Only 7% of legal teams have cracked the AI code, survey finds

However, despite the growing enthusiasm surrounding AI, new research suggests that most in-house legal teams are still struggling to move beyond trialling the technology and unlock its full value.

According to a new report from Axiom, only a small proportion of in-house legal teams have successfully scaled this technology across their operations, reaching a stage where its use is consistent, optimised, and measured.

The 2026 Axiom In-House Legal AI Report gathered insights from over 500 in-house legal leaders across six countries, including Australia, the United States, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom, to offer a snapshot of how legal teams are embracing AI and the obstacles preventing many from realising its full potential.

While 82 per cent of legal teams are using AI in some capacity, the survey found that just 7 per cent have reached a level of maturity where the technology is consistently deployed, optimised, and measured across the entire legal function.

At the opposite end of the AI maturity curve, 18 per cent of legal teams reported they have yet to embark on their AI journey.

The remaining respondents fell across various stages of adoption, with more than a quarter (26 per cent) saying they were still exploring the technology’s potential, while 17 per cent were testing its capabilities through pilot programs.

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The largest cohort, representing 29 per cent of respondents, said they were actively expanding AI adoption across their legal operations, while a further 15 per cent had progressed to deploying multiple AI use cases.

Despite this progress, 5 per cent said they were still struggling to secure widespread adoption within their organisations.

According to Axiom, the divide between the small group of legal teams successfully scaling AI and those struggling to gain traction has little to do with budget or resources.

Instead, it stressed that success comes down to “discipline”, with the highest-performing teams following a deliberate and consistent approach to implementation rather than chasing technology for technology’s sake.

For legal departments hoping to join their ranks, the report identified five practices that consistently separate AI leaders from the rest: investing in people, starting with manageable projects, establishing governance frameworks early, clearly defining the problems they want AI to solve, and seeking guidance from experienced partners and advisers.

The challenge appears even greater across the Asia-Pacific region, where relatively few legal teams have advanced beyond the early stages of adoption.

The survey found that fewer than one in eight APAC legal teams have reached an optimisation stage in their AI journey.

Just 3 per cent of legal teams in the region reported that they had optimised AI usage across their operations, while nearly a third (29 per cent) said they were still exploring the technology’s potential and identifying suitable use cases.

By comparison, 10 per cent of legal teams in the United States have optimised AI usage across their departments, while just 5 per cent of their counterparts in the United Kingdom have reached the same stage.

Speaking about the findings, Axiom’s chief legal AI and talent officer, Sara Morgan, shared that the greatest obstacles to AI success are not the tools themselves, but the substantial effort required to choose, implement, support, and sustain them within legal teams.

“The top disappointments teams report are not about AI performance. They are about the work of adoption: tool selection, implementation time, training burden, and ongoing maintenance,” she said.

Rather than focusing solely on purchasing AI tools, Morgan argued that successful legal teams are investing in the systems and support structures needed to ensure the technology delivers practical outcomes.

“What ranks first is strong integration with existing workflows. What follows [are] well-defined use cases, investment in training and change management, and internal expertise. None of those is a tool decision. All of them sit around the tool,” she said.

For Morgan, the difference between experimentation and genuine transformation comes down to execution.

While AI adoption continues to accelerate across the legal profession, she argued that the teams generating the strongest returns are not those moving the fastest but those taking a disciplined, methodical approach to implementation.

“The teams getting AI right are not the fastest movers. They are the most disciplined ones. They started with a problem worth solving. They picked one use case to prove,” she said.

“They configured their tools for the actual work. They measured from day one. They brought their people along. And when that worked, they did it again.

“The majority of the market cannot do that today. That is the gap. The services layer is where the gap gets closed. And the data makes clear the market knows it.”