In-house lawyers have been notoriously slow to embrace the tech-backed delivery of legal services, but our survey of more than 600 global legal spend decision makers shows many believe technology will transform the way they work.
More than half of those surveyed expect automated legal services to have a significant impact on the way corporate legal functions serve business within the next three years.
Larger companies expect to be at the forefront of this change, with FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 legal teams among the strongest believers that new, tech-driven ways of working are imminent.
Respondents were not just talking about back-office systems. Eighty percent of legal heads think advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will have a noticeable impact on the way their teams work sometime within the next decade, though they disagree on how soon change will arrive. More than half (54%) of respondents expect advances in AI to have a noticeable impact on their legal teams in five years, rising to 80% for a ten-year timeline.
Where the money for this new technology will come from remains unclear. Even though few legal teams believe their existing IT systems are adequate, just over one in ten spends more than 5% of its budget on legal tech.
james.wood@legalease.co.uk
For further analysis of our survey findings and analysis of the advance of AI and automation, see ‘Deep Blue sky thinking’.