More law firms use AI for contract review and legal research

In short: Lawyers are using AI more often for everyday legal work, but they are keeping people in charge of checking the results.

What's going on

AI tools are becoming common in law offices for tasks like reviewing contracts, doing legal research, and supporting lawsuits. In contract work, tools such as Spellbook and Kira Systems can pull out key details, flag risky clauses, and compare versions of documents. Some midsize firms report cutting review time by as much as 60%, while attorneys still make the final call.

For legal research, products like Lexis+ AI and CoCounsel can answer questions faster and include citations (links to the cases and sources they used). That can free lawyers to focus more on strategy instead of manually searching through long documents. One tool mentioned, Harvey, is used to look for patterns in case data, which can help lawyers estimate how a dispute might play out.

AI is also used in lawsuits to summarize depositions (recorded question and answer sessions) and organize medical records into timelines. Think of it like a very fast assistant that sorts a messy filing cabinet, but a lawyer still needs to check every important item. In day-to-day office work, Microsoft Copilot and meeting tools like Otter.ai, Read.AI, and Fathom can draft text, summarize email threads, transcribe meetings, and create task lists.

Surveys show adoption is rising. About 30% of lawyers used AI in 2024, up from 11% in 2023, and use is projected to reach 46% at larger firms by 2026.

What to watch

Rules and client expectations are tightening. The American Bar Association says lawyers must supervise AI, protect confidentiality, and communicate with clients about its use. Corporate clients are also increasingly asking outside law firms to be clear about when AI is used.

Source: Arstechnica