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Printed Jan 15, 2026
AI’s elementary impression on the authorized career is already remodeling apply in concrete, measurable methods, permitting corporations to shift focus from tedious administrative duties to higher-value billable work.
AI considerably will increase work high quality and accuracy (65% and 58% of execs agree, respectively) by enabling extra complete evaluation and analysis.Regulation corporations are realizing improved profitability and income development, with 69% of these utilizing AI extra broadly reporting elevated revenue.Automating routine work results in substantial time financial savings and diminished write-downs, instantly contributing to higher agency economics.Past productiveness, AI improves work-life stability and reduces stress for authorized professionals by offering higher visibility and taking over routine duties.
With all of the speak about AI and the transformative profit it is going to have for legal professionals, it may be tempting to suppose these discussions are a part of an ever-increasing hype cycle.
The issue is that these conversations give attention to a really slim set of advantages to utilizing AI, particularly within the authorized career.
Like a lot of a very powerful improvements in historical past, their precise worth can’t be pinned all the way down to anyone level of affect. The car didn’t simply “make us go sooner,” it basically altered how we take into consideration private transportation. The lightbulb didn’t simply make it extra handy to gentle a couple of darkish areas; it meant that our days didn’t want to finish when the solar went down. (To borrow a couple of analogies from the late Marshall McLuhan.)
These are only a few trendy innovations that reworked our life and society in many various methods. Now, AI is just simply starting to have its personal elementary impression of comparable scope and scale. And for legal professionals, that transformation is already taking place in concrete, measurable methods.
Analysis into how AI will help legal professionals
One of many extra thrilling facets of witnessing a breakthrough know-how like AI emerge seemingly in a single day is to watch the way it manifests in our every day life. Along with us discovering new methods to use AI on daily basis, the know-how itself can be quick evolving.
To maintain up with what this implies for legal professionals and their legislation corporations, Clio’s researchers have been endeavor in depth and rigorous research to higher perceive how AI has benefitted authorized professionals to this point, and what all of it means for the way forward for authorized apply. This analysis options analyses on information from tens of 1000’s of authorized professionals, and is supported by in depth surveys and interviews.
These findings have been revealed within the newest Authorized Developments Report, amongst different analysis into shopper perceptions on AI and the business’s first neurological analysis into the cognitive load related to authorized work.
In case you don’t have time to learn all the report, I get it. That’s why we’ve put collectively this abstract of the 21 findings on how AI will help legal professionals.
1. Elevated accuracy
58% of authorized professionals say that AI has elevated the accuracy of their work. One of many benefits right here is that AI can assessment and supply suggestions and corrections on issues like writing and grammar. However a extra important profit is that legal professionals and their workers can sometimes work extra confidently understanding that AI provides a a lot larger scope of element and evaluation in authorized analysis and in referencing and summarizing the information of a case from an intensive corpus of shopper information.
With the advantage of a comprehensively deep background evaluation, and suggestions on how you can proceed with a case primarily based on its information, legal professionals and their workers begin off a lot additional forward of their work with purchasers, giving them extra alternatives to query and refine their work into a greater product.
2. Improved work high quality
65% of authorized professionals say that AI has improved the standard of their work, and 44% say that this can proceed to be a big profit sooner or later.
The discovering additionally aligns strongly with a earlier examine performed by the Boston Consulting Group and revealed by the Harvard Enterprise Faculty, which discovered that AI enormously improved the work efficiency of consultants of their work. Along with finishing extra duties in much less time, employees within the examine produced 40% larger high quality work, no matter their talent, expertise, or prior coaching.
With the AI capabilities in options like Clio Work, authorized professionals can conduct extra complete analyses throughout a larger scope of assets.
Utilizing Clio Work’s AI, legal professionals can run in depth queries of over a billion court docket filings, authorized publications, and jurisdictional case legislation in minutes, returning outcomes which are extra complete than what a person lawyer or paralegal might obtain in spending hours combing by in depth key phrase mixtures of their search queries.
