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What was once viewed as a productivity tool has become a critical lifeline for many legal teams, with a new Legora report revealing that more than eight in 10 departments now consider AI essential to their daily work.
Artificial intelligence has evolved from an experimental technology into a business-critical tool for in-house legal teams, becoming so deeply embedded in their daily work that, for many, it is now difficult to imagine operating without it.
A new report from Legora has revealed the extent of that reliance, with 87 per cent of in-house legal leaders describing AI as “essential” to their daily work and warning that removing it from their toolkit would significantly disrupt their operations.
Published this month, The Legora ROI Report – The Value of AI for In-House Teams draws on interviews with 30 senior in-house legal leaders from Legora customer organisations across nine countries, conducted by independent legal industry analyst Ari Kaplan.
The report found that AI has become a fundamental part of modern legal operations, evolving from a simple productivity tool into core infrastructure, with almost all respondents (97 per cent) saying it has enabled them to respond to stakeholders more quickly and efficiently.
The benefits extended well beyond faster response times, with 77 per cent of respondents reporting that Legora had accelerated the completion of legal projects, while nine in 10 said the technology had reduced the time needed to get up to speed on new legal matters.
Rather than delivering incremental improvements, respondents said AI had dramatically reduced turnaround times, with tasks that once took days now being completed in just hours.
The impact, however, extends beyond speed.
Legora said AI is helping legal teams unlock new capacity, allowing lawyers to redirect their time towards more strategic work rather than simply completing tasks faster.
The report found that 80 per cent of respondents can now accomplish more in the same time frame, while 87 per cent are spending more time on strategic, higher-value work, and 53 per cent are able to support additional business units.
Reflecting on the findings, Legora chief executive and co-founder Max Junestrand said the findings show AI’s greatest value is not the technology itself, but its ability to seamlessly support legal professionals by acting as a trusted “second set of eyes” and helping teams deliver faster, more informed advice.
“The lawyers we spoke to didn’t talk about the tool. They talked about the second set of eyes that caught a clause in a supplier agreement, or the ability to answer a stakeholder’s question in a meeting instead of a week later,” Junestrand said.
“That is the standard AI has to meet inside a legal department: it needs to be something a team can no longer imagine working without.”
