How legal professionals see the possibilities of generative AI in law

Should GenAI be applied to legal work?

On the question of whether professionals should use GenAI in their work, there was more hesitance. However, a majority of respondents said they should apply it to their industry’s work. This information means that use cases are not only evident but should be an active part of regular job functions. Lastly, 30% simply weren’t sure.

Corporate legal departments were more likely to believe they should use GenAI in their work. There is a gap between their position — 62% think they should use it — and those of their outside counsel at 51%. Law firms may experience pressure from their clients to look carefully at their generative AI options, as clients want to know they are receiving the efficiency benefits the technology promises.

According to the report, government law agencies and courts were much more skeptical about GenAI. Only 40% of agencies and 47% of courts believe they should apply it to their work.

The argument in favor of GenAI for legal work

The rationale for using generative AI comes down to the business impact of the technology. Legal industry respondents see a great potential for cost savings. They also recognize that it could allow professionals to spend more time on high-value tasks and see its potential to help with quality control.

According to one law firm partner, “It will, if used correctly, make it possible to provide more efficient legal services and advice and at a higher quality and speed. Access to justice has been a growing problem since I started practice over 20 years ago and this could be a game changer.”

Overcoming the objections to GenAI

Legal professionals have hesitations about GenAI. First, there are concerns about the reliability and accuracy of available solutions. One way around this concern is to choose a tool that draws from content you trust. AI-Assisted Research from Westlaw Edge Canada with CoCounsel provides summaries and recommends cases for your legal matters, and it tells you exactly how it arrived at its answers, with links to the relevant cases.

There is also some concern about the tools' lack of human touch or intuition. “It has some applications, but I don’t believe that it can replace counsel entirely,” said one law firm partner. “Much of what we do is a function of feel, circumstances, personality, etc. which I believe is difficult to replicate with a computer.”

Generative AI cannot replace humans in the delivery of legal services. It simply augments their effort, taking the rote work of sifting through cases and contracts to arrive at a strategy. Humans must be responsible for verifying results, developing their approach — and getting their clients, colleagues, business partners, and other stakeholders on board.

To reduce the need for human overview, GenAI tools based on industry-specific, trusted content mean fewer AI hallucinations and more accuracy. In the legal realm, experts must train professional-grade AI tools on a specific, trusted data set. Tools trained on a universe of content that includes Google, Wikipedia, or even Twitter will raise concerns over one trained for the exact job needed.

Preparing for the added efficiencies and support GenAI brings will require leadership and creativity. About half of the survey respondents in legal believe that generative AI is either a major threat or somewhat of a threat to industry jobs. Just under half of law firm professionals think it will affect billing and firm revenue. With pressure from clients to incorporate GenAI, firm leaders will need to decide how to adapt their models for long-term success.

How to use GenAI in legal

Legal respondents pointed to several uses for GenAI. Legal research, document review, and document summarization are within the top five uses for law firms, corporate legal, courts, and government. Law firms, courts, and governments would use it for briefs and memo drafting, with law firms also seeing its utility for drafting correspondence. Corporate legal, courts, and government believe it could be helpful for contract drafting. In-house teams also see it as beneficial for extracting contract data.

Thomson Reuters offers many products that serve these use cases. AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Edge Canada with CoCounsel can significantly reduce the manual effort of legal research. For contract drafting, Thomson Reuters Canada offers a dynamic and powerful document automation capability that combines the best of HighQ productivity and collaboration with the practicality of Contract Express.

Widespread adoption of GenAI is still on the horizon, with only 12% of organizations in the survey using it regularly. Still, as the marketplace offers more legal-specific tools, that number will likely grow. Many legal professionals may build careers by successfully incorporating generative AI into their organization. It’s a time of both caution and experimentation that is sure to lead to growth and evolution in the industry.

The “2024 generative AI in professional services” report dives deeper into these trends and looks at attitudes toward governance, impact on business and client relationships, and more.