As Pierce, a lawyer at a small enterprise and actual property legislation agency in Missouri says, “If I run throughout one thing that I don’t know something about, I now have faith that AI will get me on the precise path, and that’s large.” (2025 Authorized Developments Report)
3. Elevated work capability
54% of authorized professionals elevated their work capability because of AI. It is because AI can tackle quite a lot of the day-to-day work that contributes to the legal professionals and their workers feeling over-worked and over-burdened of their day. When this work will be taken on and automatic with an AI, this opens up bandwidth inside particular person workers members, and the workforce as an entire.
The variety of makes use of and purposes of AI in a legislation agency are legion. It’s a boon to nearly any process that entails discovering, reviewing, or synthesizing info, particularly when a agency manages all of its casework in a centralized apply administration resolution. The capabilities in an answer like Handle AI also can tackle particular duties, together with:
Extracting key dates and deadlines from a group of court docket paperwork and scheduling the mandatory calendar occasions and assigning duties.
Initiating month-end billing by drafting shopper invoices and routing them to the suitable accountable legal professionals for assessment.
Creating case notes, duties, occasions, and bills rapidly to maintain circumstances transferring effectively.
4. Time financial savings, effectivity, and fewer write-downs
62% of authorized professionals say that utilizing AI results in time-savings and elevated efficiencies. Whether or not it’s drafting a letter to a shopper, monitoring down vital case info, or catching up on vital case particulars, all these duties will be achieved in a fraction of the time with AI.
One of many greatest challenges for a lot of legal professionals is managing the period of time spent researching the legislation on behalf of their purchasers. If a authorized challenge is especially complicated or novel, this will typically lead to added hours spent reviewing case legislation. When it’s time to ship the bill to the shopper, that is typically when legal professionals see their hours written down—since that is when the shopper might elevate a dispute.
To save lots of corporations the hours (and income) misplaced to those write downs, higher efficiencies and time financial savings imply that legal professionals can hold their analysis hours down, and in flip, really invoice for the work they do.
As Pierce says, “Earlier than AI, I needed to guess what key phrases would set off the precise circumstances. Even then I wasn’t all the time assured that we have been getting all of it. I’d spend an hour or two looking, looking for related circumstances, happening rabbit holes. Now it takes actually 5 minutes and my first two hours of analysis are achieved.”
5. Elevated income
36% of authorized professionals utilizing AI stated that it’s elevated their income; this jumps to 69% of these utilizing AI extra broadly. In different phrases, as corporations incorporate AI extra utterly into how they work, the extra seemingly they’re to see rising monetary positive aspects.
One enter to that is that when AI takes on the sorts of non-billable, administrative work that legal professionals and paralegals typically cope with in a typical day, this opens them as much as focus extra time on billable work that’s extra precious to the agency.
Issues like calendaring, process administration, shopper communications, looking case info, and even simply prioritizing duties. AI can tackle the majority of those duties, which when added up, can put hours again right into a lawyer’s day.
6. Lowered operational prices
33% of legislation corporations diminished their operational prices with AI. One of many greatest findings from the newest Authorized Developments Report is that—in a cohort evaluation of rising, steady, and shrinking legislation corporations—people who have seen the largest will increase in income did so with minimal will increase in headcount.
As an alternative of spending extra to rent further workers, these corporations have been in a position to make use of know-how to extend the capability of the individuals they already had, which in flip they’re capable of put in direction of extra revenue-generating work.
AI additionally creates alternatives for agency leaders to discover artistic options to issues that they might have in any other case needed to rent an costly marketing consultant. Casey, a accomplice at a mid-sized civil litigation agency in California, says, “Final yr, I paid a marketing consultant 1000’s of {dollars} to assist us perceive our workers wants as we proceed to develop in 2025 and 2026. Now, I can plug these numbers into an AI and get that very same recommendation instantaneously, and at a value that’s included in my AI subscription.” (2025 Authorized Developments Report)
7. Elevated legislation agency profitability
36% of authorized professionals say that AI has elevated their agency’s profitability. As corporations each improve income era by placing extra time into billable work and scale back prices, they inevitably improve revenue. This could be a main profit to fairness companions, but in addition the agency as an entire if these earnings get reinvested into the enterprise.
