In-House Legal Teams Deploy AI to Cut Costs, Saving Up to 8 Hours a Week
Updated
Updated · Financial Times · Oct 8
In-House Legal Teams Deploy AI to Cut Costs, Saving Up to 8 Hours a Week
3 articles · Updated · Financial Times · Oct 8
Summary
Dentsu, IAG, ArcelorMittal and Shell say in-house legal teams are using AI to automate routine work, with reported lawyer time savings ranging from 15%-20% to as much as 4-8 hours a week.
IAG said more than half of 1,500 legal matters reviewed over six months were at least partly automated, while software screening roughly 50,000 law-firm invoices a year delivered more than 800% ROI in just over one year.
Dentsu said about half of 250 surveyed lawyers now use AI tools for tasks such as conflict checks across 40,000 contracts, but warned that lawyer-built tools can duplicate work and create maintenance and data-governance problems.
Shell is tying AI adoption to a broader plan to cut legal spending by about 40% within three years, while ArcelorMittal said proving payback remains difficult, especially if vendors shift to unpredictable usage-based pricing.
Across the teams, legal operations leaders said AI is moving lawyers toward higher-value work rather than replacing them outright, though uneven training, limited IT support and ROI measurement still constrain wider rollout.