Spellbook's survey shows that 97 percent of in-house lawyers who use AI find it useful in their work
The speed at which in-house legal departments are adopting AI has taken legal tech leaders by surprise, according to Scott Stevenson, CEO and co-founder of legal technology company Spellbook.
His company, alongside the in-house professional development community Counselwell, recently conducted a survey, which has yet to be published. The early figures, Stevenson says, are striking: 97 percent of respondents who use AI indicated that the technology is useful in their work, with 63 percent finding current tools “somewhat effective” and 34 percent describing them as “highly effective.”
“Those are pretty incredible numbers compared to what the numbers would have been two years ago or even one year ago,” he says.
While concerns about AI hallucinations once dominated discussions, Stevenson believes that period – which he calls AI’s “messy adolescence” – has largely passed. He says legal AI tools are maturing rapidly and being adopted at rates exceeding previous technological shifts.
“AI has become remarkably mature very, very fast,” he says, adding that AI adoption in the legal industry has moved five times faster than the uptake of cloud technology.
Apart from in-house legal departments, Stevenson says the most enthusiastic adopters of legal AI have been small law firms and solo practitioners – a segment that has embraced the technology "ravenously."
“These firms can sometimes have lumpy workflows and often have limited staffing… AI has enabled them to scale their operations and take on more complex matters like nothing ever before,” he says.
After the initial success within the small firm segment, Stevenson says in-house legal departments quickly became Spellbook’s major customer base.
In his words, the transition “just made sense” as in-house counsel teams “often operate like a small law firm within a company.” He adds that they are similarly concerned with efficiency and speed and aren’t constrained by the billable hour.
In contrast, larger law firms have been slower in adopting AI, primarily due to the friction it creates with traditional hourly billing models. However, Stevenson believes that this resistance is starting to fade. Some firms adjust by raising their hourly rates, while others shift toward fixed or contingency-based billing.
He sees the more significant challenge as habit change – lawyers are busy and reluctant to alter familiar workflows. That’s why he thinks tools that integrate directly into existing platforms, like Word, will gain traction by minimizing disruption.
Spellbook is preparing to launch Spellbook Associate, an AI agent-based tool designed to perform multi-document drafting tasks typically handled by junior associates. After six months of early access testing with 400 customers, Stevenson says the official release is expected within the next month or two.
According to him, the tool automates time-consuming tasks such as formatting, copying, pasting, and making coordinated edits across documents in complex transactions like financings and share purchase agreements. It also benchmarks agreements against public data and will soon allow firms to use their historical documents for deeper insights.
While the tool can reduce repetitive work, Stevenson admits that it doesn’t match the full capabilities of a human associate, and it still requires human oversight.
Later this year, Spellbook plans to expand the tool’s capabilities to include email and message integration. The tool, Stevenson says, will be able to triage communications, prioritize tasks, and pre-review documents – potentially before a lawyer even logs in for the day.
Stevenson stresses that legal AI adoption must be gradual and intuitive despite rapid progress.
Rather than asking lawyers to give up control, he says the company’s approach is to enhance existing workflows without overwhelming them.
“Lawyers already know how to ride a bicycle. We just want to give them an electric version. They are still going to pedal and steer, but they will go 10 times further than they did before.”
