Navigate the Impact of Generative AI on Your In-House Counsel Team

Many in-house counsel envision a future in which the practice of law is improved by the use of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.

Generative AI & the Legal Profession Study & Methodology

A groundbreaking nationwide survey conducted by LexisNexis® revealed some important insights regarding how the emergence of generative AI technology is impacting the legal profession. We surveyed 4,180 people — including 1,176 lawyers, 1,239 law students and 1,765 consumers — across the U.S. You can download a free copy of the study here.

AI Insights for In-House Counsel

Our survey found that 4 in 10 lawyers are researching and exploring opportunities to use generative AI in their work, with specific potential use cases identified in the areas of researching matters (59%), drafting documents (53%) and document analysis (40%) leading the way.

These early adopters see potential benefits from generative AI, such as:

• Increasing efficiency (61%)
• Streamlining work (46%)
• Improving work quality (25%)

An overwhelming 73% of in-house counsel said they expect to be made aware of the use of generative AI tools by the law firms with which they work, and 58% indicated that they expect their outside counsel to give them a choice regarding the use of generative AI tools.

These empirical survey results illustrate that in-house counsel are open-minded — and even bullish — about the future adoption of generative AI technology applications. They are deeply invested in which tools are used by their outside law firms in these early days of the commercial availability of AI tools.

AI "hallucinations” in the legal space

The legal industry was given a sobering glimpse into these risks when the New York Times reported in May that a lawyer who used ChatGPT to assist him with some legal research had submitted a brief in New York federal court that contained case citations entirely made up out of thin air by ChatGPT.

This unfortunate incident was the result of a critical flaw in the currently available versions of open-web generative AI tools. They are prone to using contextual clues that cause them to “hallucinate” believable answers that are in fact patently false. This disturbing risk was illustrated in recent months by other lawyers who blogged about how ChatGPT surfaced law review articles that did not actually exist and theoretically on-point case precedents that only existed in the imagination of ChatGPT.

Indeed, chief information officers at two large law firms told Legaltech News that, while they are excited about the potential of generative AI tools to improve productivity, they fear that “relying on the commercial ChatGPT at this stage can be ethically dubious.”

Lexis+ AI platform

LexisNexis® has been leading the way in the development of legal AI tools for years, working to provide lawyers with products that leverage the power of AI technology to support key legal tasks while establishing important safeguards and data control programs to make sure that we are abiding by responsible AI development principles. We’re now pioneering the use of generative AI for legal research, analysis and the presentation of results with the launch of Lexis+ AI.

As Today’s General Counsel reported, our new Lexis+ AI platform “transforms legal work but does not hallucinate.” This is because Lexis+ AI “leverages trusted and authoritative content directly from LexisNexis throughout its development,” they said.

We believe Lexis+ AI will transform legal workflows for corporate legal departments by leveraging leading-edge generative AI technology in a responsible fashion with trusted content and insights from LexisNexis.

LexisNexis is currently inviting in-house counsel to collaborate with us in the months ahead by sharing their expertise and feedback as we continue to refine our generative AI solutions to support corporate legal departments.

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