New survey data from LegalOn has shown that 17% of large companies are now using AI contract review software, with a further 21% evaluating the time-saving technology. This matters because: it drives inhouse efficiency, and may also help shift expectations more broadly about how contracts should be handled, both internally and by external advisers to those corporates. Now, 17% may not sound like a lot, but given historical rates of legal AI adoption, this is a major boost. In fact, if one combines the data for small and large companies (i.e. those above and below 1000 staff – see graphs below), then just in the last 12 months use of such tools inhouse has increased from 8% to 14%. If that trend were to continue over the next few years, with those evaluating such tech then moving to adoption, then we’d be witnessing a significant change in how many inhouse legal teams handle contract review, whether that’s part of a CLM platform, a dedicated contract management and review system, or some other AI-based review approach. The LegalOn survey also found that, understandably, inhouse lawyers were spending several hours per day just on contract review, with the desire to use legal AI tech mainly driven by the ‘need for speed’, as this site calls it. The hope of reducing dull work is also a key reason. Other drivers included: reducing risk, providing a consistent approach to review, and generally saving on costs and resources within the inhouse legal team. Elsewhere in the survey, LegalOn found that despite the clear benefits of using playbooks inhouse for contract review, only 7% of large companies had ‘fully comprehensive’ playbooks. But, more positively 34% had ‘some’ comprehensive playbooks. Stay Ahead of the Financial Trends with Our Latest FinTech News Updates! Source: https://www.artificiallawyer.com/2025/01/15/17-of-large-companies-now-using-ai-contract-review-tools/