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Key Takeaways
AI is taking over in the legal sector, with two thirds of legal professionals using innovative models to streamline their workloads and buy-back their billable hours. However, the speed of adoption hasn’t come without its risks. Credibility concerns, mounting instances of AI “hallucinations”, and tech fragmentation issues are prompting firms to restructure their approach. How? Via robust AI governance frameworks, centralized and secure tools, and firm-wide training.
An AI-enabled digital workplace for legal teams
The legal industry is infamous for its slow adoption of disruptive technologies. But, in recent years, firms far and wide have taken a sharp u-turn.
Currently, 54% of legal professionals highlight “technology selection and deployment” as their primary challenge, usurping “work volume” for the very first time (ranked as the second top challenge at 52%).
AI sits at the center of this technological revolution. Indeed, 69% of legal professionals already use generative AI for work purposes — and with great success. 38% of users claim it saves them 1-5 hours per week, with a further 23% saving 6+ hours.
However, while this unprecedented spike in adoption certainly shows promise, it hasn’t come without its risks.
The real risk of AI in legal
The pace of AI governance has yet to catch up with the pace of adoption. This isn’t unique to the legal sector; it’s a universal challenge faced by all industries across the globe. That being said, heavily regulated organizations are taking the hardest hit because they have the most to lose.
As it stands, a majority of legal firms lack any AI-specific guardrails, training, or policies. And though sentiment still remains positive, many professionals express growing concerns over the trustworthiness of AI’s output.
Consider the following statistics:
- Over half of firms do not provide training on the responsible use of generative AI. Only 11% currently provide mandatory training.
- 73% of legal professionals say hallucinated outputs are their top AI concern, followed by the loss of human judgement and data security.
- Only 7% of professionals report their firm has a documented AI governance policy that is actually followed. 14% have no AI governance framework at all.
- 41% suffer from fragmented, disparate AI tools that result in them having to fall back on “manual workarounds” between platforms.
To summarize: while AI is having a positive impact on efficiency and productivity, its rollout has, in many ways, snowballed out of control.
Firms are already facing real world consequences of this.
In 2025, the UK’s high court issued a sobering warning to lawyers after multiple instances of fictitious, AI-generated case citations and quotations were used during trials. In one damages case against the Qatar National Bank, a claimant used 18 falsified case-law citations. Lawyers that use falsified evidence are of course at risk of sanctions and potential referral to the police.
How to adopt AI in a sustainable and compliant way
AI has its place in the office and, when carefully supervised, the courtroom too. But law firms and legal professionals must proceed with caution.
One slip, and you could do significant damage. Not just to your firm and its clients, but to the justice system as a whole.
In the following 5 tips, we help you adopt AI in a secure, sustainable, and compliant way.
1. Select your pilot use cases
Don’t let the AI hype carry you away. Ultimately, AI won’t be necessary for every task in your firm. In some instances — such as building cases for the courtroom — you may want to avoid its use altogether. (Unless you’re willing to fact check every AI-generated output to ascertain its accuracy.) In other scenarios, such as contract review cycles, you may be able to use process automation instead.
The key is to choose use cases that drive efficiency without compromising quality. Where do the current bottlenecks lie? How can AI ease workloads and speed-up operations? From there, narrow down your use cases.
Document-specific AI chatbots and localized AI search within your digital workplace are two great starting points. Both of these examples generate summaries using your data exclusively. Lawyers can find information, understand contract changes, research cases, and familiarize themselves with internal policies at speed — without any risk of “hallucinations” or inaccuracies.
Other popular AI use cases in the legal industry include; brainstorming; drafting correspondence and documents; and editing documents. Though some firms are beginning to experiment with predictive AI for litigation and due diligence, too.
2. Identify AI tools that don’t further fragment your tech stack
As we stated earlier, many legal firms are facing a spiralling fragmentation problem. There are too many platforms in their tech stack, and many of them don’t integrate well at all. Ironically, this is causing yet more friction.
Bearing this in mind, try to adopt AI capabilities within the tools you already use to prevent tool fatigue, manual workarounds, and mounting stress. Ideally, these tools should be easy to use and secure.
To highlight what we mean, let’s take a look at Claromentis: a digital workplace solution comprising intranet, automation, e-learning, policy management, and knowledge management tools. Claromentis unifies your people, communications, and operations in one intuitive solution. This makes our AI capabilities all the more powerful.
