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As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in legal practice, law firms face a growing challenge: getting lawyers to trust and actively use the technology.
As part of the AI Innovate 2026 live stream, host Naomi Neilson spoke with LexisNexis’ head of core product, Seeta Bodke, about overcoming adoption barriers, maintaining professional accountability, and turning AI-driven efficiencies into meaningful business outcomes.
The discussion explored how firms can rethink legal workflows, improve pricing confidence, strengthen client relationships, and ensure that the time saved through AI transforms into something that is of greater value.
Overcoming barriers to AI adoption in law firms
For law firms, Bodke highlighted that successful AI adoption starts with recognising that lawyers’ scepticism is not necessarily a barrier, but is rather an essential part of their professional responsibility.
“I think scepticism isn’t a flaw in the system. It is the system. I think early on, when ChatGPT launched, what a lot of AI tools did was that they asked lawyers just to trust them,” Bodke said.
“They didn’t really tell you how they came up with those responses.
“The answer is not to reduce that scepticism, not to make them less sceptical, but to build tools that they can trust.”
However, trust alone is not enough. Bodke highlighted the importance of having transparent internal guidelines so lawyers understand where AI can be used, what requires additional checking and where professional accountability remains.
“It’s not so much about giving them more and more features, it’s about telling them how to use the features that they’ve got at hand right now.”
She also emphasised that responsibility for adoption must be assisted by firm leadership, rather than ultimately left to individual lawyers.
“The responsibility sits across. But then if it’s everyone’s job, it becomes no one’s job because you need to have someone to take accountability.”
Purchasing AI is only the beginning, as Bodke noted: “The purchase is a procurement decision, but the adoption is actually a practice decision.”
“I think that’s important, the purchases happen. That’s not the finish line, it’s a start line for the practice to ensure that adoption happens.”
Redefining legal work and pricing
While AI can significantly reduce the time lawyers spend on research, drafting and other routine tasks, Bodke argued that its greatest value lies in what lawyers do with the time that they save.
“It’s not about getting the AI to do the thinking for you; it’s about getting to the thinking faster,” Bodke said.
“We’ve put so much into grounding answers in trusted legal content or the content that lawyers bring to us, their own content. Checking is that whole game there.”
Bodke argued that AI should just be able to make legal work faster and not create another layer of work for lawyers.
“If these AI tools aren’t designed right, we would have just invented a more expensive way to check, and you would actually spend more time checking than doing,” Bodke said.
She highlighted that cross-checking should be implemented into the way that lawyers read and review AI-generated work, with the level of scrutiny reflecting the risk involved.
“My test is if checking is going to take longer than doing, then we are doing something wrong in building these products; we are not building the right products; we failed,” she said.
Bodke pointed out the need for firms to reconsider how saved time is utilised, especially when it comes to professional development and client service.
“The risk truly is not that the time is disappearing, but the risk is that you’re doing the same thing over and over and again with that time that you saved and you’re not doing something new with it,” she said.
