Sept. 23, 2026 (read October 22, 2026) (Vendor announcement)
- August: Introducing August Products, Oct. 21, 2026 (read October 22, 2026) (Vendor announcement)
- Artificial Lawyer: With August, a company's agents ask lawyers for help, Sept. 29, 2026 (Trade press; secondary)
- Draftwise: Legal Ontology platform announcement, Aug. 24, 2026 (read October 22, 2026) (Vendor press release)
- Draftwise: Introduces Ontonomi with Ropes & Gray, Sept. 29, 2026 (read October 22, 2026) (Vendor press release; the Ropes & Gray page returned 403 and was not read)
Questions and answers
What is August for Agents?
August for Agents, launched September 23, 2026, lets a company's AI agent send a legal question to a service built and supervised by the company's own law firm. August says the firm's agent answers if the issue is within its mandate and otherwise routes it to a lawyer, and that the firm stays responsible for the advice.
What is Draftwise Ontonomi?
Ontonomi is the standalone name Draftwise gave on September 29, 2026 to its legal ontology platform, first announced August 24. It models the relationships between a firm's clients, agreements, clauses, rights and negotiated positions so lawyers and AI can reason across the firm's own history.
Is Ropes & Gray using Ontonomi?
Draftwise's release says Ropes & Gray is the founding legal ontology partner and will deploy it in its private funds practice. We could not read the firm's own page, which returned a 403, so this rests on Draftwise's announcement.
Can an AI agent give legal advice on its own?
August's own position is that it should not: its service is built so the firm's lawyers define what an agent may answer, and questions needing judgment go to a lawyer. Whether an agent's exchange is privileged depends on its purpose, participants and jurisdiction, as August itself says.
Do these launches mean law firms will earn from AI agents?
August says firms can package repeatable work as a service, and Artificial Lawyer calls the model a way to drive work to law firms. Neither shows results yet, and we found no customer figures in the announcements, so treat the revenue case as a claim to test.
Operational information, not legal advice. Descriptions are each company's own statements, read October 22, 2026; we did not test any product. Prices and availability change; check the vendor before you decide.