Law360 (March 4, 2025, 2:04 PM EST) -- More attorneys seem to be using generative AI tools and view it positively compared with last year, but lawyers are still concerned about legal ethics and client confidentiality when it comes to the technology, according to the latest survey from Law360 Pulse.

Fifty-four percent of lawyers who participated in Law360 Pulse's 2025 AI Survey reported that they currently use generative AI for at least one use case, an increase from last year's 35% of attorneys who said they are using the technology.

Dean Seiveno, chief enterprise officer at Fennemore Craig PC, told Law360 Pulse that law firm training and the integration of generative AI into already adopted legal tools is leading more attorneys to use the technology.

"You can't avoid it, so you might as well embrace it and put up a guardrail," he said.

The report is based on the responses of nearly 400 attorneys at private U.S. law firms who completed the second Law360 Pulse AI Survey. The survey was conducted from November 2024 to January 2025. Attorneys were asked about their use of generative AI, views on the technology, firm training and policies, and more.

The report also found that the percentage of lawyers who view AI adoption in the legal industry positively has increased from 27% in 2024 to 35% in 2025. The percentage of attorneys who view AI adoption neutrally decreased from 46% in 2024 to 34% in 2025, while negative segments increased slightly from 23% to 26%.

Dan Surowiec, global chief information officer at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP, attributes the increase in positive sentiments around generative AI to law firms and legal tech companies finding ways to implement the technology with guardrails that address early challenges and issues. One guardrail that firms and companies have created to address the issue of hallucinations, or false information, is having generative AI tools cite the source from which they pulled their answers.

"Law firms specifically have gotten our minds around how to start to manage the risk more effectively, and as part of that, have been able to provide more tools that are providing better value to lawyers, so the perception of what AI can do and how it can be used has improved," he said.

Another key finding from the report is that nearly 80% of attorneys believe the use of generative AI has made their work easier. Sixteen percent of lawyers believe use of the technology has had no effect on their work and 6% believe it has made their work harder.

Joe Green, chief innovation officer at Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian LLP, said attorneys like to focus on high-value and complex tasks, but their days are filled with administrative work that can be tackled with generative AI. Some administrative tasks that generative AI can address include drafting emails and scheduling meetings.

"There are a whole bunch of things that tend to be more repeatable or less interesting that generative AI can help lawyers do more quickly," he said.

Nearly 70% of attorneys said one of the positive effects from generative AI is increased efficiency in administrative tasks, according to the report. Other positive effects from technology include cost savings being passed along to clients and ability to expand caseload due to streamlined work.

The report found that attorneys are currently using generative AI for many different use cases including e-discovery, contract review, marketing, translation and trial preparation.

The most popular use case for generative AI is legal research, with 40% of attorneys currently using the technology for this purpose and 24% of attorneys planning to use the technology for legal research.

The next most popular use cases for generative AI were document summary, correspondence and document creation.

Hunter Jackson, chief knowledge officer at McDermott Will & Emery LLP, said that generative AI excels at document summarization and correspondence, making those particularly good uses of the technology for lawyers.

"Correspondence and the summarization capabilities are just incredibly powerful, add efficiencies and reduce time," he said.

While generative AI adoption is growing in the legal industry, lawyers still have concerns about the technology, according to the report.

Most attorneys – 79% – are concerned about generative AI's imperfect understanding of legal ethics and standards, about the same percentage as last year – 76%. The next top concern for lawyers is maintaining client confidentiality, security and data privacy.

About half of lawyers are also worried about loss of institutional knowledge and challenges in keeping up with rapid advances in AI technology.

Adrian D'Amico, director of emerging technology and innovation at Fennemore Craig, said that client confidentiality is always a top concern for lawyers, and generative AI adds unique challenges to the issue like ensuring client data isn't used to train AI models.

He added that some of the legal ethics issues posed by generative AI include the pricing of services using the technology and lawyer competence.

"If you're using tools like AI, you have to have that competence, which is why we have such a focus on training and enablement," he said.

--Editing by Sarah Golin, Orlando Lorenzo and Pamela Wilkinson. Graphics by Jason Mallory.

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