AI – an improvement?
In-house lawyers taking RollOnFriday’s In-house Lawyer Survey 2026 have revealed how they want firms to embrace artificial intelligence to polish their work.
In the responses so far, many clients have echoed the attitudes of their companies and expressed confidence that the AI revolution will bring benefits. However, some have raised concerns, noting that AI isn’t 100% accurate (or even 50% in some cases) and therefore stressed the need for supervision.
An in-house lawyer in the energy sector said it was “fine” for firms to use AI “as long as they are clear when they use it, are ready to accept the consequences of inaccuracies and employ strict usage and checking policies by lawyers of the appropriate experience level”.
“It’s the way the industry is moving, so is expected,” said another respondent. “However, of course this comes with the caveat that we would expect all AI outputs to be fully verified by a human lawyer, to weed out an AI-invented bullshit.”
An in-house lawyer in a bank was more sceptical: “Lawsuit waiting to happen. We are watching.” While others were frustrated that duff advice could be traced back to machine learning. One GC said they had a bad experience of “having to redraft a clearly AI produced letter of waffle”.
Some were worried that firms would let their homegrown AI scrape client data so it could fine-tune itself. “I’m still wary about confidential business information being fed into AI tools – and where that sensitive information ends up,” said one client.
One in-house lawyer in finance suggested this was a barrier: “I’m all for it, but our internal governance makes consenting to it a huge pain.”
However, there was also a recognition among some in-house lawyers that just as AI was being used by their organisations, so their firms would be expected to get similarly up-to-date.
“AI is to be embraced rather than feared, as it is the default setting,” said a client in insurance.
“We are doing it in-house and would expect our external firms to do so too,” said an in-house lawyer in banking, “we can’t ignore technological change and need to use it appropriately and intelligently”.
“It’s very clear that genAI will significantly effect many legal workflows, and I expect our firms to be innovating in that regard – and working out how they sell that back to us,” said a GC in technology.
That innovation would be particularly welcome if it brought smaller invoices.
A GC said: “AI is a necessity, and we also need to see the impact of AI in our bills. If we are able to use the same or similar AI tools to advise the business, then the firms will simply be disintermediated unless they are able to demonstrate value add. The areas where they can demonstrate value add are shrinking, which should be deflationary for our legal spend. So firms need to get on board or lose business.”
Many respondents agreed with this, commenting that they expected firms to “pass on the cost benefit of AI integration,”; “deliver cost efficiencies”; and “reduce cost and increase quality”.
Some clients warned that narratives must be transparent about AI contributions. One in-house lawyer said firms use it “badly and very obviously – and then they still try to bill hours for it”.
Clients also wanted to ensure the use of AI wasn’t at the expense of training. One GC said firms had to be open with “how they are managing juniors who might be using it” and “how are they training them to think for themselves? “
Another in-house lawyer agreed that the use of AI is “inevitable,” but opined: “It is a tool like any other, but at the moment I am not sure it is that reliable. I can see it has its uses, but context is so important in all matters and at the moment, certainly, that needs the personal touch. I would be worried about junior lawyers relying on it”.
If you’re in-house, have your say by filling in the survey below (or just get your AI tool to do it for you).