Extract from Benjamin Joyner’s article “AI Is Yet to Change Many Client-Firm Relationships in the U.S., U.K.”
AI hasn’t yet impacted the relationship between in-house counsel in the U.K and U.S. and their clients, according to a survey of 200 attorneys in the two countries from Definely, a British legal tech company focused on contract drafting and review.
Of the 200 attorneys, 117 respondents work in private practice, while the remaining 93 work in-house, with roughly equal numbers from each market. Respondents were recruited from YouGov’s research panel and Definely’s client base.
Despite frequent predictions that the advent of artificial intelligence may change the relationship between in-house attorneys and outside counsel, the survey indicated that there is little evidence of a sea change as of yet.
When asked if they expect AI adoption to impact their spending on outside counsel, a combined 73% of in-house respondents said they didn’t know or didn’t expect changes in either direction. In addition, 64% are unsure whether their clients make use of AI tools at all.
These findings were mirrored in other results; over half of in-house respondents thought outside counsel’s integration of AI for purposes of service delivery was either slightly or very unimportant (33%) or not important at all (21%), while more said they were unsure about the importance of implementing AI for efficiency and collaboration (48%) than said it was important (30%).
