Extract from Benjamin Joyner’s article “Embracing Gen AI Faster Than Their Outside Counsel, Legal Departments Expect to Do More Internally”
Legal departments are dramatically outpacing their outside counsel on generative artificial intelligence adoption, even as they contend with an array of competing pressures, according to the Blickstein Group and FTI Consulting’s 18th annual Law Department Operations Survey Report.
The report, published Tuesday, found that legal departments are leading their outside counsel in gen AI adoption for key workflows, and that they expect that edge to lead to reduced spending on law firms going forward. The ability to perform more work internally may prove critical for legal ops teams as they respond to enterprise-level pressure to work faster while reducing costs.
Gen AI’s potential to disrupt the relationship between law firms and clients has been a major topic in the legal industry for several years. Although the increasing adoption of gen AI may not have led to widespread changes in pricing models or falls in outside counsel demand yet, indicates a major adoption gap opening up between clients and their firms. The report drew on a survey which included responses from 68 largely North American companies, across a broad array of enterprise sizes and industries.
