I’m covering polls from the 2025 UF-Law E-Discovery Conference! Here’s the second installment, with more AI and GenAI polls!

The 12th(!) annual UF Law eDiscovery Conference conducted by the University of Florida Levin College of Law was held last month, and it had great educational content as always. It’s also become the biggest eDiscovery educational conference with over 3,000 attendees participating over the course of three days.

Because several hundred people are attending each session, the polls that are conducted during some of the sessions are very informative and instructive regarding trends in the industry. Once again, Maribel Rivera was kind enough to share the poll results with me. So, over a series of posts the next couple of weeks, I will publish the results of polls from the 2025 UF-Law E-Discovery Conference!

Today, I’m continuing with more AI and GenAI polls (the first set of polls was discussed here). The next poll result came from the session GenAI Revolution: Supercharging Your Case from Start to Finish!, which was conducted on Thursday and moderated by George Socha, with panelists Manfred Gabriel, Mike Gaudet, Mary Jacques & Daniel Klier. The question asked was:

How likely are you to try using GenAI with eDiscovery data for something other than traditional review?

And here are the results:

Over four in ten of 462 respondents (42%) said that they were “Likely” to try GenAI with eDiscovery data for something other than traditional review. I’m surprised that number isn’t higher and it’s low compared to the result in our State of the Industry report, where more than 30% of respondents said that generative AI & LLM technology is being applied to seven different eDiscovery use cases. Another 27% of respondents said “Maybe” in response to that question.

Conducted on Wednesday, the “nuts and bolts” session Electrify Your Personal Brand with GenAI in eDiscovery, which was conducted by Maribel Rivera conducted one poll, as follows:

Rank the challenges of adopting AI in legal practice from most to least concerning:

And here are the results:

Apparently, many respondents are concerned about a lot of AI challenges! 44% of 387 respondents said “All of the above” in terms of challenges that concern them. In terms of specific concerning challenges, “Trust in AI-generated results” was the highest with 25% of respondents. “Justifying cost to leadership” had only 5%, which was very surprising.

Also conducted on Wednesday, the final AI/GenAI poll result came from the session The Annual Judicial Panel, which was moderated by David Horrigan, with panelists Hon. Gary Jones, Hon. William Matthewman, Hon. Julie Sneed, Hon. Scott Schlegel & Hon. Patricia Barksdale. The question asked was:

Should we address the use of artificial intelligence in the law with new rules and regulations or with more education?

And here are the results:

Somewhat surprising here. The majority of 582 respondents said: “More Education:  Existing rules and regulations can handle it”, but not by much – 55% of the total. That left 45% who selected: “More Rules and Regulations: Left uncontrolled, the lawyers and the robots will bring havoc to civilization.  We read and saw 2001: A Space Odyssey.  We know what can happen.” With so many people discussing how we don’t need standing orders in courts and should be able to rely on existing rules like FRCP Rule 11 to hold lawyers accountable, it’s surprising that nearly half still think we need rules and regulations to address the problem, which isn’t going away as I discussed yesterday.

It’s never too early to start planning for next year’s conference, which will be conducted February 24th through February 26th in 2026! Mark your calendars! There are no more AI and GenAI polls to cover but look for more results from polls on other topics from the 2025 UF-Law E-Discovery Conference later this week!

So, what do you think? Are you surprised by any of these results? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.