Corporate Legal AI Adoption Doubles: What GCs Need to Do Next
Generative AI use in corporate legal departments has almost doubled year over year, according to part two of The General Counsel Report from FTI Consulting and Relativity. Eighty-seven percent of general counsel now report team-level use, up from 44% in 2025. AI has moved into strategy, with 39% listing it as a priority for improving efficiency and outcomes. Formal tech roadmaps also hit a new high at 53%, and roughly 70% plan to invest in new tools over the next 12 months.
The headline numbers
- 87% of GCs report gen AI use on their teams (44% in 2025).
- 39% say AI is a strategic priority for legal department performance.
- 53% now have a formal technology roadmap (up from 25%).
- ~70% plan to invest in new legal technologies in the next year.
"Generative AI has become a fixture in the majority of legal departments... appropriate upskilling will be imperative," said Sophie Ross, Global Chief Executive Officer of FTI Technology. "General counsel will need to provide their departments with structured training, education and expert support... and underpin those efforts with technology roadmaps that enable innovation alongside risk mitigation."
"The era of the 'Luddite Lawyer' is over," added David Horrigan, Discovery Counsel and Legal Education Director at Relativity. Adoption rose from 20% in 2023 to 87% in this year's report, and CIOs now see "digital ambassadors" emerging in legal teams-signals of a new "TechnoLawyer" era.
Where legal teams are actually using generative AI
- Summarization: 83% using or testing
- Identifying contract clauses: 63%
- Audio/video transcription: 53%
- Foreign language analysis: 40%
- First-pass review: 37%
Legal research, e-discovery, document review, contract drafting, and contract analysis are the comfort zones. The pattern is clear: start with structured workflows that have clear playbooks and human validation.
Why this matters for in-house counsel
AI is no longer a side project. It's a lever for cycle-time reduction, cost control, and quality gains under tight headcount and budget pressure. With CIO collaboration increasing, legal's credibility now hinges on policy, training, and measurable business results.
A practical 90-day playbook
- Publish a clear policy: Define permitted and restricted use cases, data handling, confidentiality, privilege, and export controls. Require human-in-the-loop review for any work product used in matters.
- Refresh the tech roadmap: Tie AI initiatives to KPIs (cycle time, review accuracy, outside counsel spend). Sequence a 12-month plan by impact and dependency.
- Pilot 2-3 high-yield use cases: Prioritize summarization, clause detection, and transcription. Set baselines and success metrics before launch.
- Build guardrails: Use secure, enterprise-grade environments. Control prompts and outputs, log activity, and restrict sensitive data. Validate model provenance, apply RAG where apt, and run red-team tests.
- Upskill the team: Provide role-based training and hands-on labs. See practical resources like AI for Legal and the AI Learning Path for Paralegals.
- Stand up AI governance: Form a small working group (Legal Ops, Privacy, Security, IT). Define review cadences, exception handling, and incident response for AI-related issues.
- Vendor diligence: Assess data use, retention, access, encryption, SOC 2/ISO 27001, model update cadence, and indemnities. Get DPAs and clear SLAs on accuracy and uptime.
- E-discovery integration: Automate transcription, dedupe, and first-pass coding with human QC on privilege and key issues. Document defensibility.
- Contracting workflow: Align clause libraries and playbooks with AI prompts. Gate auto-drafting behind risk thresholds and require approvals for deviations.
- Legal research discipline: Verify outputs against primary sources and maintain citation trails. Many bar associations emphasize tech competence; see ABA Model Rule 1.1, Comment 8.
- Measure relentlessly: Track time saved per task, accuracy, exception rates, spend reduction, SLA adherence, and user adoption. Report quarterly to the C-suite.
Partnering with CIOs and "digital ambassadors"
The report flags growing involvement from technology leaders and the rise of legal "digital ambassadors." Give those champions clear mandates: validate tools, standardize playbooks, track metrics, and coach peers. This keeps AI grounded in real matters-not in abstract pilots.
What to watch next
- Procurement will raise the bar on vendor security, privacy, and indemnities.
- Model updates will force ongoing validation of accuracy and bias controls.
- Regulatory guidance will keep evolving; align with frameworks like the NIST AI Risk Management Framework.
Methodology at a glance
Part two of The General Counsel Report draws on one-on-one interviews conducted in September 2025 with 30 chief legal officers and general counsel (63% with global roles; 59% at organizations with over $500M in annual revenue). It also includes interviews with technology and transformation leaders for additional perspectives.
A separate quantitative survey by Censuswide in summer 2025 captured responses from 224 general counsel and chief legal officers at organizations with over $100M in revenue and more than 1,000 employees across South America, North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
Bottom line: AI adoption is here. The advantage goes to legal teams that pair it with policy, training, governance, and measurable impact.
Your membership also unlocks:
