While only 36% of respondents have ever used generative AI in a personal or professional capacity, adoption rates are likely to accelerate in the coming months, with 39% saying they are currently exploring opportunities. This rose to 64% when analysing responses from large law firms alone, and to 47% when looking at responses from in-house lawyers.

Almost two-thirds of respondents (65%) agree that generative AI technology will increase their efficiency. When asked how they would like to use generative AI specifically in their work, respondents said researching matters (66%), briefing documents (59%) and document analysis (47%) had the most potential.

However, many in the profession are understandably concerned about the risks that come from the use of AI technology. Two thirds (67%) of survey participants feel mixed about the impact of generative AI on the practice of law, admitting that they can see both the positives and the drawbacks.

“When freely available AI tools don't have access to the relevant data, they have a tendency to make up the answers, or hallucinate,” says Alison Rees-Blanchard,” head of TMT legal guidance at LexisNexis.

“This means any generated output must be checked thoroughly.  However, a closed data source means that hallucinations will be easier to identify, as verification of the output is made easier.” 

LexisNexis recently announced the commercial preview of Lexis+AI. Built and trained on LexisNexis’ enormous repository of accurate and exclusive content, this generative AI platform will transform the future of legal work. It brings powerful conversational search to complex legal research, enhanced summarisation to speed up insight creation and, with generative document drafting, it will guide users through the legal drafting process with citations that link directly to LexisNexis content.

The full report can be found in our Knowledge Bank