In October last year, we invited leaders from major UK law firms to a breakfast roundtable to discuss the accelerating impact of AI on legal practice. Five challenges emerged as central to how firms can seize the opportunities of AI. Each is accompanied by a potential way forward. By Richard Hartshorne, Business Unit Director at Expleo.
1. How to manage risk through Responsible AI and data governance
For law firms, AI presents both a transformative opportunity and a complex set of risks. Despite anxieties over confidentiality, accuracy and impartiality, there is an acceptance that AI will be interwoven into the legal fabric of the future.
Tech-savvy lawyers are already experimenting with unapproved, citizen-developer tools to design new ways of working for themselves. These ‘shadow IT’ applications increasingly include AI, offering the attractions of speed, convenience and personal efficiency.
However, they also bring potential threats to confidentiality, accuracy and impartiality. Popular enterprise tools such as Microsoft Copilot or affordable transcription bots like Otter.ai can blur the line between useful automation and unacceptable risk exposure.
The way forward: The challenge for firms is how to balance innovation with protection. Setting up Responsible AI principles is a good place to start, with a focus on shadow IT as a top priority.
AI-monitoring and observability platforms can also provide visibility into usage patterns, creating an auditable record for clients and insurers and embedding responsible use into daily workflows. Implementing explainability standards across tools and workflows can help firms maintain defensibility.
2. How to build a culture that embraces AI adoption
AI transformation is not simply an IT project – it is a change in how work gets done throughout the firm. Success depends on joint ownership across business functions, ensuring that all of the teams, including frontline lawyers and business services, move in concert.
Could AI be a catalyst for collaboration that finally bridges the enduring disconnect between fee earners and support teams?
Cultural change requires ‘selling in’ the opportunities of AI. People will ask: What’s in this for me? How will AI affect me (and my job)? For lawyers, that could mean helping them understand how AI investment supports client delivery. Business functions might need reassurance that technology will enhance, not replace, their expertise.
The way forward: Setting the right attitude around AI and risk is critical. If the firm is transparent about the potential up- and downsides of AI, and involves everybody from head partners to junior interns in the conversation, then any benefits of AI can be felt across the whole firm.
A cross-functional AI risk council, supported by AI Champions from each practice group, can streamline decision-making, ensure consistent application of standards, identify use cases and accelerate adoption more effectively than top-down mandates.
3. How to encourage the shift in skills and capabilities
Within five years, the capabilities of lawyers demanded by clients and employers alike will look significantly different. Firms should actively seek to develop AI “muscle memory” which means focusing on what AI can do practically to help with work today, especially in terms of evolving client service for the better. Meanwhile, grassroots innovation should be recognised and rewarded.
Lawyers need to feel like the expert in the room – but that’s not always the case when it comes to AI. Therefore, they must become comfortable talking about AI before they can confidently use it.
The way forward: Rotational apprenticeships can enable junior lawyers to spend time with IT and innovation teams early in their careers.
Instead of generic training environments, firms can partner with friendly clients to run supervised pilots on live matters. Lawyers learn by doing, the clients see tangible value, while the firm gains data that strengthens the business case for wider adoption.
4. How to evolve from billable hours to value-based pricing
The business case for AI adoption is increasingly client-led. General Counsels are under pressure from their CFOs to deliver cost efficiencies, and they expect their external law firms to demonstrate the same urgency. Many now ask for evidence of technology-driven ROI as a prerequisite for inclusion on legal panels. In some cases, clients even request firms to use specific tools, forcing firms to balance innovation with independence.
To respond, firms must package the value proposition effectively. The “product” in legal services is no longer just advice: it includes the process and the price. Conversations about cost savings should therefore be reframed around value creation: delivering faster, more consistent and higher-quality outcomes for clients.
The way forward: Firms that understand how to integrate AI into their operating models may be better placed to redefine both client value and competitive advantage. Beyond efficiencies, AI offers strategic upside. Tech-enabled, multidisciplinary law firms can enter new advisory spaces, such as data strategy, compliance automation or digital risk management; opening entirely new cash flows to complement traditional legal work.
5. How to incentivise partners to embrace AI
Many firms are beginning to formalise technology leadership roles or committees responsible for AI strategy and oversight. However, bringing partners on board the AI train, let alone persuading them to drive, can be a challenge.
Few partners are rewarded for embracing new technologies. As firms explore value-based pricing and balanced scorecards, this is likely to change. Partners can be encouraged to model AI’s impact by linking it to their own portfolios, showing where automation can free up time, improve profitability or reduce client churn. Scenario planning can help make the implications of AI adoption tangible.
The way forward: Firms can look to their knowledge teams and Professional Support Lawyers to contextualise AI use, develop AI-enabled playbooks and demonstrate where specific tools best support legal tasks.
A dashboard showing AI usage metrics, pilot outcomes, efficiency gains and client impact can demystify adoption, celebrate early wins and show partners that AI progress is measurable and aligned with strategic objectives.
The adoption of AI in UK law firms is not a question of if but how. Firms that act now – balancing experimentation with responsibility – will not only manage risk but seize the opportunity to reshape the economics of the legal profession for the decade ahead.
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