Legal Professionals Struggle with AI Adoption

“And so can every law firm, whether big or small, that has years of trainings, filings, case summaries, and hoards of other legal information. Now a small firm can create its own databases, workflows, research flows, and all other tasks in a couple of weeks, and the end product will outpace anything legal tech AI companies can produce.”

“I can't speak to your experience directly obviously. But i know they are very happy these days to tout the legal research features to research-heavy legal departments like litigation too”

“Yes but legal workflows (document processing) are a long way from legal research (researching points of legal principle from statute and case law, usually to come to a view about how it applies to a novel situation). They are completely different disciplines in human-powered legal practice. Lots of transactional lawyers will very rarely do legal research outside of their own firm’s precedents; their job is to move the deal documents forward. Harvey and other tools like it are good at the workflo”

“I wouldn't say never. The "data" is publicly-available court filings and statutes. Nonprofits like Courtlistener are beginning to give Lexis and Westlaw a run for their money. I could see a not-so-distant world where a nonprofit just replicates a Westlaw-equivalent database. Headnotes (which were painstakingly created by humans) are a very useful way to organize data that humans read, but there is probably a better shortcut that could be created by throwing raw cases through LLMs,”

“i follow some of the ai team at westlaw/thomson reuters and they actually do seem to be working on training or at least finetuning their own models. harvey is doing the same, too. its the only way forward that makes sense longterm for them.”

“Partly yes. they've also done some kind of post-training on an enormous corpus of legal documents (some synthetic) so it's drafting and analysis is usually far better than generic models.”

“Most of the examples in this thread are contract-shaped, which is probably why you keep hitting the same wall. The patent side looks different. I would not conclude from the NDA tool that low-volume workflows are poor AI candidates. Volume is one variable. The others are what a miss costs and how easily you can check the output. NDA triage fails on both, so you were right to drop it. Your Slack agent had nothing authoritative to check against, which is why lease agreements leaked in. cmumulle72&”

“Thanks for sharing the report.. interesting data, especially the low very confident numbers across tools and the demand for better precedent/playbook integration. Makes sense that drafting is the sweet spot right now, while anything needing deep firm-specific knowledge or verification is still tricky. Curious if the respondents saw big differences between general models (Claude/Gemini) and legal-specific ones (Spellbook/SimpleAI) on contract review or negotiation prep. (For anyone looking for pr”

“Gotcha. Why did you create it if you dont mind me asking? Is it part of some legal tech service or you just did it for fun?”

“Interessante que o pêndulo virou de "cuidado ao usar IA" pra "cuidado ao não usar", mas isso só funciona se "usar IA" quiser dizer usar com o contexto certo com playbook e dados do escritório, porque negligência por confiar cegamente numa IA genérica também é negligência.”

“The biggest wins I've seen aren't from asking AI to draft clauses, they're from reducing repetitive work around them. Things like summarizing long contracts, comparing redlines against a playbook, extracting obligations into a tracker, answering routine internal legal questions, and organizing incoming requests so the team can prioritize faster. Those kinds of workflows tend to save more time than trying to automate legal judgment itself.”

“We do everything ourselves (just the attorneys), custom with some LLM assistance. I’m in charge with setting up our systems. I plan to continue using Claude Projects and Cowork, but through Bedrock. I can’t speak to cost because I’m just starting the process.”

“In the US professionals exercise due competency so I doubt you have to use AI. But in that spirit, I guess if you are billing for time which didn’t need to be spend that may be a reason. Like if you insist on typing your brief with a typewriter and charging your client for the extra time.”

“I agree with you, and I think I spoke to the existing status of AI having some useful applications and it being right for us to be on the hook for failure to verify - I agree with both of those things and to your wider point about lacking creative thought. One thing that’s seemingly within the minority within these discussions is the impact upon our brains, and I think that’s something that we will all need to adapt to, to ensure that we don’t experience the unwanted cognitive decline that inevi”

“Very interesting. Is this meant for staff use or just developer use for in house tools? Curious if you’ll continue using the Claude cowork interface but set up for third party inference through Bedrock or something else. Does it end up costing about the same?”

