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Are legal teams ‘stuck in decision paralysis’ over AI integration?
A significant number of in-house lawyers recognise how much artificial intelligence will shape the future of legal practice, but a surprisingly low number of corporate counsel are actively piloting, planning, or deploying AI solutions, one provider reveals.
Jerome Doraisamy
New research from Consilio, an e-discovery, document review, flexible legal talent, and legal advisory and transformation consulting services provider, suggests that law departments may need to do better at developing strategies to incorporate AI into their team’s operations.
The provider’s fifth annual survey – Beyond the Gridlock: Overcoming the Challenges of Modern Legal Work, which surveyed 212 legal, risk, and compliance professionals in corporate law departments and law firms from Asia and the Middle East, Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe, and the United States – found that nearly one in two (46 per cent) respondents acknowledge that AI will shape the future of the legal profession, but only one in five (20 per cent) in-house teams are actively piloting, planning to deploy, or currently deploying AI solutions.
This is in comparison to one in three (32 per cent) law firms being actively engaged in such AI integration.
Speaking about the findings, Consilio managing director of global strategic client experience Michael Pontrelli said that while the promise of incorporating AI into a company has many potential benefits, “it can be overwhelming to get started”.
This said, he implored, it is important to not “get stuck in decision paralysis”.
“Humans will not be able to keep up with the growing workload volume [or] much longer,” Pontrelli said.
“To keep pace, legal departments and law firms must develop a strategy for incorporating AI. By reinventing internal workflows, processes, and procedures, they can create the space needed for all-encompassing transformative AI solutions.”
The survey also found that nearly one in two (48 per cent) legal, risk and compliance professionals rank overwhelming work volume as the biggest challenge they face and that three in five (60 per cent) professionals are prioritising smaller, operational reinventions to bring about process improvements that combat their ever-escalating workload.
This is in spite, the provider said, of a growing appetite to leverage large-scale innovations in the legal profession.
Professionals globally, Consilio outlined, are focused on addressing near-term increasing workload challenges by prioritising four key areas: contract management, regulatory compliance and risk management, information governance and records retention, and legal project management solutions.
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly and HR Leader. He has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. In June 2024, he also assumed the editorship of HR Leader. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of the Minds Count Foundation.
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