Our AI search, for instance, parses through every document, training, policy, communication, user profile, and automated process in your portal. With this wealth of data to hand, it can generate comprehensive and — most importantly — accurate AI summaries. There are no hallucinations, falsified quotations, or missing pockets of data. And every word is backed up with a linked, relevant citation. What’s more, the tool works alongside your strict permissions settings, ensuring users only see information they’re authorized to see. So there are no risks of data breaches either.
This standard of secure and accurate AI is evident in Claromentis’s document and policy Q&A chatbots, too. These helpful assistants ingest each file in isolation and, as a result, generate summaries and answers that are completely relevant.
3. Build a rigorous AI governance framework
Once you’ve selected your AI use cases and considered which tools you’ll adopt, you’ll need to build a robust AI governance framework to support your plans.
You can split this framework into the following areas:
- Identifying roles and responsibilities. Assign individuals who are responsible for monitoring AI risk, ethics (and legal accuracy), and day-to-day business output. It may be necessary to implement additional steps in your existing workflows — such as content reviews — for the sake of security and compliance. If you choose to build your own AI in-house, owners must take full responsibility for the maintenance of their models.
- Create watertight AI policies. This includes AI acceptable use policies (what tools are employees allowed to use, and what can they use them for?), as well as policies centered around security, ethics, and individual accountability. The aim is to adopt AI without losing control. Build fences that allow for experimentation, but don’t let users stray into the realms of shadow IT or unvetted generative AI usage.
- Ascertain employee compliance. Build mechanisms that enforce employees to read and accept these policies. This is non-negotiable. Without understanding your AI framework and policies, you risk non-compliance, reputational damage, and regulatory sanctions.
- Set regular policy review dates. As we all know, AI is advancing at a rapid pace. To keep on top of incipient risks, set review dates for each AI-related policy, with automatic notifications for the respective owners.
4. Design training and upskill employees
Training is crucial for improving AI literacy, cementing your acceptable use policies, and bolstering firm-wide compliance.
Try to match the delivery of your training to its contents. For example:
- Create bitesize e-learning courses to help employees understand the security risks and legal ramifications of AI misuse.
- Build longer learning pathways to improve legal judgement and strategic skills (an area that will require more investment as AI adoption increases), as well as client relationship management tactics.
- Host practical, in-person AI walkthrough sessions to help legal professionals get to grips with your tools quickly.
Ensure all of this training is tracked, certified, and auditable for compliance purposes. And, to provide added support, complement it with searchable knowledge base articles, FAQ sections, and opportunities for two-way communication with AI leaders in your organization. (For example, “ask me anything” discussion forums.)
5. Monitor AI usage and compliance
As you roll out your pilot use cases or models, keep a close eye on output, compliance, and risk across your firm.
Are the tools speeding up or slowing down processes? Are lawyers identifying any quality issues in AI output? Are instances of non-compliance rising or falling? Beyond output, closely monitor your AI training and compliance efforts. Has everyone in your firm read and accepted your policies? Have new legal trainees completed their compulsory AI training?
For the sake of clarity and convenience, consolidate these real-time operational and compliance insights in one dashboard.
Securing AI in the legal industry
It’s no longer a question of whether law firms will adopt AI or not. That door’s already been kicked wide open. Now, it’s a question of when and how.
As you navigate down the AI implementation route, it’s important to balance convenience and governance. Lawyers should feel comfortable using AI to streamline workloads, speed up research, and boost efficiency. But not at the expense of compliance.
AI hallucinations and data security risks can undermine your services and bring irreparable damage to your firm. Which is why you must build a watertight AI governance framework and invest in tools that are intuitive and secure.
Claromentis ticks both of these boxes. Our digital workplace for law firms consolidates your communications, knowledge, and operations in one accessible tool. Our AI capabilities then leverage this single source of truth, providing accurate, secure, and intuitive summaries — without any risk of data breaches or fabricated outputs.
Further to this, our built-in policy management, e-learning, communications, automation, and knowledge management tools help you build and implement a robust AI governance framework. In just one tool, you can satisfy your AI adoption needs and your regulatory obligations.
To find out more about our secure digital workplace, book a quick discussion call with one of our experts.
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