“In the U.S. at least, that would probably be unreasonable because of the prevalence of electronic filing in so many jurisdictions. But it took decades between the introduction of personal computers and mandatory e-filing.”

“I'm sorry; I wasn't trying to be pedantic. As a litigator who follows AI uses in the legal profession closely but who has never, myself, actually used AI because I haven't yet discovered a viable use case for it myself, I find myself constantly bemused by how rapidly some people adopt quickly shifting technologies that, to me, are all still in their infancy and too new to really be gaining a foothold anywhere.”

“Yes, exactly that. The privacy guarantees also read broader. I personally believe that anything involving a lawyer, and checking the box for “no training on our data” should be absolutely privileged and shielded from discovery. Anything else would be an idiotic decision. Lawyers use email, cloud storage, all sorts of other things. I strongly disagree with the “unlocked file cabinet in the middle of a public place” analogy. But we have only large-size cases, and just to be safe and prove to a cou”

“Can you share a bit more about the AWS privacy advantages over Claude’s Pro and Max plans? I thought the latter didn’t train on account data either. Is it the ZDR?”

“It’s an even tougher standard than that. It’s not that lawyers have to use reasonable technology, it’s that they must use technology if it would unreasonable not to. I could imagine a lawyer who works solely from books and with pen and paper; no computer at all. Would that be unreasonable?”

“I understand your points of view but a lot of what you speak about is a lawyer and a vendor problem, not the technology. While showing Attorneys the benefits of using AI, I preach time and time again to verify, verify, verify. Irresponsible use of AI puts the Lawyer and the Firm at risk of malpractice. When introducing AI to my folks, I started early so it is baked into the culture of the Firm that you always verify and get the context of what is being looked at. Be skeptical until you think it”

“I’m in the US so may be wrong, but this reads to me just like a hedge and attempt to future-proof the opinion. It’s like saying a lawyer who isn’t using appropriate case management software to keep track of things may be sanctionable. I don’t think it’s a specific strong endorsement of legal LLM software as it currently exists.”

"Reasonable" is a moving target

“Hey! I work in legal AI currently - get admitted, gain some PQE as a lawyer so you can build on that. Then use as much free resources as possible while working in law. A good start is the Google FREE AI fluency course. Then once you know the basics, do a micro-credential in AI that’s cheap (like $200 and accredited is what I mean by cheap). Then start thinking about how you would apply AI to legal practice. Research Harvey, Lexis+AI, Legora - Claude Legal Skills. Then after this you should have”

here's the link to the survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScIBNuKT3cA7zz3nEbvEQAdij0r_g9OkkwUVR6_dsFr9EoUgQ/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=105217150912786343586

“> The strength and value of AI is to automate processing that has traditionally been done by humans. This is definitely the pipe dream that the industry is being sold, but having spent the past years using AI routinely in my workflows, I can tell you that it’s still light years away from actually replacing human cognition. It’s hard for non-lawyers to see this because they don’t know what the AI outputs are leaving out, and THAT is where the technology really fails most commonly. It’s easy to”

“Yeah, we’ve been noticing this as well. There are a lot of legal counsel getting access to their organization’s base Claude or ChatGPT subscription, and they’re relying on the AI’s analysis without giving sufficient context. The result is that the AI hallucinates risks and “industry standard” terms quite aggressively, and gets very fixated on odd things.”

“Currently using Perplexity. I have a paid subscription. If I want to push it I use Perplexity computer. It will select the ai platform for my question - recently Claude 4.8. Sometimes it gets 'lazy' and the output is not what I'm looking for. I tell it to try harder which is effective. It knows (based on my history of prompts) I'm a lawyer. As a LLM this isn't surprising, but I can instructions it to ignore my occupation and repeat . I draft.complex statements of claim. I hav”

“An honest question: Why would I not do that through something like legora?”

