Over a quarter of lawyers regularly using AI

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By Rhys Duncan on

2

For research, drafting and comms


More than a quarter of legal professionals are using AI tools regularly, new research has found.

The research, compiled by LexisNexis, found that 26% of legal professionals are now using generative AI tools in their work at least once a month.

Of those surveyed, 91% thought that AI could be used to assist with drafting, 90% saw a use in researching matters, and 73% saw the new tech as a way to make communication more efficient.

The report, which attracted responses from 1,200 lawyers, also notes that 62% of law firms have made changes to their daily operations because of AI. These include running specialist training for staff, hiring AI experts, developing policies for the use and limits of tech, and providing AI products for lawyers to use.

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Survey respondents were also asked to share their concerns with new tools. Worry over “hallucinations” was prevalent, 57% of those surveyed seeing this as a problem, as were security risks, cited by 55%.

Commenting on the use of AI within the legal profession, partner and chief innovation officer at Baker McKenzie, Ben Allgrove, said:

“It [AI] will change how we practice law. One immediate area of focus is on how we might use it to improve the productivity of our people, both our lawyers and our business professionals. While there are, of course, quality and risk issues that need to be solved, we see opportunities across our business to do that.”

The SRA offered guidance on the use of AI to lawyers at the end of last year, citing both its ability to boost efficiency and reduce costs, and potential risks to privacy and issues of inaccurate information.

2 Comments

CC TS

There is nothing wrong with using it supplementary to your actual work. It can be useful in detecting mistakes and polishing up language to an extent. But as a sole use for doing your work, it’s abysmal. No respectable solicitor should be using this as a sole brain for their legal work

Anonymous

Using AI could be helpful to improve the way you to phrase something and to identify grammar/spelling mistakes. However, I don’t think that you should use it to research case law or to ask Chat GPT answers to legal issues because there have been cases of attorneys in the US who have used Chat GPT to generate case law and it generated cases that don’t exist. AI will play a bigger role in automating certain tasks such as document reviewing and drafting but in terms of taking over the role of a solicitor, it might still be far away if it would happen. I find online resources very helpful in this regard. If I remember correctly, Commercial Law Academy was offering a good course on legal tech.

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