London, 24 March: CEOs and CFOs are instructing their most senior lawyers to adopt AI solutions, instead of seeking new headcount, according to a major new survey of in-house lawyers.
Intelligent contracting platform Juro spoke to 160 in-house lawyers across the UK, US and EU, the majority being the most senior lawyer in their company. 76% report to the CEO or CFO.
Lawyers report that 69% of their C-suite managers want them to use AI more; and 24% haven’t adopted it fully but are being instructed by their C-suite managers to do so. 93% want AI usage to increase. Only 7% reported that their managers are reluctant for their lawyers to use AI in their roles.
AI adoption continues to accelerate in legal, with 83% of respondents having used AI for legal research, and 79% using it to draft clauses in contracts.
99% of respondents believe AI will change their jobs a year from now, with 43% believing it will change their roles significantly.
However, lawyers are reluctant to turn to AI for contract redlining, with only 31% having tried this. Trust and accuracy are cited as concerns.
And despite the huge wave of interest in AI agents, 54% of in-house lawyers admitted to having limited or no understanding of what they are.
Regulators came under fire too: 66% of respondents believe that regulators have limited or no understanding of the underlying technology they’re regulating.
Finally, 53% of respondents were concerned that AI risked making lawyers less capable and knowledgeable, as verbal reasoning and written tasks are automated.
Juro CFO, Andy Hodgson, said:
“With emerging AI it’s more realistic than ever to automate repetitive or administrative tasks, freeing up teams to focus on higher value work. That means incremental investment into automations will come before incremental investment in people. It will be the back-office and support functions, Legal included, that will feel this pressure soonest and hardest.”
Juro CEO & Co-founder, Richard Mabey, said:
“Now we can automate so many routine tasks with AI, this enables legal teams to direct their efforts where their true domain expertise lies. In-house jobs are definitely changing - we see with our customers every day - but in the case of early adopters, that change is for the better.”
You can read the full findings and analysis in the report: ‘The State of In-house 2025’.
Katherine Bryant is a Content Marketing Specialist at Juro. She is an experienced legal content creator and writer, passionate about the intersection of law and history. Katherine has an MA in Modern British Studies from the University of Birmingham, and has been published in the History Workshop Journal.
Previously, she contributed as a content writer and editor for LawCareers.Net and Latin Lawyer before arriving at Juro, where she has written legal features, news, produced podcasts, and supported events (you may have met her at LegalGeek or our own Scaleup GC!).
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