You can hurry too fast…

https://www.bespacific.com/66-of-inhouse-lawyers-using-raw-chatbots/

66% of Inhouse Lawyers Using ‘Raw’ Chatbots

Artificial Lawyer: “A major survey by Axiom of 600+ senior inhouse lawyers across eight countries on AI adoption has found that 66% of them are using ‘raw’ LLM chatbots such as ChatGPT, and only between 7% and 17% are using bona fide legal AI tools made for this sector. There is something terrible about this, but also there is a silver lining. The terrible bit first: if you’re primarily using a ‘raw’ chatbot approach for legal work then that suggests that what you can do with genAI is limited. You can’t really organise things in terms of proper workflows, and more likely this is an ad hoc, ‘prompt here and a prompt there‘, approach. It’s also a major data risk. It just shows a level of AI use that is what we can call ‘surface level’. There is no deep planning or strategy going on here at all it seems for many lawyers. The positive bit…..a huge number of inhouse lawyers are now comfortable with using genAI. Now we just have to get them to understand why they need to use legal tech tools that have the correct structure, refinement, privacy safeguards, ability to be formed into workflows, and leverage agents in a controlled and repeatable way….and more. OK, what else?

• 87% of legal departments are handling AI procurement themselves without IT involvement – with only 4% doing full IT partnerships.

• Only 21% have achieved what Axiom is calling ‘AI maturity’ despite 76% increasing budgets by 26% on average for AI spending.

And that’s not great either, as it suggests a real ‘free-for-all’.  It’s a kind of legal AI anarchy…. Plus, they found that ‘according to in-house leaders, 79% of law firms are using AI, but 58% aren’t reducing rates for AI-assisted work. 34% actually charging more for it’….”

SOURCE: AXIOMLAW Report – The AI Legal Divide: How. Global In-House Teams Are Racing to Avoid Being Left Behind. “Corporate legal departments face unprecedented pressure to harness AI’s potential, with three-quarters increasing AI budgets by 26% to 33% and two-thirds accelerating adoption timelines—yet only one in five has achieved “AI maturity,” reflecting a chasm between teams racing to reap AI’s benefits and those trapped in analysis paralysis. These insights and more are covered in this report on AI maturity, budgets, adoption trends, and strategies among global enterprise in-house legal teams…”