8. Enterprise development
18% of authorized professionals foresee with the ability to develop their enterprise with AI. Primarily based on the various advantages that we’ve seen for legislation corporations utilizing AI, we anticipate this quantity to develop sooner or later, particularly if corporations carry in additional revenues because of their AI use.
In truth, as proven in Clio’s cohort evaluation revealed within the Authorized Developments Report, rising legislation corporations are about twice as prone to be utilizing AI in Clio in comparison with corporations which have seen their revenues both shrink or keep the identical.
9. Improved shopper responsiveness
63% of authorized professionals say AI has improved their responsiveness to purchasers. Probably the most frequent makes use of for AI is drafting communications that may be rapidly despatched to purchasers.
Since context is so vital to the standard of AI-generated communications, a case administration resolution like Clio Handle is turning into an indispensable instrument for lawyer-client communications. Along with storing case info, Clio Handle permits corporations to handle emails, cellphone conversations, and textual content messages, which will be despatched and obtained instantly from the platform to the shopper’s cellphone quantity or Clio’s safe shopper app.
With all of this info tracked in a single place, Clio’s AI can rapidly draft messages primarily based on the shopper’s message historical past, case notes, and any documentation you may have already got on file.
Ezra, a accomplice at a basic apply in Indiana, explains how AI also can present perception into how you can higher talk with purchasers. He says, “AI helps clarify tough authorized ideas in ways in which purchasers perceive. I can ask it to rewrite one thing I’ve used one million occasions and see what’s lacking for the shopper.”
Mixed with Clio’s authorized analysis workflows, Ezra can reply to purchasers rapidly relating to their case. “I can question the AI as I’d an affiliate lawyer. I get the response again in a short time, which I can then cross alongside to our shopper.” (2025 Authorized Developments Report)
10. Improved shopper satisfaction
34% of authorized professionals report improved shopper satisfaction because of their use of AI. When AI will help enhance the pace and responsiveness of a legislation agency within the work that they do for purchasers, along with benefiting the general high quality of the work, purchasers discover.
As Sebastian, proprietor of a small legislation agency working in actual property, building disputes, and transactions in California, says: “I don’t particularly inform purchasers, ‘This was generated by AI.’ However I’ve seen that purchasers are pleased with the standard of the work, product, and readability.” (2025 Authorized Developments Report)
11. Elevated competitiveness
29% of authorized professionals stated that AI has made their agency extra aggressive. Improved work high quality, effectivity, responsiveness to purchasers—all of those are crucial to constructing the kind of model and popularity for a legislation agency that stands out towards the remainder.
This may manifest in higher evaluations and referrals, extra aggressive charges because of improved efficiencies, and likewise the flexibility to be extra conscious of potential purchasers once they first attain out; with the ability to reply preliminary questions whereas a possible shopper is purchasing round typically means with the ability to make impression and construct belief earlier than one other agency can do the identical.
12. Job alternatives
Whereas different industries have seen job losses with the uptake of AI, this isn’t the case in authorized; 93% of legislation grads discovered jobs in 2025, a yr that additionally noticed the biggest variety of graduating college students in almost a decade, in line with a report revealed by the Nationwide Affiliation for Regulation Placement.
The report additionally highlights that new grads are additionally discovering extra full-time “legal professional positions” requiring bar admission. Eighty-three % of grads landed full-time, long-term legal professional positions in comparison with simply 57% in 2011.
13. Profession development
Along with the sturdy will increase in job demand throughout the authorized career, 38% of authorized professionals stated that AI has created new alternatives for improvement and development.
As authorized professionals proceed to tackle extra complicated and strategic work which have a larger impression on the success of their legislation corporations, this in flip opens up new position alternatives. Which means as a substitute of paying for extra workers to deal with menial data-entry and calendaring duties, corporations can make investments extra in workers which are targeted on overseeing bigger strategic initiatives and processes that corporations can derive extra worth from.
