Extract from Dan Roe’s article “Thanks to AI, More Tasks Are Staying In-House”
Roughly three years into the legal profession’s sprawling experiment with generative AI, layoffs at major legal departments like Microsoft and a tough corporate counsel job market indicate that the technology may be impacting the jobs of in-house lawyers more than those at law firms.
But even as law firms race to adopt and integrate generative AI tools in order to remain competitive with one another, general counsel and people who work with them say that some legal work is now staying in-house because of AI.
No doubt, the most complex, high-value, high-stakes matters are still going to law firms, meaning that the most sophisticated law firms have been largely insulated from competition with AI tools.
However, there’s growing evidence that some aspects of assignments handled by Big Law firms are staying in-house thanks to AI, such as tasks that legal departments were too busy to handle, basic legal and regulatory research and first drafts of contracts.