“One thing that doesn't get talked about enough is context. AI is often good at a single task, but it struggles when the answer depends on understanding the history of a matter, unwritten firm practices, or business context that isn't in the documents.”

“If you're just starting, I'd focus on AI implementation, prompt design, SQL, and basic Python. Those skills complement legal work really well and are becoming increasingly valuable across the industry.”

What AI tools that you're focusing on

“I use it to pump out a first draft just to get me started but I usually give it a form brief that I’ve written previously and I give it the research I’ve already done and an instruction in the prompt to only use the cases I’ve provided. Sometimes I will ask it to find a citation where I can’t find a good one, but I always independently verify the cite and the language before I actually use it. It’s also pretty good at pulling cites from a deposition if you give it the prima facia elements of the”

“Do you own your own firm? Claude skills can pretty much automate any routine task. I have it preparing monthly GL reconciliations/roll forwards for me with a documented/auditable trail as well as automating cash & other routine transactions.”

“I'm not a new grad but it's apparent that quite a lot of lawyers are a bit tech avoidant. I'm putting time into understanding how to use various ai tools and understand their relative strengths and weaknesses. Mastering the skill of writing good prompts helps. Then I keep an eye out for new products as they emerge and test them. I work in medico-legal and came across consensus ai and giving that a go. Lawyers need advice around legal professional privilege and how to manage that whil”

“Not an attorney, but a technologist who has consulted exclusively with law firms for the last 20 years. This is basically the answer to the thread (IMO) and the entirety of success of AI in the legal industry. The strength and value of AI is to automate processing that has traditionally been done by humans. Prompts are effectively natural-language programs that the AI engine runs. In order for a computer program to be useful, it needs to transition some state of affairs from one state to another”

“Automate everything you can. Be careful about putting anything in the LLMs out there that is client/private case info. Judges are getting very annoyed with it and there is even some pushing for legislation to treat platforms like ChatGPT the same as social media. So if you wouldn’t post it on Instagram, don’t put it in an LLM. There are some like Harvey, gc.AI, Legora…. There’s a bunch of them that are legal specific. Matter management, contract and document management are huge.”

“If a lawyer hears your claims and thinks "no case", and you go find an LLM to tell you "great case" and proceed in pro per assist by that LLM, which of those two responses do you think the human judge will likely give when the publicly traded company's lawyers move to dismiss your case for failure to state a claim?”

Hang on, why fire your deal closers?

“I don’t understand the whole “AI solved NDA generation” thing. I’m a biglaw-adjacent lawyer so don’t see much of this sort of thing, but I’m surprised anyone who generated NDAs or any other simple contract in any volume before had a template they used with a simple template management platform (or even Mail Merge!) that spammed them out every time, in a deterministic manner so you never have to worry about hallucinations or LLMs inserting extra words just because that’s what the lottery machine”

“Not recommending, just sharing: https://huggingface.co/Equall/SaulLM-54B-Instruct”

“Good prompting, understanding workflows, and knowing how legal tech really (!) fits into practice will help most lawyers more than programming. If you later want to go deeper, basic SQL or Python is a nice bonus.”

“I have released EU AI Act OpenRAG, a downloadable SQLite corpus of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 for legal research and engineering. The key difference is how the legislation is divided. It is not split into arbitrary token or character windows. Each chunk follows the Act’s actual structure: article paragraph, recital, definition or annex point, with the relevant chapter, section and provision metadata preserved. The database includes 933 chunks, embeddings, exact EUR-Lex links and documented applic”

“For anyone who is a legal engineer or has considered the position, any insights into what WLB looks like in the role? Given the fast expansion and adoption of AI in BigLaw I am so curious about the role, but wonder if it becomes an all consuming position similar to BigLaw deal work. submitted by /u/theothercoco_c [link] [comments]”

“Local LLM would be best for pre-input PI screening and sanitation or a secure second brain/RAG for raw client documents. The challenge is local LLMs won't provide the same level of parsing judgment as cloud-based frontier models.”

