AI: Lawyers more likely to say AI could be used in the law than should be
The proportion of law firms using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has almost doubled, new research has found.
Meanwhile, a separate study of AI in mergers and acquisitions has found that more than eight out of 10 lawyers plan to use GenAI in the next one to two years.
Researchers from the Thomson Reuters Institute found that the percentage of law firms using GenAI was 26%, compared to 14% a year earlier.
Nor was such a large increase confined to the law, with the proportion of tax, accounting and audit firms using GenAI growing at an even faster rate, from 8% to 21%.
Researchers based the report Generative AI in professional services on responses from 1,702 professionals across the world, of whom 12% were from the UK.
The proportion of professionals describing themselves as ‘hesitant’ about GenAI fell to just over a quarter (26%) this year from 35% in 2024, while the proportion describing themselves as ‘excited’ rose six percentage points to 27% and ‘hopeful’ five points to 28%.
Almost nine out of 10 lawyers and accountants said GenAI could be applied to their industry, but notably fewer said it should be – 59% of lawyers were in favour of adoption, up from 51% last year, compared to 71% of accountants, up from 52%.
The top reasons why professionals believed GenAI should be adopted were helping with or automating routine tasks, saving time, increasing efficiency while improving quality, and saving on costs.
Those who opposed adoption were concerned about GenAI’s reliability and accuracy, as well as the ‘lack of human touch and intuition’ and ‘nuanced thinking’. The potential for ‘limitations and biases’ and ‘need for human oversight or regulation’ were also mentioned.
The top uses of GenAI in the legal sector were document review, legal research, document summarisation, brief or memo drafting, and contract drafting. It was also used for correspondence drafting and knowledge management.
Only a fifth of professionals said their organisation was measuring the return on investment of GenAI tools.
Meanwhile, a separate study of AI in M&As has found that 84% of lawyers plan to use GenAI in their practice over the two years, with contract drafting and ‘organisation’ the most popular uses. Larger firms also saw a role for negotiating and ‘closing’ a deal, while smaller ones looked to due diligence.
Researchers from technology firm Litera and Wakefield Research, in collaboration with the American Bar Association’s technology in M&A subcommittee, surveyed 300 legal professionals at law firms in the USA, UK, and Canada, for the report M&A in the AI era: Future trends in deal-making tech.
Just over half of M&A engagements were completed using AI-based technologies, while three quarters (77%) of lawyers described AI as “highly important” to their practices.
Nine out of 10 (91%) said they believed that the majority of M&A engagements would be completed using AI-based technologies within the next 10 years – indeed, 59% said they had clients asking about using specific AI technologies or products in their M&A due diligence on a regular basis.
Researchers said this was “a particularly common occurrence” in the UK, where seven out of 10 reported it.
Daniel Rosenberg, partner at Charles Russell Speechlys and chair of the American Bar Association’s technology in M&A subcommittee, commented: “It is no surprise that clients are increasingly asking lawyers to deploy AI in their transactions in order to leverage the significant efficiencies AI can generate.
“Those efficiencies are potentially so significant that lawyers should be more worried when their clients are not asking these questions – those clients are potentially going to be talking to lawyers who can offer these efficiencies on their own initiative.”
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