Why should law firms take a strategic approach to AI adoption?
Canadian astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield is quoted as describing Mission Control as "one of the most formidable and intellectually stimulating” environments in the world.
Everyone in that room has hard-won expertise in their particular technical area. As individuals, they’re brilliant.
But here's what makes it really work: that expertise operates as a coherent system. Astronauts don't survive on individual talent alone.
UK law firms are facing the same challenge with AI. And if the statistics are anything to go by, it's proving harder than expected.
The gap the statistics reveal
LexisNexis reports that 61% of UK legal professionals now use generative AI at work, up from 46% in January.
That's remarkable progress in less than a year. Real momentum driven by curious, capable people finding practical ways to work better.
But only 17% say AI is fully embedded in their firm's strategy and operations.
That gap isn't surprising. Moving from individual experimentation to organisational capability is genuinely difficult work. It requires coordination across teams that rarely need to coordinate. It needs governance frameworks that don't exist yet. It demands time that no one has.
Why this is harder than it looks
When individual lawyers adopt AI, they're solving immediate problems in their own work. That's relatively straightforward: find a tool, test it, refine your approach.
But moving to strategic integration means solving problems that sit between departments.
How do you write governance that enables confident use without creating bureaucratic gridlock? How do you coordinate training across teams with completely different needs? How do you establish quality standards when different practice areas work in fundamentally different ways? How do you answer client questions about AI capability when usage varies significantly across the firm?
These aren't technology questions. They're organisational questions. And they're complicated by the fact that everyone's already busy, AI is evolving rapidly, and there's no established rule book to follow.
Where the pressure is building
The challenge is that external pressures aren't waiting for firms to figure this out.
Clients are starting to ask direct questions in pitches: "How does your firm use AI? What governance do you have in place? How do you ensure quality and manage risk?"
Right now, many firms can't answer with the clarity and confidence those questions deserve. Not because they lack capability, the high individual adoption rates show that capability exists, but because that hasn't yet translated into something they can articulate as a strategic firm position.
That creates an uncomfortable tension. You know your people are doing good work with AI. You know you're making progress. But when a client asks, or when you're competing for a significant tender, you can't quite describe what that progress looks like at the firm level.
The growth opportunity no one's talking about
Here's what's interesting, this isn't primarily about efficiency.
LexisNexis also found that 56% of private practice lawyers using AI are spending the time saved on increasing billable work. They're taking on more clients. Handling more complex matters. Building deeper strategic relationships.
That's a growth signal, not a cost-reduction signal.
But growth at firm level requires strategic coordination. You need consistent quality you can promise. Clear governance you can explain. Shared workflows that mean clients get the same enhanced service regardless of which team handles their work.
The firms that crack this coordination challenge first don't just avoid the "we can't quite explain our AI capability" problem. They gain a genuine competitive advantage in a market where differentiation is increasingly difficult.
What makes this achievable
The 17% statistic tells us something important. And that’s that some firms have already figured this out. They've moved from individual adoption to strategic integration. Which means it's achievable, even though it's difficult.
And chances are this isn’t a grand transformation programme. It's practical, incremental work —
Governance that enables rather than blocks: clear boundaries that help people work confidently, not policies that sit in drawers gathering dust.
Cross-functional coordination that happens regularly, not just reactively: compliance, BD, HR and operations talking to each other.
Shared quality standards that emerge from real usage patterns, not imposed from the top down.
Training that builds on what people are already doing, not starting from scratch.
Workflows that treat AI as part of how work gets done, not bolted on as an afterthought.
None of that is easy. But all of it is possible, even with the time and resource constraints firms are working under.
Which firms have an advantage
Pragmatic firms less encumbered by legacy systems and rigid hierarchies that are willing to test things that work rather than wait for perfect solutions are likely to move faster.
What every firm at this stage needs is clarity on what strategic integration actually looks like in practice, and a practical path to get there that doesn't require putting everything else you're doing aside.
The firms that forge ahead over the next 12-18 months will be the ones who can articulate their AI capability clearly, differentiate credibly in competitive situations, and deliver the kind of consistent, compliant AI-enhanced service that sophisticated clients increasingly expect.
If you’re exploring how AI might support BD and client-facing teams specifically, I’ve made my Rainmaker Protocol prompt available here in a Google doc.
It’s a governance-safe example of how structured, repeatable prompting can support clearer positioning, stronger narratives and more consistent team outputs — the kind of firm-level coherence clients increasingly expect.
What comes next?
If you're grappling with the question "How do we move from individual adoption to something we can actually explain to clients?", you're not alone.
The difference is that some firms are starting to find practical answers. Not perfect answers, this is all evolving too fast for that, but workable approaches that turn enthusiastic individual adoption into strategic capability you can build on.
Synthetic stress testing
One tool I'm rolling out already with legal clients is a process to stress-test firm growth ideas using AI-simulated decision-makers (based on academic research covering nearly 10,000 human responses).
You take an idea and run it past simulated versions of the people you’re trying to influence — managing partners, COOs, clients — built from real demographic and decision-making data.
And that helps you —
Strengthen ideas and proposals before you spend on design, rollout, and partner time
“Hear from” people you can’t easily access, particularly in the C-suite
Walk into the boardroom with mapped objections (and a stronger story for clients and panels)
Test multiple options without a big research budget
See results in days, not months
Stay within firm policies: anonymised scenarios, no client/matter data, no training on your data
You can find out more about this tool in this presentation. Drop me an email if you'd like to chat through.