Follows series of high-profile blunders
AI hallucinations are now the biggest concern for lawyers using the technology, despite adoption across the profession surging to near-universal levels.
A new LexisNexis report, Scaling up: The AI-dependent lawyer, found that 83% of UK legal professionals are concerned about lawyers relying on inaccurate or fabricated information generated by AI. That figure has climbed sharply from 57% at the beginning of 2024.
Hallucinations sit comfortably ahead of the other major AI worries identified by respondents, with 53% concerned about confidential data leaking and 52% wary of lawyers becoming too reliant on the technology.
The findings come despite AI use now being almost universal across the profession. The survey of 543 UK legal professionals found that 94% now use AI for legal work, with 74% using it at least once a week and more than a third (34%) reaching for it every day.
And lawyers aren’t just using the tech to tidy up emails. Legal research is now the most common AI use case, cited by 69% of respondents, followed by document summarisation (62%), while 53% use it for both drafting and document review.
This growing reliance appears to be doing little to calm nerves about whether AI-generated work can actually be trusted. Four in five lawyers (81%) said they feel more comfortable using AI grounded in legal sources, up from 70% a year ago.
Concerns also stretch beyond lawyers themselves. More than three-quarters (77%) of those surveyed believe AI is causing clients or members of the public to misinterpret the law.
Lawyers’ concerns have not stopped them becoming increasingly reliant on the technology. One in ten respondents now describe themselves as dependent on AI to do their jobs, rising to 15% at large law firms and 13% among in-house lawyers.
The research follows a number of high-profile AI blunders, including Pinsent Masons’ citation of an insolvency rule that did not exist, following AI-hallucinated research by a junior lawyer, and a similar error at US firm Sullivan & Cromwell, which apologised to a New York judge after fabricated citations appeared in a court filing.