AI: Seven in 10 lawyers cite delivering work faster as a key benefit of AI
Four out of five lawyers are currently using or planning to use artificial intelligence (AI) tools, according to new research – but the impact on pricing remains unclear.
“The legal market is undergoing a significant transformation, with firms embracing AI to streamline operations and enhance service delivery while grappling with the challenges of maintaining accuracy, confidentiality, and ethical standards,” said the report, Fast law: why speed is the priority for lawyers using AI, by LexisNexis.
“Those firms that effectively navigate this transition and leverage AI’s capabilities while upholding professional integrity are likely to gain a competitive edge in the evolving legal landscape.”
It polled 803 lawyers and legal support workers across the UK and Ireland and found that the number using generative AI for work purposes has almost quadrupled in a little over a year, from 11% in a survey LexisNexis did in July 2023 to 41% in September 2024.
The percentage of lawyers planning to use AI also jumped, from 28% to 41%, while the proportion of lawyers with no plans to adopt AI dropped from 61% to 15%.
The report quoted Bhavisa Patel, director of legal technology at Eversheds Sutherland, highlighting areas such as legal research, document review, and contract analysis as the short to medium-term gains, “allowing lawyers to concentrate on complex and strategic work”.
In the medium to long term, the possibilities were vast, but the legal sector has yet to clearly identify the problems the technology would solve, she added.
Firms were encouraging all staff to use AI tools – at Clifford Chance, those not using them are asked why. At Charles Russell Speechlys, nearly half of the 1,200+ staff were using AI monthly, with the technology providing answers to tens of thousands of queries over the last couple of months.
Pawel Lipski, a partner at Bird & Bird, told researchers the firm was currently using AI as an additional research tool and basic text generator and to assist with reviewing documents. In the near future, however, he suggested it would need to redefine how to train junior lawyers.
“As generative AI tools become better in research and drafting, it may be very challenging for younger colleagues to get proper training,” he said. “It will certainly not be the kind of training I had.”
The survey also revealed 60% of firms have made at least one internal change to implement generative AI, the most common of which was offering an AI-powered product to staff, which rose from 15% in January 2024 to 36% by September 2024.
More were developing policies on the use of generative AI (11% to 24%) and providing AI-related training for staff (11% to 18%).
“As expected, large law firms are the most likely to have made a change to drive AI forward, at 78%,” the report noted.
There has also been a big rise in AI activity inside corporate in-house legal teams, jumping from 47% earlier this year to 74%, while at the bar it had quadrupled to 32% this year.
Users were pushing internal collaboration, with training sessions, use-case or prompt engineering workshops, and open forums all now common.
Seven in 10 lawyers cited delivering work faster as a key benefit of AI, followed by an improved client service (54%) and a competitive advantage (53%).
The majority (71%) of in-house teams expected their external counsel to use it, with changes to pricing structures expected to follow.
Uncertainty on this clearly remains, however – 39% of private practice lawyers now expect to adjust their billing practices due to AI, up from only 18% in January 2024, but equally only 17% think AI will end the billable hour model. Another 40% believe it will remain in place and 42% are uncertain about the impact.
While 77% of in-house counsel expect law firms to inform them when they are using generative AI, only 59% of firms believe their clients want to know.
Concerns over inaccurate or fabricated information from public-access generative AI platforms was a widespread concern, although 72% said they would feel more confident using one grounded in legal content sources with linked citations to verifiable authorities.
Gerrit Beckhaus, partner and co-head of Freshfields Lab at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, said the City giant used a host of technologies, processes and controls to proactively mitigate and minimise AI risks, including automated tools to manage and monitor the AI model lifecycle.
“The most important element of our approach, however, is the ‘lawyer in the loop’ principle and human centered legal AI,” he went on.
Despite this still being early days for AI, the survey showed that over-reliance on it was already a concern for half of lawyers.
Leave a Comment