AI use in the legal sector

How legal professionals are using AI today

In legal departments, AI is primarily used for drafting documents, contract review and legal research. It is striking that legal professionals usually use general-purpose AI assistants for these tasks. Copilot is the clear frontrunner, followed by Claude and ChatGPT. Tools specialised in legal matters remain a niche for the time being.

If you look beyond usage, another figure stands out. Only 23 per cent of in-house legal teams have a systematic training plan for AI. Among legal interim managers, only 33 per cent are systematically learning about it. Usage is therefore far ahead of the supporting infrastructure.

Why this gap poses a risk

When everyone uses a tool without a shared framework, discrepancies arise that you’d prefer to avoid in a legal context. How thoroughly is AI output checked before it leaves the organisation? What confidential information ends up in a general-purpose chatbot? Without clear agreements on when AI should or should not be used, and how the output is checked, responsibility tacitly shifts to the individual lawyer, rather than to the organisation where it belongs.

How organisations can structure this more effectively

The question, therefore, is not whether legal teams should use AI - they already do. The challenge lies in making the transition from individual experimentation to a coordinated approach. Three concrete steps that can help with this:

• Establish a shared framework for use: which tools are permitted, for which tasks, and who monitors the output
• Build in training opportunities, not as one-off sessions but as a recurring part of the team’s working practices
• Make it clear who within the team is responsible for AI-related issues, particularly where there is a lack of specialisation

Our research also confirms that this need is very real: 52 per cent of in-house legal teams indicate that existing staff require further training. The demand for structure is there; it is simply not yet being met everywhere.

Incidentally, this gap between usage and governance is not a phenomenon unique to Belgium. International research by Wolters Kluwer confirms the same pattern across the wider legal sector, indicating that this is a sector-wide growing pain, not a local exception.

AI is just one of the five themes in Legal Insights 2026. Would you like to know how other legal teams are dealing with compliance pressures, workload and capacity planning? Download the full report.