From Pilot to Practice: Scaling Legal AI in 2025

🟦 Editor’s Brief

The legal industry has never moved faster — or with more hesitation.

Every firm, every in-house team is testing the waters with AI. Some are piloting GenAI for contract review. Others are embedding copilots into workflows or surfacing insights from matter data. But here’s the truth:

Most teams aren’t stuck because of the tech. They’re stuck because there’s no strategy.

This issue of The Advantage goes beyond demo decks and into the hard part: scaling GenAI from promise to performance. We’ve curated trends, tools, and frameworks legal leaders need to operationalize AI — without losing control over governance, ROI, or trust.

🟦 The Pulse

AI is everywhere — but ROI is MIA.

• According to Thomson Reuters’ 2025 GenAI Report, 95% of legal professionals expect GenAI to be embedded in daily workflows within five years.

• Yet only 20% are measuring ROI — strategy lags behind speed.

• Consistent with discussions from organizations like ILTA, much of current GenAI adoption remains stuck in pilot mode — with few defined metrics, little change enablement, and limited business alignment.

Insight: Adoption isn’t the finish line — it’s where the real work begins.

🟦 Stack Spotlight

Tools in Focus: Harvey Assistant | CoCounsel | Vincent AI

Legal-specific GenAI copilots are rising:

• Harvey Assistant achieved a 94.8% accuracy rate for Document Q&A in the Vals Legal AI Report (VLAIR), outperforming human lawyers on multiple tasks.

• CoCounsel (Thomson Reuters) scored 77.2% on document summarization.

• Vincent AI showed promising results in drafting and legal research workflows.

But are legal teams truly capturing this value?

While accuracy continues to improve, usability and training remain major blockers to widespread adoption.

The tech may be ready — but enablement is not.

🟦 The Ops Playbook

5 Steps to Scale Legal AI Beyond the Pilot

1. Define the outcome — don’t just chase a use case

2. Map the data — structured, relevant, secure

3. Train for trust — onboard both human and AI actors

4. Create adoption loops — feedback → iteration → improvement

5. Align with KPIs — tie GenAI output to legal and business metrics

These steps address adoption blockers highlighted in industry reports — including gaps in integration, undefined goals, and missing metrics.

Teams that scale GenAI treat it as infrastructure, not innovation.

🟦 In Their Words

🟦 The Deep Take

Why Legal AI Is Still Hard to Scale

It’s not hallucinations. Or integrations. Or even budget.

The real reason GenAI fails in legal?

They lack:

• A framework to define what “good AI” looks like

• A budget model to evaluate build vs. buy

• An intake process to surface repeatable, high-value use cases

While VLAIR shows GenAI outperforming human lawyers on specific tasks, realizing that potential at scale requires structure, governance, and cultural readiness.

Takeaway: Scaling GenAI isn’t a tech problem — it’s a governance problem wrapped in a capacity challenge.

🟦 Calendar Watch

Upcoming Legal Tech Events

1. CLOC Global Institute 2025
   📍 May 5–8, 2025 | Las Vegas, NV
   The leading event for legal operations professionals
   Learn More

2. ALA Annual Conference & Expo 2025
   📍 May 18–21, 2025 | Nashville, TN
   Practical strategies for legal management excellence
   Learn More

3. Legal Geek North America 2025
   📍 June 17, 2025 | Chicago, IL
   A high-energy conference for legal professionals, in-house counsel, and legal tech innovators.
   Learn More

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Next Edition: Legal Tech Stack Audits — what to keep, what to cut, and how to consolidate without chaos.

Published weekly by Advanta Legal Tech. Questions or feedback? Contact us at [email protected]