Since our last survey in August 2024, AI adoption figures have stayed relatively flat. The percentage of in-house lawyers using generative AI climbed from 57% to 72%, while lawyers intending to use AI dropped from 32% to 25%. The percentage of lawyers with no plans to adopt AI dropped from 10% to 3%.

97% of in-house lawyers are either using or planning to use generative AI

One solicitor and in-house senior advisor told us investing in AI innovation is a no brainer.

The key drivers to using generative AI, according to the survey, are delivering work faster (94%), offering a better service to stakeholders (63%), and having a competitive advantage (53%).

Three-quarters of lawyers say the top benefit of generative AI is working faster

A Group General Counsel at an asset-based lender in Bristol says there's a strong need to focus on using technology to enhance labour intensive but low value work.

Despite these very positive steps forward, our survey found many are growing frustrated with the speed at which their organisation is moving. Nearly half of in-house lawyers feel their organisation is slow to act when implementing new technology.

In-house teams have been relatively quick to evaluate, implement and integrate AI into their services, but lawyers are eager for their organisations to continue pushing for greater AI-powered innovation. And faster.

Our survey found only 14% of in-house lawyers said their legal team is fast or very fast at implementing new technology, especially AI. Instead, nearing half (53%) believe their legal team is slow or very slow.

53% said their legal team is slow or very slow at implementing new technology

Responding to change and making use of data and analytics are also areas in need of greater innovation. Making use of data and analytics (42%) and responding to change (31%) were also listed as slow or very slow.

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When asked what would encourage lawyers to use AI more often, two-thirds (64%) said more training, while 45% said better communication around use guidelines. Other commonly expressed answers were for easier integration with existing workflows (43%), and a desire to hear more use cases from colleagues (40%).

Two-thirds (64%) of in-house lawyers said they'd use AI more if they had training

The innovation activities of a legal department should closely align with the organisation's current business goals, says Nick West, Chief Strategy Officer at Mishcon de Reya.

How in-house teams are implementing AI

The top steps in-house teams have taken to implement AI include developing generative AI policies (48%), offering an AI-powered product to staff (44%), and training staff to use AI (28%).

Half of in-house teams have launched an AI policy

Ensuring AI adoption isn’t just about initial enthusiasm; it requires long-term leadership and reinforcement.

When looking to innovate, in-house teams should prioritise immediate value, says Tony Randle, Partner, Client Tech & Service Improvement at Shoosmiths.

Randle provided an example. "We identified that building legal tech, including AI, into legal workflows common to most of our practice areas will deliver the greatest positive benefits."

With nearly all in-house lawyers either using or planning to use AI, departments must move quickly beyond basic experimentation. The real differentiator will not be whether departments adopt AI, but how effectively they embed and measure it.

Failing to act on AI isn’t just a missed opportunity, it’s a serious business risk. Departments that lag behind won’t just lose efficiency. They’ll lose their workforce.

The data suggests we are at a tipping point. Legal professionals recognise the value of AI, but if they feel their organisations are holding them back from working more efficiently, they may look elsewhere for opportunities. Departments that fail to invest in AI risk not only inefficiency but losing their workforce.

Some expressed concern over the impact that slow or no AI investment would have on their careers. More than a third (38%) said their career would be negatively impacted if their organisation failed to embrace AI, while 19% said they would consider leaving if their organisation failed to embrace AI.

19% of in-house lawyers said they would consider leaving if their organisation didn't adequately invest in AI

A Group General Counsel at an asset-based lender says:

This isn't solely about your people and their attitudes towards upskilling. The attractiveness of a workplace is now heavily influenced by the tech tools they have invested in.

If the talent wars have shown us anything, it is that the younger generation of lawyers are just as hungry as previous generations for growth and career development, and they see AI is the catalyst to that growth.

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The top benefit of generative AI is increased efficiency, which has a far-reaching knock-on effect on most aspects of a legal department.

But attributing a precise metric to time saved, risk reduced, or the impact on employees can be a challenge.

More than a third (39%) of in-house respondents said their organisation is currently measuring for time savings, while one-fifth (28%) said they are measuring accuracy of outputs. Others are looking at employee feedback (24%) and cost savings (29%). Only a third (34%) said they aren't measuring any of these obvious metrics, significantly lower than when looking at the legal sector as a whole (50%).

A third of in-house lawyers say their organisation isn't using any of the obvious success metrics

One senior corporate counsel said their organisation measures the effectiveness of AI tools by evaluating their impact on efficiency, accuracy, and compliance.

"Key metrics include time-saved on repetitive tasks, such as contract review or document analysis, error reduction rates compared to manual processes, and alignment with regulatory and ethical standards."

They also pointed out metrics like speed in contract lifecycle management, accuracy in risk identification, and user satisfaction are particularly critical.

Measuring the ROI on AI investment, at this stage, is a real challenge for all across the board.

"Law firms are yet to publish hard data on the level of efficiency gained through using new AI tools because getting tools to a point of adoption where real value can be measured has been a challenge," says Hodgson from Linklaters

This would mean measuring efficiency, accuracy and reliability, data privacy, explainability and interpretability, risks of bias, quality of output, the ability to scale and the lawyer experience, all in real-time, she says.

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An obvious metric is whether a tool can speed up work, says Deborah Finkler from Slaughter and May.

The opportunities to create benefits from AI at the moment are huge, and the key point about measurement is to ensure the method and target of measurement support the use case and the underlying objectives, says Mark Smith, Director of Strategic Markets at LexisNexis.

Unsurprisingly, many lawyers expressed concerns about the perceived risks of using AI. Hallucinations were the top concern (79%), followed by leaking confidential data (63%) and individuals becoming too reliant on AI (42%).

The end goal, however, shouldn't be 100% accuracy for everything, says West from Mishcon de Reya.

Interestingly, three-quarters (78%) of in-house respondents said they would be somewhat or completely confident using AI-powered tools grounded in legal content sources.

Almost three-quarters of UK lawyers would be more confident using AI tools grounded in legal content sources