Why Law Firms Need to Shift to an AI Mindset – and Fast!
Most law firms have some kind of AI tool floating around in their tech stack now. But the real gap isn’t between firms that ‘have AI’ and the ones that don’t – it’s between firms that think differently about how they work and those that just bolt it onto the same old way of doing things.
So what is an ‘AI mindset’ for law firms?
Having an AI mindset isn’t just about buying the latest shiny new AI gadget that arrives in your inbox. It’s about starting with a basic belief: if a task is something that’s routine and based on rules, then maybe a machine should be doing it instead of a person, and humans should only jump in when there’s a need for real judgement, context or empathy.
That flips the usual question from "Who's going to do this?" on its head and asks instead "Should we even be doing this at all, or can we redesign the workflow so that the machine is doing it first and the lawyer just double-checks the work?"
It’s about treating AI like accountants treat calculators – it’s just a basic tool that you use because it’s useful – not some sort of special project that you need to get all excited about.
Why This Shift Needs to Happen ASAP
Over the past couple of years, surveys have shown that most law firms are increasing their spend on AI and automation and the vast majority of lawyers think that AI will be changing the way they work on a day-to-day basis in the next five years. At the same time, clients are getting more and more frustrated with the speed and clarity of the answers they’re getting – and the longer and more expensive they get, the less impressed they are.
When one law firm uses AI to send a neat, risk-scored answer overnight, and another takes two weeks to do the same job manually, clients can see the difference between firms that are genuinely making an effort to move forward and those that are just clinging to the old way of doing things.
AI Mindset vs The AI Tool Trap
A global survey cited in BestLawFirms reported that the share of legal organisations actively integrating generative AI rose from 14% in 2024 to 26% in 2025, with 45% of law firms either using it or planning to make it central to their workflow within one year.
Having a “tool mindset” means: we bought a contract review tool, and a few people use it when they remember. On the other hand, an AI mindset says: we looked at our contract process and completely redesigned it so that every single draft gets passed through an AI tool first, and we’re tracking the savings and the improvements.
In a firm where the tool mindset is the one that dominates, adoption is patchy and the return on investment is fuzzy because whether the tool gets used depends on the individual enthusiasm of each lawyer. In a firm that’s got an AI mindset, the workflows and the checklists and the incentives all revolve around using legal AI tools – so using them just becomes the way that you work.
What This Looks Like Inside a Firm
Take litigation, for example. With a platform like Mike Litigator, a team can track cases across thousands of courts and get automatic updates, and generate dashboards in just a few clicks. For a firm with an AI-first mindset, this isn’t just some side feature – it’s the way that we replace email chains and manual diaries and all that old-school nonsense with automatic tracking and updates.
Now think about contracts. Gen-AI assistants like Mike DocChat can read scanned agreements, pluck out the important fine print, flag any gaps, and boil the whole thing down to plain English that anyone can understand. And in a business that’s built around getting the most out of AI, that’s just the starting point for every big deal or dispute. The AI lays the groundwork with a first draft and checklist, and then a lawyer comes in to think through it, ask some tough questions, and make some calls.
New roles that naturally pop up when you’re thinking about AI
Once AI becomes an essential part of how you get things done, new roles start to emerge alongside it. Legal engineers team up with partners to turn their expertise into reusable templates, clause libraries and automated workflows – a bit like part-way through a project, and part-way through designing a system.
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It’s clients and regulators pushing in the same direction
General counsel aren’t shy about asking how law firms are using AI to keep a lid on costs and speed up all the routine work. Some RFPs already go and ask directly about law firm AI adoption and how they keep quality and risk under control.
And on top of that, regulators and professional bodies are getting their guidance in order, focusing on confidentiality, being able to explain how AI makes its decisions, and making sure you’re held accountable for it. If you treat AI governance like you do conflicts checks – something you’ve got to do, log it, and audit it regularly – then you’ll find it a heck of a lot easier to roll out all this AI technology without things falling apart at the seams.
What an AI-driven mindset looks like in day-to-day life
Legal professionals who adopt generative AI report saving up to 260 hours per year, about 32.5 working days – freeing time for higher‑value work.
Inside a firm that’s got an AI mindset, a few things stand out straight away. Work is broken down into smaller tasks – and each one gets a label: machine-led, human-only, or a bit of both. And every single time you use AI to help you out, there’s a clear spot for a human to review it and sign off on it.
The firm also starts tracking some real numbers: how long it takes to sort out a typical case, how many mistakes get caught early on, and how many hours you’re saving or having to write off because of it. And training isn’t something you sign up for as some kind of “innovation extra” – it’s just something you do as part of getting started. New joiners learn the tools, the firm’s precedents, and the style guide all at the same time.
The Attitude That Will Shape the Next Ten Years
Firms that can figure out how to build an AI-first mindset into their overall strategy, staff training, and even the day-to-day way they do things will be able to churn out faster, clearer, and more predictable work without running their people into the ground. For those teams, legal AI tools are going to feel like the solution to a problem they’ve been trying to figure out for years – how to do better, more high-quality work on a much bigger scale, with the human judgement and expertise that truly matters still very much at the heart of what they do.
