RSGI’s new report looks at how in-house legal teams’ use of AI is changing how they create, deliver and buy value. It draws on RSGI’s research for The Accelerating Impact of Legal AI: Harvey as Foundational, a report commissioned by Harvey, and on our broader research for the FT Innovative Lawyers programme.
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Our research reveals that AI is delivering four commercial outcomes to in-house legal teams: creating capacity, elevating legal’s standing in the business, insourcing more legal work, and redefining value from outside counsel.
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Harvey's most immediate effect has been to create capacity within legal teams under pressure to manage more complex legal risks at speed. Individual users save four to eight hours a week on average. Significantly, that time is being redirected to higher-value and more strategic work.
Using Harvey is helping in-house lawyers expand their role and influence. Nearly half (48%) of legal teams expect the legal function to have a more influential strategic role in the business within the next year as a result of using Harvey. As fast adopters, legal teams have gained a reputation for innovation and are held up as role models for AI transformation across other parts of the business.
As demands on in-house teams grow and outside counsel rates rise, the economic case for insourcing more legal work has strengthened. Reduced external legal spend was named by 68% of legal teams as a measure used to justify their Harvey licences, and more than a third (36%) report insourcing work that was previously sent to outside counsel. For some, Harvey enables full automation of a task; for others, it lets the in-house team complete the first steps of a complex matter before involving external lawyers, significantly reducing spend.
AI is changing what in-house teams expect from law firms — not reducing the need for outside lawyers, but reshaping how work is allocated and where the greatest value is seen. External counsel is becoming a higher-value judgement layer. AI capability is also becoming part of the value equation: 48% have mandated external law firms to use AI in their legal work to increase efficiencies, and 28% are actively reviewing their panel on this basis.
Download the full report here: The New Economics of In-House Legal | Harvey
Key findings
Key findings