14. Much less tedious work
62% of authorized professionals say that AI has diminished the quantity of tedious work they need to do. Whereas there’s little question that duties like end-of-month billing, researching case legislation, and shopper comply with ups are vital and precious to any legislation agency, the truth that these duties will be absolutely, or a minimum of partially, automated with AI signifies that agency workers don’t need to be mentally slowed down with work they don’t get pleasure from.
In truth, neurological research present that the cognitive load related to all these work will be alleviated by augmenting them with know-how. The analysis signifies these improvements can scale back the quantity of psychological power required to remain mentally targeted and to recollect small particulars. In truth, the findings present that utilizing a apply administration resolution like Clio can scale back complete cognitive load by as much as 25% in authorized professionals.
15. Extra capability to deal with complicated work
53% of authorized professionals say that AI has empowered them to deal with extra complicated work. Probably the most tough facets to dealing with a big case is with the ability to work by the entire particulars and to prepare a coherent understanding and strategy to dealing with the matter.
AI will help legal professionals navigate probably the most complicated authorized conditions by summarizing key factors and highlighting crucial patterns essential in each understanding in addition to advancing a case ahead. For particular person authorized professionals, the boldness gained from that is large in with the ability to work by issues and to confidently clarify to purchasers what paths they’ve to maneuver ahead with.
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16. Lowered stress
47% of authorized professionals say that AI has diminished the stress they really feel at work. Along with feeling extra assured concerning the accuracy and high quality of their work, AI additionally creates an added layer of consolation.
It would tackle routine day-to-day work like scheduling court docket deadlines, creating case notes, and logging time and bills, in addition to hold a watch out for vital priorities and dangers to flag earlier than they turn out to be points (e.g. an unexpected/imminent deadline) that require attentive fire-fighting.
With higher visibility and foresight into upcoming work, everybody on the agency has the advantage of higher, extra proactive visibility into vital priorities, in order that there’s much less threat of a last-minute, late-night scramble to get them achieved.
17. Improved work-life stability
48% of authorized professionals stated that AI has improved their work-life stability. While you’re extra on high of your work, and fewer prone to have to remain late on the workplace, meaning extra time to give attention to the non-public spheres of your life. Issues like household, social life, and health and well being.
Avoiding tedious work and the psychological pressure that may include repetitive administrative duties also can open up headspace in people, in order that we will be extra current in life exterior of labor.
18. Improved job satisfaction
46% of authorized professionals say that AI has improved their job satisfaction. Analysis performed by in-depth interviews of authorized professionals for the Authorized Developments Report discovered that repetitive administrative work, work overload, and poor work-life stability are important components in decreasing motivation in authorized professionals.
However, constructive relationships with purchasers, mental challenges, and extra management over their work are components which are extra prone to inspire legislation agency workers.
As AI options proceed to tackle the repetitive administrative work that legal professionals and their workers constantly dread, they’ll be capable to focus extra on the sorts of work that retains them and engaged of their work.
19. Elevated workers retention
36% of authorized professionals stated that they have been extra prone to keep of their present position because of AI. For agency managers, it is a huge one, since workers turnover could be a main drain on agency assets and productiveness. Shedding a member of the workforce signifies that their work must be taken on by others. It additionally signifies that the agency must spend time discovering a alternative and coaching them up.
In lots of circumstances, it may very well be six months earlier than a agency is again to capability, and in the event that they lose somebody distinctive, it might imply dropping part of the workforce that can by no means get replaced.
So, whereas many are touting the advantages of AI to boost productiveness and effectivity in legislation corporations, one of many greatest advantages could also be that it makes many authorized professionals really glad of their jobs and within the work they do. In different phrases, AI isn’t simply making us extra productive, it’s basically altering our relationship to our work.
20. New know-how improvements
71% of authorized professionals are extra motivated to maintain up with know-how due to the brand new developments made in AI. Since many within the authorized career have a popularity for being adversarial to new applied sciences, the truth that AI has been such a motivator to discover new options and new methods of doing issues reveals nice promise for the broader authorized career.
As legislation corporations discover new methods to innovate their service choices, they’ll profit each the authorized professionals working at them in addition to their purchasers.
