Advancing AI in Legal Teams
Legal leaders across Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia are focused on enhancing their teams' AI capabilities. They want legal functions to be faster, smarter, and more resilient. Yet, despite investments, many struggle with stalled pilots, slow adoption, and limited impact. The core issue is fluency with AI, not just having the tools.
Access vs. Readiness
Many assume that providing AI access means the team is ready to use it effectively. According to Factor’s GenAI in Legal Benchmarking Report, 61% of legal departments give most or all team members access to AI tools. But fewer than 19% feel very confident using them, and 20% say they need help. The challenge isn’t installing software—it’s about building real capability. Access alone doesn’t teach lawyers how or when to use AI.
Designing for the Majority
Most AI programs focus on early adopters—the top 5%. But legal teams mostly consist of curious yet cautious members. To drive widespread adoption, training must meet everyone where they are, build confidence, and foster fluency across the broader team.
Misunderstanding Generative AI
Many treat generative AI like traditional legal tech—static tools that either work or don’t. But GenAI is different. It’s more accessible and doesn’t require programming skills. It demands users to clearly frame problems, engage actively with outputs, and guide the system toward useful results. Expecting instant, polished answers misses the point. GenAI tools improve through interaction and refinement.
Context and Orchestration
Even the best AI needs context, workflow design, and human input to perform well. Without coordinating tools, people, and processes, AI capabilities remain underused.
Changing Mindsets
Lawyers are trained to eliminate ambiguity, but GenAI introduces possibilities rather than certainties. AI outputs depend heavily on context and need interpretation. This new dynamic can feel uncomfortable. Without cultural change, pilots won’t scale. Success comes from helping legal teams understand GenAI’s workings, boundaries, and how to use and challenge its outputs confidently.
Preparing Your Team
Unlike previous waves of legal technology, GenAI tools require more than simple training or rollout. Adoption means building new skills, instincts, and mindsets. Here’s how to make progress:
Develop an AI Mindset
Legal professionals should understand how to think alongside AI tools, not just operate them. This includes knowing what GenAI can and can’t do, where it fits in workflows, and how it changes approaches to tasks. Teams must identify relevant use cases, understand AI’s role in decision-making, and assess risks confidently.
Teach Interacting with AI as a Core Skill
AI fluency requires active engagement. Prompting is the main mode of interaction, but it’s more than commands—it’s a mindset shift. Lawyers must engage with GenAI creatively and intentionally, often unlearning assumptions from other technologies.
Stress Testing and Verification
Lawyers don’t need to be engineers but must know when to trust AI and when to challenge it. Training should include how to interrogate outputs, check for hallucinations, and flag weak assumptions.
Real Integration into Daily Work
Embed AI into existing tasks like summarizing agreements, triaging intake, and identifying risk patterns. Practical use builds momentum.
Thinking Like Builders
Adopting GenAI is about creating new approaches to legal tasks. Leading teams understand how GenAI works and apply it creatively with critical thinking and judgment. Lawyers don’t need to code, but they should know how AI fits into workflows. Successful teams treat legal use cases like product ideas: defining needs, prototyping solutions, and iterating until effective.
Building Fluency
Progress comes from deliberate fluency-building, not chasing the latest models or flashy pilots. Fluency involves specific skills that reshape problem-solving and value delivery:
- Practicing AI on realistic, legal-specific tasks in a safe environment
- Learning to prompt with structure, context, and clarity
- Stress testing outputs for risk, bias, and hallucinations
- Embedding AI into routine workflows, not hypothetical ones
- Collaborating across legal, operations, IT, and business teams to drive adoption
Success depends on building fluency where it matters most: in everyday legal work.
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