Last year, legal tech companies rolled out more generative AI tools, and law firms invested in those tools and trained their attorneys on how to use them while grappling with court orders and ethical opinions on use of the technology.
Here are law firm and legal tech company leaders' top concerns around generative AI tools in 2025.
Getting AI Right
One concern law firm leaders have related to generative AI is choosing the right tools for their organizations and getting their professionals to use those tools.
Hunter Jackson, chief knowledge officer at McDermott Will & Emery LLP, told Law360 Pulse that it is challenging for law firms to evaluate these tools, understand their capabilities and determine how they can be used in the practice of law.
Generative AI tools can't be used for every lawyer task, and the current versions of these tools are not suitable for senior-level work, he said.
One of the ways Jackson wants to implement generative AI at McDermott is to get everyone who reads complaints to use the technology to summarize those complaints.
Jackson said if McDermott picks the right generative AI tools and gets its professionals to use them the right way, the firm will have a competitive advantage.
"That's what keeps me up at night in terms of making sure we try and do the right thing," he said.
Carolyn Austin, director of practice innovation at K&L Gates LLP, said a challenge she sees for her firm when it comes to choosing the right generative AI tools is some tools have specific uses that solve one problem for one practice group and are not scalable across the firm, while other tools have many uses for multiple practice groups, but can't solve some specific problems for certain practice groups.
"We are going to have to balance this as a law firm looking across the entire spectrum of what's out there and figure out what we want to invest in," Austin said.
Growing AI Regulations
Another concern law firm leaders have tied to using generative AI tools is the growing regulation of the technology.
Last year, more federal judges issued a wide range of standing orders on generative AI, and some state bars published opinions advising lawyers to remember their ethical obligations when using the technology.
Austin said these regulations make it challenging for law firms to seize the opportunity generative AI presents to provide their clients with better services and meet client expectations.
"We balance the ability to realize that kind of opportunity against the fact that we still are working through a number of regulations," she said.
Mary Jane Wilson-Bilik, partner at Eversheds Sutherland, added that law firms also need to monitor AI regulations at the federal level and how that might impact business operations like marketing and human resources.
Wilson-Bilik said some commentators think the incoming Trump administration may defund efforts at the federal level to address discrimination and bias in AI and will be more focused on cybersecurity and the safety of AI systems.
"Keeping an eye on what's happening on the federal level and on the state regulatory level and how that impacts law firms is going to be critical," she said. "Most of these things might take more than a year to play out, but you need to know and prepare and be ready to address any of these changes that are happening."
AI Innovation Decline
On the vendor side, there is a concern about generative AI developers slowing down their innovation.
James Ding, CEO of DraftWise, said that in 2024, the generative AI models released by popular developer OpenAI were faster and cheaper but not smarter.
Ding compared generative AI developments over the past year to how Apple has tweaked the iPhone in recent years without making major changes.
"The leading labs have produced miracles basically every year or every funding cycle, and for the first time, the majority of their innovation isn't miracles, it's just kind of fundamental software building," he said.
Ding said his company has developed many prototypes on existing generative AI models that can't be released until the models improve.
"It's going to be really hard to do some of the things that we thought we could do because the models just can't do it and probably won't do it for a while," he said.
More Data Breaches
Law firm leaders are also concerned that generative AI technology could lead to more data breaches and related litigation.
In 2024, several law firms, including Burr & Forman LLP and Houser LLP, disclosed data breaches and even more firms faced litigation over data breaches, with few firms reaching settlements in these suits.
Wilson-Bilik said the ability to search large amounts of data quickly with generative AI increases the potential for hacks.
"Legal risk management is really strained by many of the developments in generative AI," she said.
Wilson-Bilik added that even though law firms are trying to make their cybersecurity defenses as strong as possible, data breaches are still possible.
"It doesn't take much for there to be a hack or a privacy breach," she said.
--Editing by Nicole Bleier and Drashti Mehta.
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