“Current setup: Small litigation firm using Claude Max with sanitized uploaded info for non-publicly-filed documents. Planned setup: Add Amazon Bedrock to access Claude with enterprise features including ZDR (but not HIPAA BAA) for privileged content upload and processing. Possible addition: Mac Studio M5 Ultra with 128+ GB to run local LLMs including agents. Uses would be medical record analysis and--hopefully--continuously-running agents to track case and calendar deadlines, create task lists b”

“Take a look at GC.ai, Harvey, Legora Those are legal specific and bring a useful operating environment”

“I wouldn't have even known that by looking at the message. In any case, technology for legal is stuck in the 1990s. My current client is working in a space that has a lot of lawyer interactions and I'm frankly shocked at how bad and inefficient the processes are. You guys don't even know what git is. I doubt these AI generated emails have the same engineering quality.”

“I’m in house doing complex contract review. My company is tech forward and I have HIPAA compliant level tools. Claude is the tool for contract review, not ChatGPT. I think I use Sonnet mainly. If you throw a document in there with the right prompting, it can actually give you the red lines. Then you come in as human in the loop and refine. I’ve also had Claude write me addendums based on documents that I’ve given it. For legal research, I make sure that whatever tool I’m using is not doing close”

I use ai to gatherba quick summary of the key provisions

“spot on, you hit the nail on the head. it’s definitely not simple pattern matching or regex since it runs through an LLM via groq, it actually does semantic reasoning. but your point about context is 100% right. currently it just gives a general risk assessment, but adding a "Persona Selector" (like: analyze as a freelancer, agency, or client) so the risk score dynamically shifts is literally the next thing on my roadmap now. seriously love this feedback, appreciate you pushing me on t”

“What tools are you using that you have to do this? Results are genuinely getting better, and I’m the biggest complainer.”

“I agree with all of this. In many cases, CEOs are pushing internal AI use in order to *appear* strategic and forward thinking. I’m also a fan of measured usage where it really makes sense.”

“I work in a software company as a litigation lawyer and use AI heavily. This is not private practice. A dispute for 500 does not require the same effort as a 6 figure dispute. I use AI for intake, triaging, and providing playbook answers to the most common disputes before they escalate to a full on court claim. I'm in the UK so YMMV. But my leaders are fine with imperfect and proportionate, and I don't see significant risk of my law licence in the AI-assisted work. There's a lot deem”

“Hi there! This is not a job posting. I’m looking for recommendations for AI contract review tools that can be used by non lawyers.”

“I mostly use AI for double-checking my own work, issue-spotting in vendor agreements, and digging up relevant counterparty context then using that to inform risk reviews. Also for drafting email responses (using a style guide I created by training it on my exported email inbox). It's also really good at automating processes, so I've been using it to figure out how to streamline and update our suite of automation workflows (suggesting how tools in our existing tech stack can talk together”

“My experience has been that leaders are very keen to SAY "we want you to move fast and utilize these tools, even if that means making mistakes." But then when there IS a mistake, they will say: "Blaming it on the AI is making excuses and not taking accountability. You are responsible for reviewing its outputs." As such, in-house counsel are unfortunately stuck between a rock and a hard place; being pressured to use AI tools without adequate human oversight, then held personal”

“I’m hoping to get some real-world data points from people at Midwest law firms (roughly 100-200 attorneys, preferably outside of Chicago) who are Of Counsel/Counsel. I know every firm is different, but I'm primarily trying to figure out whether it's reasonable to negotiate to keep a merit-based bonus structure beyond my first two years. The current offer I'm considering is structured as: Base salary + a percentage of my collected billables after I hit a billing threshold + a smaller”

I was shocked too when I discovered it!