Australian law firms have, since 2023, published a great deal about AI. What they have actually deployed, at scale, is a smaller and more specific set of applications.
Case one: a top-tier firm
One of the top-six national firms deployed an AI-assisted contract review tool across its property and M&A practices in mid-2024. Eighteen months on, the tool is used in 71 per cent of eligible matters. Lawyer time per matter has fallen by an average of 22 per cent. Client billing has been restructured on affected matters, mostly toward fixed-fee arrangements.
Case two: a boutique
A twelve-lawyer commercial boutique deployed a locally-hosted AI system for document search across its historical file base. The application is narrow. It is, on the firm's numbers, saving each lawyer roughly ninety minutes a week.
The pattern
In both cases, success required a narrow use case, a supportive senior partner, and eighteen months of iterative tuning. The mistake, seen elsewhere, is to expect AI to work broadly at day one.
