In-house legal teams use AI to cut repetitive work, not jobs

In short: More company legal departments are using AI to handle repetitive tasks, aiming to increase capacity without cutting staff.

What's going on

In-house lawyers, the legal teams that work inside companies, are increasingly using AI to take on routine work. Leaders say the goal is to reduce the grind of repeat questions and paperwork, not to reduce the number of lawyers.

Aine Lyons, deputy general counsel at Workday, said her team wants to use AI to get more done, while still relying on human judgment. She said the real value is not having fewer people, but helping the existing team do more of its best work.

Some legal teams are tracking “deflection” rates, meaning how many common questions can be answered partly by AI instead of a person. Workday gets about 25,000 sales related legal questions a year, and Lyons said the team aims to resolve three quarters of them at least partly using AI. Prosus, which owns companies including Just Eat Takeaway, said its team size has not changed, but its capacity has expanded.

Prosus also worked with law firms DLA Piper and Von Seidels to build a central hub for intellectual property records. The company said it now has nearly 50,000 records from more than 300 jurisdictions in one place, which staff can search using everyday language (like asking a librarian a question instead of digging through file cabinets).

What to watch

Cost and trust remain major issues. Tools like Harvey and Legora can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and a Factor survey found over 80 percent of respondents use AI but only 22 percent highly trust its outputs. Courts have also criticized mistakes linked to AI, which adds pressure for careful checks, especially for junior lawyers who still need to learn the basics.

Source: Financial Times