For in-house lawyers, AI can function as the equivalent of adding to the team, but also creates time for better training and work-life balance
I recently posed the hypothetical question, “If lawyers had all the time in the world, what would they do with it?” The list of potential options or desires for in-house lawyers may be different, but it is equally impactful in its own way.
At the outset, let’s quantify the potential time we’re talking about. According to the recently published Future of Professionals report from Thomson Reuters, the lawyers surveyed thought that the benefits of using artificial intelligence (AI) in their workflows could save them an average of 4 hours per week, or roughly 200 hours per year. For in-house counsel, operating under constant pressure to do more with less, this presents a rare opportunity for them to actually get more of something.
Considering the options
So, what to do with this newfound time? Some of the options identified by in-house lawyers are similar to those for outside counsel.
First, more time can be dedicated to training and developing younger lawyers. Whether a young lawyer works in-house or in a law firm, mistakes will happen that often will take time and resources to correct. Time spent training these young lawyers to be better lawyers faster will minimize the number of mistakes they make, resulting in a higher quality of work faster.
Another similar option for in-house lawyers and outside counsel for newly freed-up time is to actually spend less time at work. In-house lawyers are certainly not hurting for matters that demand their attention. So, if the tech adopted by a corporate law department can deliver on its promised efficiencies, then each of these matters should have at least certain phases or tasks that will take less time to complete.
Another similar option for in-house lawyers and outside counsel for newly freed-up time is to actually spend less time at work.
The amount of work that the average general counsel takes 50 hours per week to complete today would, by lawyers’ own estimates, take 46 hours to complete in the future. The time put back into the bucket of available hours could be spent away from work, adding greater balance to the lawyer’s life. This, in turn, helps to reduce mental duress, burnout, and turnover, ultimately helping the law department manage and retain top talent and saving money.
Further, some of the demands placed on GCs by the realities of their work offer some unique potential benefits for AI as well.
Expanding capacity
The Thomson Reuters Institute’s annual Legal Department Operations Index has found for several years in a row that, even as legal matter volumes increase for in-house law departments, the majority of in-house teams are experiencing flat or even declining headcount. At the same time, most departments are also seeing flat to declining budgets, so finding ways to add capacity through additional hiring is highly unlikely.
AI may be able to help here, however — and no, we’re not talking about robot lawyers. We’re talking about ways to leverage the lawyer time that AI can free up.
Another way to think of the 4 hours saved by AI per week is that time represents roughly 10% of a 40-hour work week. If that 10% can be turned into increased workload capacity for the average in-house lawyer, each lawyer becomes 10% more productive. As that increased productivity compounds, the collective result starts to look more and more like the output that could be achieved by adding a member to the team.
Sports teams often talk about their fans being the 12th man at the football game or the 6th player on a basketball team. The result of increased capacity from AI is the added workforce equivalent of another player for the in-house legal team.
Now I want to be clear, there is no guarantee that every 10-member law department will now be able to do the work of 11 people, there are simply too many variables — such as what tech solutions are implemented, how well they are adopted, the type of work the team performs, and of course, how the team chooses to strike the balance between seeking increased work output and pursuing other options.
While each team’s approach to these variables will differ, the larger point is that the promise of AI creates options that would not have otherwise existed.
While each team’s approach to these variables will differ, the larger point is that the promise of AI creates options that would not have otherwise existed.
Don’t underappreciate the potential impact
Bill Gates once famously said: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” With that in mind, I offer up my own example of the potential impact that AI could have on the future for lawyers.
In preparing the Future of Professionals report, we brainstormed ways to communicate the potential impact of the time savings that our surveyed lawyers had estimated. Remember, they estimated 4 hours per week in the first year with AI.
Here’s my personal favorite analogy for what that time savings could mean.
That 4 hours per week equates to 200 hours per year (assuming two weeks of vacation); and according to the American Bar Association, there were roughly 1.33 million lawyers in the US as of January 2023. That works out to roughly 266 million hours that the legal profession in the United States could save and repurpose in one year thanks to AI.
Now, the Empire State Building took just over one year to build and consumed over 7 million working hours. Using that as our foundation (pun intended), with the potential time savings in one year thanks to AI, lawyers in the US could build approximately 38 Empire State Buildings!
Any way you look at it, lawyers could accomplish some pretty significant undertakings not only with AI, but also thanks to the time it would give back, allowing them to put those hours toward more productive efforts.
You can download a full copy of the Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals report here.
