Clients are increasingly sending lawyers large volumes of AI-generated letters, emails, questions, etc. The big jump in material lawyers are receiving means they are stuck spending more time reviewing and responding to this content, driving up legal bills.

A partner at a US litigation firm notes that they have received so much AI material that they could only respond to the client at appropriate intervals. And both Addleshaw Goddard and Mishcon de Reya have highlighted this issue at their respective firms, noting the influx in AI-generated correspondence across all practice areas.

Rather than reducing workload, AI in this context is unexpectedly creating a larger amount of work for lawyers. Since lawyers are required to meticulously validate and respond to output that is now likely more verbose and inaccurate, AI is acting as a friction point in the lawyer-client relationship.

Whilst AI is a great consumer-side tool, enabling clients to generate complex output more efficiently, this ease does not translate as well to lawyers who have to bear the cognitive load of identifying subtle errors or hallucinations that are still highly probable with current AI models.

What does this mean for the legal sector?

• Law firms operating on fixed fee models (charging one amount for a deal no matter how long it takes) will see profits eroded as lawyers are unnecessarily engaged for longer hours.

• Firms alternatively billing hourly (with the final bill depending on hours spent) are better insulated against this development but might face client pushback if the final bill is too high.

• The trend will likely accelerate AI adoption at law firms, as developing in-house AI models would efficiently deal with AI material sent over by clients.