Examples
Seven common legal uses of AI, the job the AI does in each, and the decisions a lawyer keeps.
Updated 5 min read
The short answer
AI use cases in law center on high-volume paperwork: reviewing documents, pulling data from contracts, supporting research, handling client intake, entering invoices and tracking deadlines. The AI prepares the work. A lawyer reviews it and remains responsible for the result.
Key points
Examples
Results appear only where they come from a Nexum client project.
Document review
AI reads large sets of documents, flags the relevant passages and sorts them for a lawyer to check.
Read the case →Contracts
AI pulls parties, dates, renewal terms and obligations from contracts into a structured table for review.
Read the case →Research
AI summarizes sources and suggests where to look. The lawyer confirms that every cited authority actually exists.
Client intake
An AI assistant answers first questions, collects case details and routes the inquiry to the right attorney.
Read the case →Billing
An AI assistant reads each invoice, matches it to the right case in the practice system and syncs it to accounting.
40+hours back every month
Read the case →Billing
The same workflow keeps data clean, so bills go out sooner.
50%faster billing cycle
Deadlines
AI finds dates in filings and correspondence, adds them to the calendar and sends reminders to the team.
Large firms
46% of firms with 100+ attorneys use AI
All respondents
30% of responding lawyers use AI
Solo lawyers
18% of solo attorneys use it
Adoption is real but uneven. The ABA's 2024 technology survey, reported by the ABA Journal, found that 30% of responding lawyers use AI.
Size matters. Use climbs with firm size: 46% at firms of 100+ attorneys versus 18% among solo lawyers.
Only 13% of those surveyed call AI mainstream in the profession.
Handled by AI
Stays with the lawyer
The use of AI in legal profession work centers on tasks that repeat: reading, sorting, copying data and chasing dates.
BLS expects part of routine legal work to become automated. It does not expect lower demand for lawyers, and says the time saved can go to meeting clients and strategy.
Paralegal employment should hold roughly flat through 2035, BLS says, though technology such as AI may cap demand.
Do
Don't
The use of artificial intelligence in legal practice comes with duties. ABA Formal Opinion 512 lists competence, confidentiality, client communication, supervision, candor to the court and reasonable fees.
Before client information goes into a self-learning tool that could disclose it, the opinion requires the client's informed consent.
California's State Bar adds that a lawyer cannot delegate professional judgment to AI and remains fully responsible for any AI-assisted work product.
AI drafts
It prepares summaries or research leads
Citations checked
Each citation is found and read
Errors fixed
Errors are fixed before use
Final sign-off
The lawyer owns the final work
In Mata v. Avianca, lawyers filed a brief citing court opinions that did not exist, produced by ChatGPT. The court said attorneys act as gatekeepers for the accuracy of filings.
It imposed a $5,000 penalty. California's guidance warns that AI can produce plausible citations to authority that does not exist.
The ABA survey found three-quarters of hesitant lawyers cite hallucinations as their reason.
99.8% data accuracy
Our AI consulting work starts by mapping your repetitive processes and their cost, then ranks them by payback.
For law firms, that usually points to invoices, intake and documents. See our work for the legal sector.
A boutique law firm we worked with removed manual invoice entry, with 99.8% data accuracy.
Our data
We asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity 10 buyer questions about AI for law firms. They named 116 companies, and 84% appeared in only one of the three.
| Criterion | ChatGPT | Gemini | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Companies named | 39 | 52 | 55 |
| Sites cited most | clio.com (4 of 10) | lumay.ai (5 of 10) | clio.com (3 of 10) |
Nexum measurement, October 20, 2026, via DataForSEO: 10 buyer questions to each AI, US English, 30 answers in total. 11 companies appeared in all three. Google showed an AI Overview for 7 of the 10 questions.
FAQ
Final step
You leave knowing which processes to automate first and what each one costs you today, whether we work together or not.
You can keep paying for manual work, or find out this week exactly what it costs you.
What happens on the call
Before
You answer 3 quick questions when you book, so we come prepared.
On the call
We find the manual work that costs you most and put a number on it, live.
Decide
An honest read on whether we're the right fit. If we're not, you'll hear it on the call.
Once you book, we look at your site and tools before the call, so the 30 minutes go to your numbers, not introductions.
Prefer to write first? Email us directly: contact@nexumautomations.com
