Now that Lawbot3000 has replaced all his colleagues, he has to make office small talk with himself.
RollOnFriday’s Best Law Firms to Work At 2026 survey is well underway, with over 2,000 respondents having had their say about their firms – so far.
A hot topic emerging this year is the extent to which firms are encouraging their staff to use AI.
Earlier this year, Shoosmiths announced that it would provide an extra bonus pot of £1million to staff if they collectively made one million ‘prompts’ on Microsoft Copilot. A lawyer at the firm has said that while it would “be easy to criticise” the idea, they said they believed that “in time” it would “lead to the adoption of better, more suitable AI tools”.
But other staff were less positive about embracing their robot overlords. A White & Case staffer complained that the US firm was “worryingly obsessed with AI”, while a TLT trainee was tired of management “going on” about the technology.
It has been a balancing act for firms; while many are increasingly making use of AI, it’s clear that expert supervision is still required, and the SRA has warned lawyers not to rely on machine learning. It’s certainly been a high-risk for robot cock-ups. Very high-risk.
It’s also caused some staff to worry about their job security. When Freshfields recently commenced a redundancy process affecting paralegals, the firm cited “a fast-changing legal market” and “investing in technology” – which many have interpreted as meaning an investment in AI. A staffer at the Magic Circle firm suggested that the rise in technology had changed the culture for the worse and impacted jobs, with lawyers leaving as “they can be replaced by AI”.
BCLP business staff redundancies this year “were because of AI”, claimed one staffer, adding that they were “lubing up” for their “future AI masters.”
However, those future AI masters had their defenders. A BCLP colleague commented that they were “excited by the opportunity to change BCLP’s narrative to one that has steadied the ship, is embracing technology and innovation – especially AI – throughout the organization, is investing in growth markets and people, and is living up to the standard it has set as a full-service global firm”. Which may or may not have been drafted by ChatGPT.
Others are hunkering down: a Baker McKenzie business services staff member admitted that their focus was on “surviving the GEN AI revolution.”
Work in a law firm? Have your say and rate how satisfied you are in RollOnFriday’s Best Law Firms to Work At 2026 survey. If you prefer, you can respond using this Google poll.
Others complained that the product just wasn’t good enough. An associate at a US firm commented that a lot of their colleagues were using AI tools such as ‘Harvey’. However, they opined that “it is essentially ChatGPT in a legal wrapper, but somehow does our job worse”.
They stated that feedback from their firm trialling Harvey was that it “can’t handle lengthy interactions”, and crashed if too many were uploaded at once.
Other supposed shortfalls included an inability to recognise all words in a pdf, or to do calculations, and the infliction of “inaccuracy fatigue” on its human checkers.
Work in a law firm? Rate how satisfied you are in RollOnFriday’s Best Law Firms to Work At 2026 survey below. If you prefer, you can respond using this Google poll.