More than a quarter of lawyers use generative AI on monthly basis, study shows

The number of legal professionals using generative artificial intelligence (AI) on at least a monthly basis has more than doubled in a year, according to new research.

Publishing the results of a survey on the use of AI in the UK legal sector, LexisNexis said the appetite for generative AI technology in the industry is "unprecedented", with 26% of respondents reportedly using generative AI on at least a monthly basis, up from 11% in July 2023.

The survey, which took responses from more than 1,200 legal professionals in the UK, also showed that more than half of UK law firms have already made changes in their day-to-day operations as a result of generative AI.

Generative AI is a technology that is typically trained on vast amounts of data and can create coherent written responses to questions or generate images or other data.

In the legal sector, the technology can be used for automating contract reviews, drafting documents, summarising information, among others.

According to the research, 15% of organisations surveyed launched an AI product for internal use in the last 12 months.

The survey said organisations have also delivered AI-related training, hired AI experts, and developed policies on the use of generative AI.

The survey also found that 91% of legal professionals want to use AI for time-saving tasks like drafting documents, 90% for researching matters and 73% for streamlining communication tasks such as writing emails.

More complex tasks like contract analytics (53%), connecting generative AI to case management (50%), or real-time comparisons of law across jurisdictions (45%) were also high on the priority list.

However, some concerns remain, with 57% of respondents suggesting that hallucination – which is when a generative AI programme provides false information – was among the biggest hurdles to adopting the technology.

A lack of trust in the current free-to-use technology (55%) and concerns over security (55%) were also seen as off-putting flaws.

However, legal professionals said if legal AI technology used reliable legal content sources with linked citations to the case, legislation or content used to create the response, two-thirds (64%) of respondents said they would be somewhat or completely confident using a solution of this description.

Stuart Greenhill, Senior Director of Segment Strategy at LexisNexis, said: "The appetite for generative AI technology in the legal sector is unprecedented.

"Lawyers from all backgrounds are jumping at the chance to make the most of its time-saving potential. However, the demand is growing in the legal sector for generative AI tools that are grounded and trained on legal sources and can provide a higher-level of transparency for all responses generated."

The news comes in the same month the Bar Council released new guidance that said there is nothing "inherently improper" about barristers using artificial intelligence programmes like ChatGPT.

However, the Bar Council warned that practitioners should understand the software and use it responsibly.

Adam Carey