Everlaw has released its In-House Innovation Report. One notable finding: 86% of respondents said they are using GenAI for legal work.
The In-House Innovation Report is a survey report of 300 in-house legal professionals, released yesterday by Everlaw in partnership with Wakefield Research. Highlighted here and in a blog post by Petra Pasternak here, it has several notable findings, including:
- 86% of respondents said they are using generative AI tools for legal work, 37% are using it extensively.
- 54% of respondents reported that, thanks to the capabilities and efficiencies of AI, they’ve already reduced the volume of work they’re sending to outside counsel.
- Another 44% said that they intend to start cutting back on outsourcing to law firms within the next year.
- 92% of respondents say they’re seeing measurable cost savings: 13% say they’ve seen “significant” GenAI-related cost savings, 56% say their savings have been “moderate” and 23% say outside counsel savings have been “slight”.
- 81% of respondents say that within five years, most legal work will be priced by outcome rather than billed by hours worked, and 47% say it’ll happen in only three years.
- Respondents’ top concern about AI, indicated by 80% of them, is accuracy and alignment. 72% are concerned that non-lawyers will rely on AI for legal advice that may also be error prone. And 63% are concerned that overreliance on GenAI will erode human skills.
While concerns still exist with GenAI, it certainly appears that in-house legal professionals are “gung-ho” about GenAI, that they’re reducing work being sent to outside counsel, that outside counsel firms are at least passing along some savings to their clients, and that most in-house legal professionals expect the billable model to fade as the primary billing mechanism for law firms. Great for them, not so much for those outside counsel firms – for them, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
So, what do you think? Are you surprised by the findings of Everlaw’s In-House Innovation Report? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Image created using ChatGPT, using the term “robot business person working at a computer workstation with a robot hand coming out of the screen handing it money”.
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