2023 Bright Insight: The 2023 National Legal Sector Benchmark Survey Results

07 T E C H NO LOGY

Has your firm explored augmenting work with artificial intelligence (AI)?

Artificial intelligence is infiltrating the legal sector at scale. In fact, 59% of firms surveyed in this year’s publication are either currently using AI or plan to do so in the future . High-revenue firms have proven to give AI the most consideration with 87% of Global 100 firms and 83% of Am Law 50 firms exploring the technology. Firms with lower gross revenues, and those that aren’t on the Global 100 or Am Law 200 lists, show a lower instance of having explored AI to augment their work.

For the 42% of firms that plan on using AI in the future, and the 17% that already do, how they intend to use the technology varies. Attorney-intensive work that firms are looking to augment with AI include legal research (61% of ‘yes’ firms), expertise (38%), and document analytics & generation (27%). Firms are also considering using AI to augment document management (47%) and e-discovery (20%), which typically falls on paralegals and legal administrative staff.

Yes, we are currently using AI 17%

No 41%

Legal technology venture capital inflow

Yes, we plan on

If yes, in what areas have you considered/ are using AI?

Capital Invested (4-Qtr Rolling) Deal Count (4-Qtr Rolling), rhs

using AI in the future 42%

Pandemic High $1,358

$1,500

150

Legal Research

61%

Document Management

47%

$1,000

100

% No

Pre-Pandemic High $522

Expertise Automation

38%

13%

Global 100

17%

Am Law 1-50

Predictive Analytics

27%

$500

50

46%

Am Law 51-100

Millions (USD)

Contract & Litigation Document Analytics & Generation

Number of Deals

27%

43%

Am Law 200

76%

None of the Above

E-Discovery

20%

$0

0

Other

5%

Source: Cushman & Wakefield Research

2017 Q1

2021 Q1

2018 Q1

2016 Q1

2019 Q1

2022 Q1

2017 Q3

2021 Q3

2023 Q1

2018 Q3

2016 Q3

2019 Q3

2020 Q1

2022 Q3

2020 Q3

Source: Cushman & Wakefield Research

Source: Cushman & Wakefield Research, Pitchbook

26 | BRIGHT INSIGHT