Given that AI is top of mind for so many of us right now, I’ve started polling our in-house friends about how they’re using AI in their practice. As one might expect, the perspectives and views are varied:
- “AI has become part of my daily routine faster than I expected. Six months ago I was using it once or twice a week. Today I’d guess I have it open almost as often as Outlook. That doesn’t mean I trust everything it says. It means I’ve learned it’s an outstanding starting point and a terrible substitute for legal judgment.”
- “I probably use AI twenty times a day. I also probably tell it ‘that’s not right’ twenty times a day.”
- “When I first became aware of AI for the masses, I thought it was a toy. Then I used it to summarize a 250-page SEC proposing release in about three minutes. I still read the releases, but at least now I know where to focus.”
- “We’re a smallish legal department. If AI can save each of us an hour a day, that’s like hiring another lawyer without convincing Finance to approve another headcount request.”
- “The funny thing is, I don’t think AI made me a better securities lawyer. It made me spend more time actually being a securities lawyer instead of formatting tables, rewriting the same paragraph seventeen different ways or searching through old proxy statements.”
- “I remain unconvinced that the hype matches the reality. Every demo makes it look magical. Then you ask a nuanced securities law question and discover the confidence level is much higher than the accuracy level.”
- “Outside counsel started sending work back faster. Our CFO started asking why Legal couldn’t move at the same speed. Whether that expectation is fair is almost beside the point. AI has changed what our internal clients think ‘fast’ looks like.”
- “I use AI constantly for brainstorming. I use it almost never for the final language.”
- “The SEC has never accepted ‘my associate drafted it’ as an excuse. I doubt they’ll be more sympathetic to ‘my AI drafted it.'”
- “We’re seeing pressure from every direction. Our CEO wants to know how Legal is using AI. The Board wants updates on AI governance. Our employees assume we have AI tools. Our outside counsel is using AI. Frankly, the only people asking whether we should adopt AI are the lawyers who haven’t tried it yet.”
- “AI reminds me of that first-year associate who graduated at the top of the class. Brilliant. Fast. Tireless. Also fully capable of saying something completely ridiculous with absolute confidence.”
- “The biggest surprise wasn’t drafting. It was editing. AI is remarkably good at helping me identify what isn’t clear, what sounds repetitive and what probably made sense only because I’d been staring at it for six hours.”
Authored by
Broc Romanek