A majority of corporate legal departments have now adopted generative AI tools, with the number of users almost doubling over the past year, according to a report by FTI Consulting and legaltech company Relativity.
The second part of FTI and Relativity’s annual General Counsel Report – following the release of part one last month – found that 87% of GCs are using Gen AI within their teams, up from 44% in last year’s report. Another 39% say AI is now a strategic priority for supporting legal department efficiency and effectiveness.
A majority of GCs (83%) said their teams are using or experimenting with Gen AI for summarisation tasks, followed by general queries (70%), meeting notes (67%) and identifying specific contract clauses (63%).
Some 23% of respondents said they are extremely comfortable with using Gen AI for contract drafting, followed by contract analysis or review (20%) and memo drafting (13%). Areas where GCs said they were most uncomfortable with Gen AI being used for legal tasks were privilege review (34%), investigations (27%) and data breach response (23%).
Sophie Ross, global CEO of FTI Technology, said: “Generative AI has become a fixture in the majority of legal departments, and of those not yet using it, most have plans to implement it in the near term.
“As in-house teams grow more comfortable with a wide range of generative AI use cases, appropriate upskilling will be imperative. General counsel will need to provide their departments with structured training, education and expert support to use this technology effectively, and underpin those efforts with technology roadmaps that enable innovation alongside risk mitigation.”
The data showed that the number of legal departments that now have a formal tech roadmap in place increased to 53%, up from 25% in the 2025 report. Around 70% also plan to invest in new technologies over the coming year. In addition, the number of legal departments with a dedicated legal operations function also increased to 41% from 29% a year ago.
David Horrigan, discovery counsel and legal education director at Relativity, said the report showed “the era of the ‘Luddite Lawyer’ is over”.
He added: “Throughout the seven annual editions of this report, chief legal officers’ use and acceptance of technology have been important focus areas, and the 2026 edition shows a meaningful shift in the role technology plays in the work of the general counsel… In addition, with chief information officers included in this year’s report expressing that they see ‘digital ambassadors’ emerging in legal departments, it’s clear we’re entering a new era of the ‘TechnoLawyer’.”
The report is based on one-on-one interviews with 30 CLOs and a separate quantitative survey of more than 200 GCs in a dozen countries.
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