European law firms are ramping up efforts to embrace the potential of Gen AI. In a recent report by The Global Legal Post in association with LexisNexis, senior lawyers and executives from leading firms in Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Belgium said they expect Gen AI tech to transform how they deliver legal services and the way their lawyers will work on a day-to-day basis. 

Here are six key takeaways from the report:

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to AI integration

From testing and piloting Gen AI tools to roll out and adoption, there is no single approach to follow; instead, it will be dictated by the size of the firm and its culture. “The smaller ones will be able to implement very quickly, because the disruption would be quite limited,” said Sebastien Bardou, VP strategy in the CEMEA region at LexisNexis. “For the larger ones, it’s better to implement in waves. You can’t just turn on a switch and say everyone is going to use it.” 

Firms should also ensure they have support programmes in place to bolster adoption efforts and reduce the chances Gen AI tools will go unused. For example, some firms are providing support such as technical training and access to prompt libraries to make it easier for lawyers to get the information they need. “We really want to ensure a good user experience from the very first moment and also make sure our junior lawyers are trained from the beginning,” said Eric Wagner, a partner at Gleiss Lutz in Germany.

Skills needs will change

While knowledge of the law will still be a prerequisite, lawyers will also need to learn basic AI hygiene skills such as being able to write effective prompts and being able to recognise if the AI output is trustworthy. “We will have to emphasise more around critical thinking when training lawyers around AI use – we have to get people used to being critical with the input and output of these tools,” said Beatriz Rodríguez Gómez, a partner at RocaJunyent in Madrid. 

Because AI should free up lawyers to spend more time with their clients, they should also take steps to sharpen their soft skills and relationship-building to stand out from peers. “The most repetitive tasks and the more day-to-day activities will be easily done with the help of AI, and so the difference will be made by how you respond to your clients’ needs,” said Vittorio Pomarici, a partner at BonelliErede. This means that in the future, lawyers will be much more akin to private bankers, he said.

Firms must rethink training

Given that Gen AI will likely increasingly handle work previously performed by juniors, firms will need to innovate when it comes to training new lawyers. “Law is traditionally an apprenticeship model, where people learn on the job and learn by doing the easy and repetitive tasks,” said Paula Gomes Freire, managing partner at Portuguese firm Vieira de Almeida (VdA). “If you remove that from the equation, because these tools can do that quickly for you, what kind of people and skills will you need and how do you recruit? These are the kind of challenges that we see on the horizon.” 

At the same time, firms must invest in Gen AI and legaltech more broadly to ensure they can attract and retain the best talent. “The trainees now and tomorrow are Gen Z – if they’d come to our office and we were to say to them ‘here is your paper and your writing tools’, they simply won’t stay,” said Stephane Criel, a partner at Belgian firm Monard Law.

Processes can be completely reimagined

As Gen AI technology advances, firms have the opportunity not only to improve workflow efficiency but also to entirely redesign the way lawyers work. “AI integration isn’t just about dropping in a tool – it’s about reshaping processes, mindsets and in many cases, incentives,” said Mathieu Balzarini, VP product for the CEMEA region at LexisNexis. 

Gen AI technology will also have an impact on the way in-house teams work. “GCs and team leads would love to support the business more strategically, but often they just find themselves under a pile of paperwork,” said Andrew Cooke, chief legal officer at TravelPerk. He says by adopting AI, legal teams will have more time to think strategically and focus on solving customer problems. “It’s not necessarily about changing workflows per se, it’s about how effective we are at addressing those customer problems,” Cooke said.

Client expectations will shift

Given that Gen AI is still in its infancy, there remains a mix of attitudes among law firm clients about AI use, with some eagerly embracing it and others explicitly asking law firms not to use it. “This means our policies have to be spread out so everybody is in tune and knows what AI tools can be used or shouldn’t be used,” said Margarida Saragoça, business and knowledge director at VdA. 

In some cases, clients don’t just expect firms to be using it, they want firms to be innovating around how it is used. “They are not coming to us and saying, we want you to do x, y, z with AI, and the rest should be done by human beings, they want us to integrate AI into our workflow and to become more efficient,” said Thomas Meurer, an M&A partner at Hengeler Mueller.

Value-based billing will become more prevalent

As Gen AI changes the way lawyers work, there is likely to be a growing focus on how much clients will be willing to pay for legal services. “The pricing model will become more and more value based – this means that in some cases, we will be able to provide more value than the hours that we invest in a specific task,” said Raúl Rubio, an IP and technology partner at Spanish firm Perez-Llorca. “Often, the market tends to put a focus on cost cutting, which is obviously part of the equation, but I think Gen AI is much more about adding value.” 

This value could be the ability to complete work faster or to perform more in-depth document reviews than it would be possible for a human-only team. “This is the benefit – [firms] will not charge less but they will give me so much more value for the same fees,” said Lexis Nexis’s Bardou.

To read the full report – Harnessing Gen AI in law - lessons from the front lines in Europe – click here. To discover more about how Gen AI is changing the legal profession, visit our Gen AI legal research hub.