First Global Report on the State
of Artificial Intelligence in Legal Practice

Insights from the AI in Law Firms 2023 Survey and Leading Experts

This report presents the outcomes of the 'AI in Law Firms 2023′ survey, supplemented with expert commentary from distinguished researchers in AI and Law, Legal Informatics, and the Law of AI.

The report was prepared by an interdisciplinary team and is not affiliated with any organization. The e-book was prepared in cooperation with Liquid Legal Institute.

Following the positive feedback on the research, we want to repeat it in 2024.
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Key Findings

To assess the current impact of AI on legal practices, a global survey was conducted across over 200 law firms, representing nearly 100,000 legal professionals. The objective was to gather insights on the rapid expansion of AI, focusing on the utilization of AI tools, associated concerns, perceived limitations, and identified opportunities. The key findings and opinions include:

  • Generative AI is anticipated to transform the legal industry within the next three years significantly.
  • Approximately 40% of legal tasks are anticipated to be performed using AI in the coming years.
  • Adoption of AI by law firms is projected to generate substantial additional value, positioning these entities as market leaders.
  • Knowledge of AI and the capacity to manage AI-driven projects are poised to become key assets for lawyers in the job market.
  • Quick adoption of  is a sign of the legal industry’s agility in embracing new technologies to stay competitive and innovative.
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According to our respondents, law firms are facing increasing pressure to enhance their efficiency, prompting a closer look into the potential of generative AI technology. Our research indicates that:

  • Approximately 38% of tasks within law firms, characterized by their repetitive nature, can be effectively automated through AI. These are primarily legal research, document review, and contract generation.
  • The generative AI revolution has completely changed this market. 60% of companies have been using AI for less than a year – an obvious impact of this technology on the development of innovation in the legal world.
  • 3.51% of law firms have already implemented AI. The majority in the US. Most are the largest firms (+100 lawyers) and the smallest (1-10 lawyers).
  • The largest number of AI tools deployed are tools for automating document processing and legal research. However, there is a lack of dominant technology here – companies are still looking for the best solutions and are far from it. The market is still immature.
  • 1/3 of law firms intend to partner with technology companies and invest in AI R&D.
  • Law firms vary in their approach to AI – most are implementing the technology very cautiously, preceding pilots and ensuring that the technology is preapproved. However, nearly half of law firms are allowing AI to be used from the bottom up, taking advantage of the fact that lawyers with AI are many Times more effective than without AI.
  • If the tools were accurate and secure the average company would implement 5-6 AI-based tools. The most preferred AI systems were a document generator (84.2%), a document summarization tool (69.5%), a jurisprudence analysis tool (63.5%), and a compliance and risk management system (59.1%).
  • Lawyers are very open to implementing AI in the organization. 68.5% of companies marked 4 or 5 on a scale of 1-5, 12.8% of companies declared 1 or 2, and 18.7% of companies declared 3.
  • Lawyers are not worried that AI will cause massive job losses. Only 11.4% of those asked are concerned about a significant change in the labor market. Lawyers are convinced that AI will significantly change the way work is done.
  • 53% believe that AI tools will become an essential part of workflows and paralegals’ tasks will be automated. 38% believe that lawyers who specialize in AI will have a better chance of finding work and advancing their careers.
  • Law firms are maturing to allow AI to occupy an increasingly important role in the organization. 43% have created AI-innovation units, and 13% employ AI engineers or prompt engineers.
  • Key challenges to AI adoption are legal issues (legal liability and regulation – 80.2%), privacy and security of the technology (66.8%), and accuracy and reliability of artificial intelligence (63.9%). More than half of respondents answered that it is necessary to develop internal policies and guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence (61.7%). 52% expect additional education and training, and 42% require improved security and privacy/data protection in the artificial intelligence sphere.

  • Enrico Francesconi

    Italian National Research Council, Institute of Legal Informatics and Judicial Studies, Italy

    The report represents a wide and very relevant analysis of the appeal and penetration of AI technologies in the world of law firms. The results of the survey confirm the expectations about the interest of law firms in the applications of AI technologies in the legal domain, especially of large companies, which can invest more resources to train and qualify their personnel.

  • Saptarshi Ghosh

    Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

    The report provides a comprehensive glimpse into the current state of AI integration within the legal sector. Some recommended future actions: Lawyers need training on AI usage and bias identification, a collaborative discussion should occur among lawyers, technologists, and lawmakers to establish AI use standards, the public should be informed about AI’s advantages and risks in law.

  • Jakub Harašta

    Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

    The authors of the report allowed us to confront our opinions with meticulously collected data. Such an opportunity is rare and must be used to build narratives interpreting the data vis-á-vis one’s experience. I cannot overstate how important the data are and how grateful we should be that someone collected the data.

  • Marc Lauritsen

    Capstone Practice Systems, USA

    Michal Jackowski and Michal Araszkiewicz along with their fellow researchers have done a great service by arranging this survey and building statistical models to interpret the results, using a logistic regression approach. The survey provides a useful benchmark of attitudes and practices early in the generative AI revolution (the spring of 2023).

  • Ugo Pagallo

    Turin University, Italy

    The authors have provided a detailed picture on the extent to which law firms have adopted AI tools around the world. The statistics shows many interesting things. Although clear differences exist among law firms due to their size – five sizes in the report – and region, e.g., US and EU,there are significant convergences and trends regarding openness, practices, and concerns.

  • Giovanni Sileno

    University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    The report gives a picture of where automation is mostly occurring at the moment in legal firms (research, review) and future needs (document generation), highlighting the text-based nature of legal work and its potential for AI to reduce errors and disrupt practices. This attitude may explain why language models are expected to provide much disruption with respect to current practices.

  • Minghui Xiong

    Zhejiang University Guanghua Law School, China

    The results of this report provide vital references for the future development of AI in legal business. As stated in their report, the purpose of their analysis was not to verify a specific hypothesis but to generate knowledge from the data about the presence of AI in the legal business.

A picture of the law firm market

In 2023, law firms encountered numerous challenges:

  • Wage increases below the inflation rate.
  • A decrease in the efficiency of the lawyer’s work, which, combined with the billable hours model, results in a decrease in revenue for companies.
  • A sharp, higher-than-inflationary increase in the cost of employees and other costs of doing business.
  • Adverse customer reaction to continued price increases and the search for efficient billing models.

In 2024, firms must address these challenges effectively to compete in a technologically advanced legal services market. The use of generative AI is one among many of the solutions they see.

The Editors

Michał Jackowski

Michal Jackowski, professor of constitutional law, Ph.D at the Wrocław University, attorney-at-law and tax advisor, co-founder of DSK Law Firm, one of Po land’s largest tech law firms, co-founder of AnyLawyer, a start-up implementing  generative AI in legal firms and large organizations, member of International  Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law and ITechLaw.

Michał Araszkiewicz

Michal Araszkiewicz, PhD in legal theory, assistant professor at the Department of Legal Theory at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, attorney-at-law, co-founder of the ACR Legal law firm, member of the Steering Committee of the District Bar Council in Kraków, author of over 100 scientific publications, Secretary-Treasurer of  International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law and Vice-president of the JURIX Foundation.

Expert Commentary by

Would you like to learn more about our research, read expert commentary and view detailed data on lawyers’ readiness to use AI in their daily work? Download our report!

Would you like to participate in the 2024 survey on the state of AI in Legal Practice? Would you like to contribute an expert commentary? Write to us.