21. Extra productive case administration
38% of authorized professionals say that AI will make their case administration extra productive. When working with a case administration system like Clio Handle, corporations benefit from having a single supply of fact for all of their info. This contains every little thing from case notes, communications, and paperwork to process administration, time entries, and billing.
However as corporations develop and turn out to be extra complicated, the work in managing and prioritizing all of this info could be a job in itself. That is the place built-in AI capabilities will help schedule deadlines, mechanically draft month-to-month payments, draft motions and correspondence primarily based on new case updates, and way more. Clio’s AI automates the work that retains circumstances organized and transferring, in order that agency workers can hold targeted on delivering higher outcomes.
With Clio Work, Clio additionally provides built-in authorized analysis capabilities that can securely analysis and draft authorized summaries and content material primarily based on the nuanced info saved in your information. When used on this means, Clio provides a complete strategy to managing agency information and making use of it to the authorized work that legal professionals do for his or her purchasers.
Discover new capabilities on your legislation agency with Clio’s Clever Authorized Work Platform
We’ve lined a considerable variety of advantages to utilizing AI in a legislation agency, together with every little thing from elevated accuracy and income development to improved work-life stability and workers retention.
To appreciate these advantages, and to find extra of your personal, a very powerful factor to learn about utilizing AI is that it really works greatest when it has (safe and personal) entry to the wealthy context of your circumstances, purchasers, and workflows, along with an enormous library of authorized information.
This isn’t one thing you get with AI options like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or one of many many consumer-facing AI options on the market. Clio’s case administration and authorized analysis platform is designed and constructed particularly for authorized professionals, providing an built-in AI expertise that helps you get extra achieved in a day.
In case you’d wish to be taught extra about how you can unlock the various advantages of AI at your authorized apply, e book your demo right this moment.
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How can AI assist legal professionals everyday?
AI will help legal professionals by rushing up analysis and drafting, summarizing case supplies, bettering shopper communication drafts, and automating routine workflows like billing, time entry, and process creation.
What are the largest advantages of AI in legislation corporations?
The largest advantages embrace higher-quality work, sooner turnaround occasions, improved shopper responsiveness, extra capability with out including headcount, and higher agency economics by decrease write-downs and diminished working prices.
Does AI really enhance authorized work high quality, or simply pace?
AI can enhance high quality when it helps legal professionals begin with a extra full info set (analysis, summaries, challenge recognizing) and reduces fatigue and rework, whereas legal professionals nonetheless apply skilled judgment and assessment.
How does AI scale back write-downs and improve realization?
AI can scale back write-downs by shortening analysis time, bettering confidence in analysis completeness, and decreasing rework. That makes billed time simpler to justify and fewer prone to be discounted.
Can AI improve income for legislation corporations?
Sure. AI can improve income by liberating time for extra billable work, bettering responsiveness that helps convert new enterprise, and serving to corporations tackle extra issues with out proportional will increase in headcount.
What are frequent boundaries to adopting AI in a legislation agency?
Frequent boundaries embrace uncertainty about accuracy, issues about confidentiality, lack of clear insurance policies, inconsistent workflows, and restricted coaching, particularly when AI is adopted as a standalone instrument as a substitute of being built-in into every day techniques.
How ought to legislation corporations use AI safely and responsibly?
Companies ought to undertake clear insurance policies for permitted use, practice workers on confidentiality and verification, hold people accountable for remaining work product, and like AI that works inside safe authorized workflows and techniques of report.
How lengthy does it take for a legislation agency to see worth from AI?
Many corporations see early worth rapidly in repetitive duties like drafting communications, summarizing paperwork, and billing workflows. Bigger positive aspects sometimes seem as AI use expands throughout extra workflows and turns into routine.
Will AI substitute legal professionals or scale back authorized jobs?
AI is extra prone to change how authorized work is completed than substitute legal professionals. It tends to shift time away from repetitive duties and towards higher-value work like technique, judgment, shopper counseling, and sophisticated problem-solving.
What ought to a legislation agency measure to guage AI impression?
Companies can measure AI impression by time saved on frequent duties, diminished write-downs, sooner turnaround, improved shopper responsiveness, larger completion high quality, decrease rework, and workers satisfaction and retention developments.
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