Yesterday while I was doom scrolling through LinkedIn, I came across a recent survey conducted by LinkedIn on 16,000 professionals that revealed that lawyers are a profession that is least likely to use AI at work. Only doing a little bit better than the military. People in the comment section, a lot of whom were lawyers, weren't surprised. They gave reasons like:
1. We are risk-averse professionals.
2. We are a profession that is slow to adapt to change.
3. The cost of LegalTech is too high for midsized to solo practitioners.
4. The fear of hallucinations.
5. The decision-makers in the firm determine whether AI is adopted.
6. No time to conduct serious firm-wide testing.
7. Not enough time to train associates.
8. Too risky, and then the firm needs to take out insurance.
9. I can't find AI that meets my needs.
10. What is AI?
The last reason is quite funny but true. Many lawyers don't know what AI is exactly, and some are unaware that the programs they are using have AI embedded into them. Well, at least that's what one founder in the comment section pointed out. The survey is a very small study and isn't indicative of the attitude of the entire profession to the use of AI in their work. Regardless, it's still shocking that the profession that has the most to gain is one of the least likely to use AI in their work.
I'm curious to know the age range of the lawyers surveyed and the type of law they practice. If LinkedIn surveyed younger lawyers, they may find that a lot of them are now using AI in their practice. Maybe as much as the other professions. For the lawyers who stated that they don't use AI, we would like to know why lol. I'm keeping an eye open for more of these surveys/reports/studies and I'll let you know what I find. If you are a tech and business-savvy individual the findings can reveal plenty of business opportunities for you.
We are still in the early stages of the LegalTech industry and we're going to see a lot more change in the legal industry in the next few years than we saw in the past few years.
Yours in LegalTech,
Priscilla
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