AI is everywhere but credibility isn’t. 72% of management consultants say they are confident in their use of AI , yet 54% admit to using AI tools without formal approval. This gap between confidence...
See how Nexis+ AI ™ and Nexis Data+ ™ help management consultants power faster research, credible insights, and compliant AI innovation. As a management consultant, d ata is your competitive...
Generative AI (genAI) is embedded in the professional services industry. Whether through client conversations, internal pilots, or vendor tools, most consultants have had at least some exposure to genAI...
Generative AI (genAI) is used daily across industries by approximately half of working professionals. But, according to the latest LexisNexis Future of Work research, genAI adoption is accelerating faster...
Reputational damage can escalate within hours. One comment on social media, one critical blog post, or a sudden spike in negative press, can trigger a series of events that leaves brands in challenging...
* The views expressed in externally authored materials linked or published on this site do not necessarily reflect the views of LexisNexis Legal & Professional.
Generative AI (genAI) is embedded in the professional services industry. Whether through client conversations, internal pilots, or vendor tools, most consultants have had at least some exposure to genAI tools. Understandably, many consultants and other professionals are increasingly interested in how effectively and responsibly it's being used.
In this article, we'll outline five practical ways consultants are applying genAI in their day-to-day work.
But first—why does this matter to organizational leaders?
According to the LexisNexis® Future of Work 2026: Management Consulting Industry Report, genAI adoption is widespread, but governance and control are falling behind. While consultants are highly confident in their use of AI, 54% report using tools without approval and 73% use personal tools for work, highlighting a growing gap between usage and oversight.
When organizational leaders embrace genAI technology by providing guidelines and policies to their employees for approved gen AI tools, productivity can flourish.
Here are five ways consultants can improve speed, accuracy, and outputs using genAI:
Before engaging with potential clients, consultants need a clear view of markets, competitors, and trends. Traditionally, conducting this type of market research meant hours of sifting through reports, news and gathering data before analysis could begin.
GenAI speeds up that process. With specific prompts, consultants can generate tailored research briefs in minutes, freeing up more time for strategic thinking.
Example prompt:
“Summarize the current state of the wearable health tech market using data from Morningstar and recent news. Include market size, growth projections, and key competitors in approximately 250 words.”
Turning analysis into polished deliverables—slides, reports, and executive summaries—remains a core consulting task. While the strategic thinking still depends on your expertise, genAI supports and accelerates early-stage drafting across these formats, helping consultants quickly structure content and focus their effort on refinement and strategic framing.
Content creation is now the top genAI use case for consultants (50%), reinforcing its role in accelerating output across engagements. Consultants can prompt genAI to create initial content for presentations, documents, and emails—reducing time spent on first drafts and formatting.
However, speed introduces risk. Outputs must be validated before reaching clients, particularly as AI-generated content becomes harder to distinguish from human work.
Think of genAI as your junior analyst—useful for generating first drafts, but still requiring your human expertise to ensure client-readiness.
Reviewing and extracting insights from long-form documents—like earnings call transcripts, annual reports, legal rulings, and contracts—is a vital but time-intensive part of consulting work. GenAI reduces the time required to extract key insights by summarizing large volumes of content into focused outputs.
Instead of starting from scratch, you can prompt it to do the initial review for you.
“Summarize the last three years of 10-K filings for Company X, including revenue, margins, and key risks”
In minutes, the AI delivers a focused summary, pulling out the critical numbers and priorities to inform business decisions. This allows consultants to bypass manual review and move directly into interpretation (the strategic thinking clients value).
Output quality depends heavily on how prompts are structured—yet 48% of consultants still struggle with writing effective prompts, increasing the risk of incomplete or misleading summaries.
While genAI accelerates document analysis, it also increases the risk of unvalidated outputs in client-facing work:
As a result, document analysis workflows require built-in validation steps as well as faster extraction. When organizational leaders set the tone with AI governance, validation becomes part of the process.
Take the AI capability quiz
Keeping clients informed on market trends is essential—but staying on top of multiple sources daily can eat into strategic time.
To streamline this process, genAI can scan thousands of news items and generate summaries tailored to client sectors.
“Summarize top retail industry news from the past week, focusing on ecommerce, omnichannel strategy, and Amazon/Walmart.”
Within seconds, genAI delivers a news briefing spotlighting key developments, such as M&A activity, sales forecasts, and leadership shifts.
However, the challenge is no longer access to information but trust—48% of professionals want greater transparency in how AI reaches its conclusions.
Consultants must ensure that AI-generated summaries are accurate, source-backed, and suitable for client-facing insights.
When working with clients, consultants are often handed large datasets such as sales figures, customer data, operational metrics, and more. Interpreting all this information manually can be a slow, time-consuming process.
GenAI can help by quickly analyzing these data sets to surface key trends and insights.
“Analyze this customer purchase data and identify differences in buying behavior between new and returning customers. Highlight peak sales periods and top-performing products by region.”
Surfacing key information efficiently, genAI enables and frees consultants to work on developing strategic recommendations tailored client goals based on the data trends, rather than spending time identifying patterns.
This shift is reflected in how professionals are using genAI today—39% now treat it as a collaborator rather than just a tool
While these are some of today’s most practical applications, the role of genAI in consulting continues to evolve. The latest findings from the LexisNexis® Future of Work 2026: Management Consulting Industry Report show that adoption is advancing rapidly—but not always with the controls needed to support it.
Across industries, the competitive advantage is moving from AI adoption to AI credibility. In consulting, this is defined by how effectively firms ensure insights are credible, validated, and defensible in client-facing work
This is fundamentally about elevating how consultants work, not replacing them. Consultants who can combine genAI-driven speed with rigorous validation and governance will be better positioned to lead engagements, uncover insights faster, and deliver work that stands up to scrutiny.
Is your genAI strategy keeping pace with the industry?
Explore the LexisNexis® Future of Work 2026 reports to understand how firms are balancing speed, insight, and credibility in AI-driven consulting.
Download the Report