The General Counsel Report: Majority of General Counsel Indicate Openness to Using AI in Nearly Every Major Legal Use Case

Global News

28
Mar
2025

Editor

More than two-thirds of general counsel have expressed interest in using generative artificial intelligence within the legal department, according to part two of The  General Counsel Report 2025 from FTI Consulting, Inc. and global legal technology company Relativity. Alongside growing interest in AI within legal, approximately 65% of legal departments plan to  invest in new technology in the year ahead, and 30% of that group have generative AI on their list for upcoming implementations. 

This sixth annual edition of the report is based on findings from one-on-one interviews between Ari Kaplan Advisors and chief legal officers at large corporations around the world, as well as a quantitative survey of more than 200 general counsel in a dozen countries. Together, the two data pools examined the rate of generative AI adoption, technology road mapping within the legal department and the broad use of technology as a strategy for responding to rising pressures. 

In addition to plans to purchase or improve the use of tools spanning contract lifecycle management, enterprise legal management, matter management and automation, legal department leaders expressed high comfort levels using generative AI for legal use cases including legal research, e-discovery, document review, contract analysis and more. Generative AI use has also increased over the past year, with 44% of general counsel saying their legal teams are now using generative AI, compared to 28% in 2024 and 20% in 2023. 

“A growing number of general counsel are exploring how AI can make their teams more efficient and effective,” said Sophie Ross, Global Chief Executive Officer of FTI Technology. “However, this increasing comfort level must be balanced against an assortment of persistent concerns, including the technology’s viability, availability, reliability and cost. What we continue to see among our teams and clients is that traditional AI still has strong value in legal use cases, and at the same time, generative AI has tremendous potential to improve outcomes when applied with expert human oversight. The findings in The General Counsel Report confirm that the legal field is feeling the effects of active technological disruption, and legal departments must continue to pursue expert-led testing and experimentation to understand the applications that will make the most impact for their needs.” 

Key findings covered in part two of The General Counsel Report 2025 include: 

• Most respondents (75%) have experienced an increase in workloads related to evaluating new technologies for their organization. 
• Even with widespread recognition of the value of technology, 75% of legal departments lack a technology roadmap, making it more difficult to plan and effectively allocate budget. 
• Increased reliance on law firms was the most popular strategy general counsel cited for addressing increasing risk and escalating demand, with 79% confirming they turn to outside counsel more frequently. 
• General counsel in Latin America were the most likely to be comfortable with the use of AI in e-discovery, with 86% open to it, compared to only 55% in Asia Pacific, which was the least comfortable with it. 
• General counsel are least comfortable with the use of generative AI in investigations, with 47% rating their openness at a one or two on a scale of one (not at all comfortable) to five (extremely comfortable). 
• The report revealed a slight improvement in technology readiness — 85% of general counsel said they felt minimally or not at all prepared to face the risks of generative AI, down from 93% in 2024. 

“The latest data from the 2025 edition of The General Counsel Report confirm what our research had previously indicated, namely that generative AI is not a flash-in-the-pan fad, but rather a fundamentally transformative

 technology that is reshaping the practice of law,” said David Horrigan, Discovery Counsel and Legal Education Director at Relativity. “Last year, less than a third of general counsel said their teams were using generative AI, but that figure jumped to 44% in the 2025 report, underscoring that generative AI is an important technology for the legal profession and its chief legal officers.” 

The General Counsel Report 2025 is available for download here.