Balancing innovation and ethics: applying generative AI in legal work
Integrating AI into legal workflows can bring numerous benefits, but first, legal professionals must take the proper steps to ensure that the use of AI aligns with their core values, emphasises Thomson Reuters
Nowadays, law firms have their hands full dealing with a myriad of complex challenges. The ever-changing regulatory environment, macroeconomic factors, client demands and accessibility to new technology are reshaping clients’ expectations around pricing and service delivery, making profitability more difficult, and placing a greater compliance burden on law firms — a recent LPM survey revealed that 39% of leaders believe compliance is significantly harder to manage than just 12 months ago.
On top of this, the recruitment and retention of existing talent continues to be a challenge, which has been intensified by the continual rise of hybrid working models, according to Hargrove. He notes: “Back when working in the office five times a week was the norm, lawyers used to gravitate towards working for firms that were relatively close to their home. Now that people work and visit an office less regularly, they’re not limited by location anymore, therefore they can prioritise working for the firms that pay the highest, and as a consequence limiting the availability and retention of talent ” he notes.
These complex obstacles are forcing law firms to rethink their traditional operating models and look for new ways to drive efficiency, meet compliance requirements and deliver the value and the seamless service clients are now expecting. This is where Hargrove believes high quality legal technology can prove valuable — and is what OneAdvanced Legal is aiming to deliver.
“The right technology can often help with many of these challenges. Take a tool that makes compliance easier, for example; aside from the obvious benefit, implementing this tool can increase job satisfaction for the people doing this task, and can also improve the service delivery, thus increasing client satisfaction,” he explains.
With this in mind OneAdvanced legal was launched in 2024 as a portfolio of high quality legal specific software, built on a single platform, designed to solve the challenge of the modern day law firm.
Change in perspectives
The legal market is now inundated with sector-specific technology solutions, promising to increase productivity and deliver the efficiency that firms are craving. However, unlike their larger counterparts, small to mid-size law firms often have more limited budgets and they lack the dedicated data, implementation teams or extensive infrastructures needed to make tech adoption a success.
Nevertheless, Hargrove says these law firms are warming up more to the idea of incorporating technology into their practice — with over half of leaders confirming their intention to increase their technology spend this year, according to the latest LPM Frontiers report. “The number of law firms that are fearful of technology and reluctant to adapt to the new ways of operating is definitely shrinking,” he says.
Hargrove sees two prominent types of technology buyers at the moment — the firms that recognise the value of upgrading their tech stack and proactively investing in new solutions to improve their efficiency, and the firms that are forced to change due to their current systems reaching their end of life or becoming too expensive to sustain.
“There’s quite a lot of distressed firms that are being driven by external factors, not their ambition, to change technology systems. As they’re under pressure, they often pick something simply because they have to. We’re making a big effort to educate these particular firms and support them on their journey, to ensure they pick the right tools and get the most out of their investment,” says Hargrove.
Trust: a two-way street
Given their limited resources, choosing the right tech vendor and tools to fit their needs and harnessing value out of them remains the top priority for law firms looking to invest in legal tech solutions.
A deep understanding of the legal sector and the intricacies of running a legal practice is important when choosing the right technology partner, says Hargrove. “We pride ourselves on our extensive knowledge of the market. OneAdvanced has decades of experience working in this sector, and many of our team members are ex-lawyers, so we really understand law firms, and we design products with them in mind.”
Its expertise is reflected in its OneAdvanced Legal tech portfolio. This combines all the vendor’s tools — from case management to time capture and billing tools — along with its proprietary AI and data collection capabilities to deliver an integrated portfolio. “We’re taking the burden of connecting tech products off law firms, and bringing together their workflows, so they can just focus on getting their job done. We’ve also created a significant volume of resources, such as videos, guides, tools for data migration and a customer support portal to contact our team, to reduce the barriers to tech adoption — all to make things as easy as possible for law firms,” he elaborates.
Above all, Hargrove emphasises the importance of trust and transparency between law firms and their technology suppliers. He believes clear and honest communication and feedback is essential to ensure the vendor understands the law firm’s needs and can deliver the right solutions — thus building the foundations to a powerful partnership and long-term trust.
He elaborates: “I want our customers to be our biggest fans and our biggest critics. I want them to tell me when we’ve done something right and be honest when we’ve got things wrong because that’s the only way we can learn. At the same time, if the customer is not right for our business, I will always tell them upfront. I will never sell our products to a firm that won’t benefit from them, because I would be doing them a disservice. In the end, they’ll be unsatisfied and that will just hurt our company’s reputation. There should always be a partnership between law firm and tech vendor, built on trust and transparency.”
Technology on the rise
The next step in OneAdvanced’s journey to servicing the legal market is the launch of the vendor’s first legal specific AI agents, launching in November 2025. The file and matter quality review agents are designed to take over the administrative burden of compliance checks and client due diligence for any matter — leaving lawyers with the responsibility to verify and sign off the work.
This comes ahead of the rise in AI adoption among small to mid-size law firms that Hargrove expects to see within a year. “Over the next six months, I expect firms to continue to focus on educating themselves on this technology and to experiment with low risk use cases. However, there will be a tipping point around mid-next year, when AI adoption will accelerate, as this technology will become even more prevalent and the fear of missing out will grow among firms. When that happens, we’ll be here to help firms navigate this and help them build the right foundation for the future.”
