Legal technology is changing how legal work is researched, drafted, secured, priced, and delivered. Recent surveys show rapid movement in artificial intelligence and cloud computing, alongside persistent gaps in incident planning, training, and technology budgeting. The figures below identify the measurement period and geography where supplied, so readers can distinguish survey results, estimates, and forecasts.
Contents
- AI adoption across legal practice
- Generative AI use cases and expected growth
- Cloud, office software, and legal research
- Cybersecurity, privacy, and technology governance
- Technology budgets, training, and legal education
- Client-facing and remote legal technology
AI adoption across legal practice
The 2025 Legal Trends Report found that 79% of legal professionals reported using artificial intelligence in their firms, while 40% reported using a legal-specific AI solution. These are reported usage levels from the report’s 2025 data, not a forecast of universal adoption. The same report found that 36% of legal professionals said AI had a positive influence on firm revenue.
Adoption breadth mattered in the revenue results. Among wide AI adopters, 69% reported a positive influence on firm revenue. That gap—69% among wide adopters compared with 36% across legal professionals in the reported result—describes an association in the report, not proof that AI alone caused revenue growth. Firm size, strategy, staffing, pricing, and other factors may also affect the outcome.
The report also compared firms by growth status and use of Clio. Growing law firms used AI in Clio twice as much as stable and shrinking firms. In a related comparison, growing firms using Clio Grow used it 15% more than stable firms and 44% more than shrinking firms. These are 2025 report cohort analyses, so they should be read as comparisons between groups rather than as a guaranteed growth formula.
The American Bar Association’s 2024 Artificial Intelligence TechReport provides another view. In an October–December 2024 survey, 30.2% of respondents said their offices were currently using AI-based technology tools. The share was 47.8% among attorneys in firms with 500 or more lawyers. The differing results across reports may reflect different samples, questions, definitions of AI, and survey periods.
Generative AI use cases and expected growth
The direction of travel was strongly expansionary in the 2025 Legal Trends Report: 82% of legal professionals expected to use AI more during the following 12 months. This is an expectation recorded in a 2025 survey, not a measured future adoption rate.
Thomson Reuters’ 2025 Generative AI in Professional Services Report recorded an increase in the share of legal organizations incorporating generative AI from 14% in 2024 to 26% in 2025. In the same report, 33% of current law-firm generative-AI users accessed it multiple times during a typical week, compared with 46% of current legal-department users. The figures distinguish current users from all legal professionals.
Contract and document work is a major potential use case. Lawyers were reported to spend 40% to 60% of their time drafting and reviewing contracts and other legal documents. Separately, a 2025 report estimate cited 74% of billable legal work as potentially automatable with AI. “Potentially automatable” is an estimate of task potential, not a claim that 74% of legal jobs or cases will disappear.
Pricing is already part of the technology discussion. Among wide AI adopters in the 2025 Legal Trends Report, 45% had adjusted their pricing because of AI. Of those wide adopters who changed pricing, 26% had increased what they charge, 11% had reduced pricing, and 8% had introduced new fees specifically for AI services. These percentages describe reported pricing changes within the identified subgroup; they do not represent all firms.
Cloud, office software, and legal research
Cloud computing was used by approximately 75% of attorneys for work-related tasks in the 2024 ABA Cloud Computing TechReport. The reported level followed approximately 69% in 2023, 70% in 2022, and 60% in 2021.
Firm size remained associated with cloud use. Approximately 65% of solo practitioners used cloud computing for work-related tasks in the 2024 survey, while more than 94% of attorneys at firms with 50–99 lawyers did so. The comparison highlights a technology-access difference between solo practice and a mid-sized firm group; it does not establish why the difference exists.
