A new survey by Spotdraft has found that 13.5% of inhouse respondents said that they use AI tools daily and that this approach is essential for their work. Plus, an additional 28.2% said they used AI tools ‘a few times per week’.
This may sound underwhelming, but given where we were before, this is a big step forward. As recently as 2022, the ‘essential’ group would have been a lot lower before the arrival of genAI. I.e. when the legal AI world was dependent upon NLP/ML tools that could be hard to use for those without training – or the desire to actually train the system itself, most inhouse people just didn’t feel that compelled. That is all changing now.
Moreover, the share of inhousers who are open or very open to adopting AI tools – i.e. they may not have yet, but would like to – was around 65%. And that is another huge change compared to a few years ago.
Why is this? It’s simple: genAI tools deliver value so much more quickly that once initial worries over data issues are handled, then a growing number of inhouse lawyers want to use them.
This doesn’t mean they are easy to fit neatly into a workflow, but it shows a small, but significant group are engaging deeply with AI now. And given the desire to bring those tools in, i.e. ‘openness’, then that will grow.
Plus, as mentioned before, when the clients make more use of AI their expectations change and in turn that alters how they view what external providers, from law firms to ALSPs, do, or rather how they do it.
After that a lot of the findings are perhaps not as useful, given that the number of the total inhousers (from 195 population) who said they actually use AI tools regularly is 13.5%, or 26 people.
P.S. one other thing that stood out was that the survey didn’t see AI leading to any job losses inhouse. However, that may reflect the sample numbers. Also, as you will see tomorrow – some inhouse teams are cutting jobs….but more about that soon.
You can find more about Spotdraft here.
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Legal Innovators California Conference, San Francisco, June 11 + 12
And if you’re interested in the cutting edge of legal AI and innovation, then come along to Legal Innovators California, in San Francisco, June 11 and 12, where speakers from the leading law firms, inhouse teams, and tech companies will be sharing their insights and experiences as to what is really happening and where we are all heading.
We already have an incredible roster of companies to hear from. This includes: Legora, Harvey, StructureFlow, Ivo, Flatiron Law Group, PointOne, Filevine, Briefpoint, Centari, eBrevia, Legatics, Knowable, Draftwise, LegalOn, newcode.AI, Riskaway, LawDroid, Crimson, SimpleClosure and more.
See you all there!
More information and tickets here.