One of my favorite pastimes in recent months has been reading newly released reports on legal professionals’ use of generative artificial intelligence (AI). As the author of one of those reports, the 2025 AffiniPay Legal Industry Report, I find it particularly interesting to review the analyses and insights offered in other publications.
Lately, new reports have been announced nearly every other week. While that may seem excessive, this onslaught of legal AI data is really quite helpful. The technology is advancing quickly and is increasingly pervasive, so every statistic provides much-needed visibility into overarching adoption trends across the profession.
One recent example is the Ironclad 2025 State of AI Report, which was released in early June. It’s based on survey responses from 800 legal practitioners equally split between law firms and corporate legal teams.
One of the most notable data points from the survey relates to AI adoption, which is at 69% overall. However, there is a 26-point gap between law firms and in-house teams, with law firm adoption at 55% and in-house at 81%.
These AI adoption levels are significantly higher than those from most other recent reports. Generally speaking, most other sources indicate that AI adoption in the legal profession is much lower, with approximately one-third of respondents using AI for work-related purposes.
It’s unclear to me why the Ironclad percentages are so much higher. Perhaps it has to do with the phrasing of the survey question or the population that was surveyed. The report indicates that an independent research firm with double opt-in conducted the survey, but in the absence of further information, it’s difficult to hypothesize the reason for this statistical disparity.
Another really interesting finding is that 25% of respondents reported being comfortable with AI acting as an agent on their behalf. This statistic is surprising since the concept of AI agents is a relatively new one.
Legal professionals tend to be risk-averse and are often unwilling to be the first to adopt experimental technologies. That a full quarter of those surveyed are “comfortable” with this emerging AI use case is both unusual and promising. One reason could be that positive pandemic-era experiences with technology, combined with the obvious time-saving benefits of AI, have led the profession to be more receptive to cutting-edge technologies.
Other survey findings support this hypothesis: legal professionals are convinced that AI is a game-changing tool. The vast majority — 93% — agree that AI has improved the way they work, and 96% say it has made achieving business objectives easier.
Another 57% say it allows them to focus more on strategic work, and 48% value AI for managing routine tasks, including case law summarization (61%), document review for litigation (45%), high-level research (42%), drafting legal documents (42%), and communication with stakeholders (37%). Of those who use it for communication purposes, 64% agree that AI helps them communicate better.
Survey respondents also reported other benefits from using AI, with 76% agreeing that AI helped decrease feelings of burnout, and 46% percent believing AI creates more career opportunities. Job replacement concerns dropping 8% year over year across all respondents.
However, not all legal professionals view AI’s impact on their livelihoods through rose-colored glasses. Just over a third (36%) of respondents believe AI creates fewer opportunities for legal professionals, with those in firms (40%) more likely to be worried than their in-house counterparts (33%).
Other hurdles cited regarding AI adoption included security issues (48%). Accuracy concerns are close behind at 44%, up 4% from last year. Other challenges mentioned were training deficiencies (24%) and issues navigating AI policies (23%).
One interesting question asked in the survey that I’ve not seen addressed elsewhere was whether AI should be regulated by the government. The overwhelming majority of respondents, 75%, think it needs some type of governmental oversight, while only 9% believe AI should be wholly unregulated.
Overall, this report offers an interesting snapshot of legal professionals’ perspectives on generative AI. From surprisingly high adoption rates to an unexpected comfort with agent-based use cases, these findings add food for thought to the ongoing AI conversation.
For those closely following this space or who are simply interested in how our profession is approaching AI implementation, this report is worth reviewing and comparing with others released this year to better understand where we’ve been, what’s next, and where we’re headed after that.
Nicole Black is a Rochester, New York attorney and Principal Legal Insight Strategist at AffiniPay, parent company of MyCase, LawPay, CASEpeer, and Docketwise. She’s been blogging since 2005, has written a weekly column for the Daily Record since 2007, is the author of Cloud Computing for Lawyers, co-authors Social Media for Lawyers: the Next Frontier, and co-authors Criminal Law in New York. She’s easily distracted by the potential of bright and shiny tech gadgets, along with good food and wine. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikiblack and she can be reached at [email protected].