The ABA’s 2023 technology reporting also shows that everyday office tools are widespread. In the 2023 survey, 95% of respondents used PDF-creation software and 80% used redlining software. Legal research was split between general search and paid services: 44% said they began legal research using Google, while 56% regularly used fee-based internet or online services and 21% occasionally used them. The research-use figures come from the 2023 survey and should not be treated as a current 2026 market estimate.
| Technology measure | Reported result | Measurement period |
|---|---|---|
| Attorneys using cloud computing for work tasks | Approximately 75% | 2024 survey |
| Solo practitioners using cloud computing | Approximately 65% | 2024 survey |
| Attorneys at firms with 50–99 lawyers using cloud computing | More than 94% | 2024 survey |
| Respondents using PDF-creation software | 95% | 2023 survey |
| Respondents using redlining software | 80% | 2023 survey |
Cybersecurity, privacy, and technology governance
Security preparation was less universal than basic software adoption. The ABA’s 2023 Cybersecurity TechReport found that 34% of respondents reported that their firm had an incident-response plan. The figure was 78% at firms with more than 500 attorneys and 19% among solo respondents.
The same report found that 29% of respondents reported receiving a full security assessment from a third party. Client scrutiny was also measurable: 27% said a client or prospective client had requested their firm’s security-requirements document or guidelines, and 22% said a client or prospective client had asked them to complete a security questionnaire.
Reported security incidents were not rare in the survey. Twenty-nine percent said their firm had experienced a security breach or similar security incident. Yet only 33% reported using a password-management tool. Forty-three percent used an online backup service as their most common computer-file backup method, and 40% reported that their firm carried cyber-liability insurance.
These figures cover different controls and practices, so they should not be added together or interpreted as a single security score. They indicate that the presence of cloud or office software does not by itself show whether a firm has an incident plan, third-party assessment, strong password practices, backup coverage, or insurance.
Technology budgets, training, and legal education
Technology investment also depends on firm size. Nearly 50% of solo and small-firm respondents had a technology budget in the 2023 ABA Budgeting and Planning survey. In the ABA Practice Management TechReport, 73% of firms with 10–49 lawyers had a technology budget, compared with 79% of firms with 50–99 lawyers and 93% of firms with 100 or more lawyers.
Funding expectations were positive even among solo respondents: 92% expected to maintain or increase technology-budget funding. This is an expectation from the 2023 survey, not a record of later spending.
Professional responsibility and training were also prominent. Seventy-one percent of ABA survey respondents believed keeping current with technology’s benefits and drawbacks was part of a lawyer’s professional duty. Sixty-seven percent considered training on emerging technologies very or somewhat important.
Law schools were adapting as well. In a survey conducted from late December 2023 through mid-February 2024, 55% of responding law schools offered classes dedicated to teaching students about AI. Eighty-three percent reported curricular opportunities for students to learn to use AI tools effectively, 69% had adapted academic-integrity policies in response to generative AI, and 85% contemplated curriculum changes because of the increasing prevalence of AI tools. These results describe responding law schools, not every law school.
Client-facing and remote legal technology
Technology affects how clients find information and how firms structure services. In 2024, 59% of firms billed flat fees exclusively or in addition to hourly rates. The same source reported that 54% billed using both hourly and flat-fee arrangements, while 41% billed exclusively by the hour. These categories describe pricing arrangements reported by firms and should not be combined as mutually exclusive totals where the source identifies overlap.
Consumers were using AI as an entry point for legal questions. More than 50% had used or would consider using AI to answer a legal question. More than 50% of consumers who had used AI for a legal question said it sufficiently answered the question. At the same time, 28% were directed by an AI tool to contact a lawyer, while 12% said an AI tool convinced them that their legal problem was not worth pursuing. These consumer-survey results show both referral potential and the risk that an automated answer may change whether someone seeks legal help.
Remote access was already common in the ABA’s 2023 Practice Management TechReport. At least 85% of respondents in firms with two or more lawyers had remote access to their workstations, compared with 63.6% of solo-firm respondents. At least 68% of firms had adopted contact management, remote access, fax, and instant messaging as communication technologies, and 47% had adopted customer-relationship-management technology.
The practical cost of fragmented tools is another technology consideration. The 2025 Legal Trends Report cited research estimating that the average worker spent four hours per week reorienting between apps, equivalent to five weeks or 9% of annual work time. This is a cited estimate, not a direct measurement of every legal worker.
For legal practices, the statistics point to a connected set of decisions: choose tools that match the work, protect confidential information, train the people using them, budget for ongoing support, and explain clearly to clients how technology affects research, pricing, communication, and service.