Beyond the AI pilot: What it takes to turn legal AI into practical value

The legal sector’s conversation about artificial intelligence is changing. The question is no longer simply whether lawyers will use AI, but where it adds the most value, how it should be integrated into legal work and what must remain firmly in human hands.

At a recent LexisNexis roundtable, legal professionals came together to exchange candid perspectives on the practical use of AI. The discussion moved beyond experimentation and isolated use cases to explore what responsible, effective adoption looks like in day-to-day legal practice.

One comparison captured the scale of the transition: the profession once moved from physical law books to online legal research. It is now progressing from online research towards AI-assisted research and workflows. This is not simply another technology upgrade. It represents the next evolution in how legal work is carried out.

Efficiency gains are becoming tangible—but time saved is only part of the value

Participants shared examples of AI supporting summarisation, drafting, legal research and data analysis. In one instance, a participant estimated an efficiency gain of approximately 40–45% on a particular piece of work.

40–45%

Estimated efficiency gain reported by one participant on a particular piece of work.

While the result related to one task rather than every legal process, it showed that the benefits of AI are becoming measurable. Work that previously required lawyers to review, organise and synthesise large volumes of information manually can increasingly be completed more efficiently with AI support.

However, the discussion also highlighted the limits of measuring return on investment through time savings alone. The value of AI may also be seen in:

• Improving the quality and consistency of work
• Increasing a team’s capacity without a corresponding increase in resources
• Shortening turnaround times for internal and external clients
• Allowing lawyers to devote more attention to strategy, judgement and higher-value advice

The more useful question may therefore be not simply “How many hours did AI save?” but “What did those saved hours allow the legal team to do better?”

AI can reveal insights that are difficult to uncover manually

AI’s ability to process large volumes of legal information creates opportunities that go beyond accelerating existing tasks. It can also help lawyers identify patterns and connections that would be difficult to detect through manual review alone.

One example discussed was the analysis of a judge’s body of judgments to identify recurring patterns in reasoning, preferences and language. Used carefully, this type of analysis could help litigators better understand judicial tendencies, test their own arguments and inform litigation strategy.

More broadly, analysing a substantial body of cases or judgments may reveal themes, trends and relationships that no individual lawyer could practically identify within the same timeframe. The value lies not in asking AI to determine the strategy, but in giving lawyers a broader evidence base from which to develop and challenge their own thinking.

The focus is shifting from individual prompts to complete legal workflows

Early use of generative AI often relied on a long sequence of individual prompts. The lawyer had to decide each next step, transfer context between prompts and assemble the outputs into a finished piece of work.

The roundtable showed growing interest in a more structured approach: AI that can support an entire legal task, such as contract review, document comparison or drafting, through a guided workflow.

This shift matters because legal work is rarely a single question-and-answer exchange. It involves multiple connected steps, each requiring context, review and professional judgement. Workflow-based AI can help make those steps more consistent and repeatable while allowing the lawyer to review the plan, verify the output and remain in control throughout the process.

From prompts to guided work with Protégé^™ Skills

Lexis+^® with Protégé Skills reflects this shift towards more structured legal AI. Skills are guided, reusable workflows created for specific legal tasks, helping lawyers move from an objective to a completed piece of work without having to construct and manage every prompt individually. Users can select a relevant Skill, provide the necessary context and documents, and review the proposed work plan before Protégé begins. By bringing greater structure to tasks such as review, comparison, analysis and drafting, Skills can reduce manual prompting while helping legal teams work with greater consistency, visibility and control.

For higher-risk work, AI may be most useful as a challenger

One of the most practical approaches discussed was to use AI as a second perspective rather than the primary decision-maker.

For higher-risk matters, a lawyer might first develop an independent analysis and then ask AI to test the argument, identify potentially overlooked authorities, expose gaps or challenge underlying assumptions. This preserves the lawyer’s ownership of the reasoning while using AI to reduce the risk of blind spots.

The distinction is important. The aim is not to outsource legal judgement, but to strengthen it. Used in this way, AI can act as a demanding reviewer—one that helps lawyers interrogate their own work before it reaches a client, counterparty or court.

As AI becomes more convincing, verification becomes more important

Better AI does not remove the need for verification. In some respects, it makes verification even more critical.

An obviously incorrect answer is usually easy to reject. A more significant risk is an answer that is clearly written, logically structured and highly persuasive, but contains a subtle factual or legal error. The quality of the presentation can create misplaced confidence in the accuracy of the underlying content.

This reinforces the importance of using AI grounded in authoritative legal sources and ensuring that lawyers can easily trace, review and verify the authorities supporting an answer. Speed and fluency are valuable, but neither is a substitute for accuracy, transparency and professional accountability.

Junior lawyers can progress faster—but development must be redesigned

Participants also considered what AI adoption means for the next generation of lawyers. By helping with foundational research, drafting and analysis, AI may enable junior lawyers to contribute to more sophisticated work earlier in their careers.

That opportunity also creates a training challenge. Many of the tasks AI can now accelerate have traditionally helped junior lawyers develop legal reasoning, attention to detail and professional judgement through repeated practice. If those tasks change, organisations will need to be more deliberate about how the underlying skills are taught.

Training should therefore extend beyond how to use an AI tool. Junior lawyers need to learn how to question an output, verify sources, recognise plausible errors, understand when AI is inappropriate and take responsibility for the final work. Critical thinking and legal judgement become more—not less—important when AI is part of the process.

Moving forward with judgement at the centre

The roundtable reflected a profession moving beyond curiosity and isolated pilots towards more practical questions of implementation. AI is already changing how lawyers research, draft, review and analyse information. Its value will increasingly come from how well it is integrated into legal workflows, supported by authoritative sources and governed by clear professional oversight.

The question is no longer merely whether lawyers will use AI. It is where to use it, how much to trust it, how to verify it and how to incorporate it into legal work while keeping professional judgement at the centre.

Continue the conversation

Legal AI will continue to reshape the profession, and the most valuable insights often come from exchanging practical experiences with peers. Join the LexisNexis^® AI Insider Programme to receive invitations to upcoming webinars, roundtables and other events for Hong Kong legal professionals. You can also explore how Lexis+ with Protégé Skills supports the move from individual prompts towards guided, repeatable legal workflows.

Join the AI Insider Programme

Explore Lexis+ with Protégé Skills