A survey of more than 150 GCs has highlighted the extent to which technology is transforming in-house legal teams.
GC Pulse 2025, which was conducted by Legal Business in association with Thomson Reuters, has revealed that 44% of corporate legal departments are now using legal technology frequently or all the time — a sharp rise from 34% in 2024.
The survey found much of this growth in usage is being driven by generative AI, with legal teams integrating it into their daily workflows faster than ever before.
- Click here to access the full report, and click here to watch a webinar discussion of the report’s findings.
Crucially, while GCs remain under growing pressure to lead their teams and oversee matter management, as well as regulatory risk and compliance, all while sticking to tight budgets, heightened awareness of AI means broader corporate support for tech investment for the legal team is also growing.
Nearly one-third (32%) of the GCs surveyed said they now found it easy or very easy to secure approval for technology purchases. Eighty percent of respondents expect to devote as much as 20% of their legal budgets to technology this year, up from 68% in 2024, with AI expected to drive much of this increase.
Max Freeman-Inglis, head of legal operations at Alliance Pharma, said securing budget for the legal function rarely posed a serious challenge, with the team already able to demonstrate metrics to measure the success of some implementations.
He added: ‘Our C-suite are huge on AI – they love it, see the benefits, and there’s a real push to use it. We started with the pure data piece: uploading contracts and getting the data sorted. Now, we’ve got a fully automated system for non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). What used to take two to three weeks now takes two to three hours. That’s an easy metric to show the board.’
The survey also found that perception of AI as a reliable legal resource has nearly doubled within the GC community, with 40% of respondents now expressing trust in the technology, compared to 21% last year. Only 3% of legal professionals maintain that AI is not yet dependable; down sharply from 11% in 2024.
Despite this increased faith, implementation of AI remains more measured. Although the survey found that 86% of GCs plan to maintain or increase AI-related spending, only 11% have fully integrated generative AI tools into their operations. When asked where they saw the biggest use case opportunities for AI to enhance their work, GCs pinpointed automation, due diligence and contract lifecycle management (CLM) as areas for growth.
Alex Graydon, associate general counsel at Thomson Reuters, said: ‘Over the last two years, Gen AI has been the buzzword everyone’s talking about. But automation is still very much alive. We’ve had a document automation product since around 2015, which allowed us to automate and release self-serve NDAs to the business, and we’ve expanded that automation model.
‘For example, our legal front door, built on HighQ, is a landing place for the business to request legal support. We use it for work intake: asking a series of questions, collecting answers, allocating lawyers, managing workflows, and reporting data. But we can now layer on AI to this to extract insights and value. For those just starting their tech transformation journey, it’s worth remembering automation and combining these tools with Gen AI can be powerful, but automation of workflows and document creation remains extremely valuable for many businesses.’
Looking ahead, the survey points to agentic AI – autonomous systems capable of handling complex, multi-step legal processes – as the next frontier.
Commenting on the how AI is transforming the profession, Alessandro Galtieri, deputy GC at Colt Technology Services, draws a parallel with a previous tech revolution as he concludes: ‘Five years from now, a lawyer who doesn’t use AI will be like a lawyer today who doesn’t use email.’
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The GC Legal Tech Pulse 2025 report, produced by Legal Business in association with Thomson Reuters, offers a comprehensive look at how in-house legal teams are embracing technological change, drawing on a survey of over 150 general counsel and senior lawyers. Access the full GC Pulse report here and click here to watch a webinar discussion of the report’s findings.
