Lighthouse Releases Second Annual State of AI in eDiscovery Benchmark Study

USA/Canada News

21
Feb
2025

Editor

Lighthouse, a leader in technology-enabled eDiscovery, compliance, and information governance services, has released the second annual State of AI in eDiscovery report, which has found twice as many companies actively using enterprise AI as they were a year ago, among other data points.

Lighthouse spoke with 150 experts from corporate legal departments and 75 experts at law firms offering exceptional breadth and depth of insights into the ways that eDiscovery practitioners are leveraging AI and how the industry is navigating the complexities of putting a novel technology into practice.

The full report may be downloaded here, but a sampling of data points from the report shows the legal industry is maturing its understanding and use of AI as reflected in shifting focus from existential concerns about AI such as job displacement to more functional concerns around ROI and risk mitigation.

Respondents reported a 95% increase in enterprise AI adoption.

• 72% of respondents have a positive attitude about AI’s impact on the legal industry compared to only 52% last year
• 43% of organizations have formalized AI policies blocking usage of commercial GenAI tools (such as ChatGPT), compared to 26% last year
• 20% say the highest risk from AI is “job displacement,” down from 33% last year
• Document review for eDiscovery emerged as the number one opportunity for AI use by legal

“AI is not a passing trend—it’s the beginning of a defining shift in how legal work will be done,” said Fernando A. Delgado, senior director of AI and analytics at Lighthouse. “We've been developing Large Language Model (LLM) backed AI solutions for over six years because of the unique capabilities this type of technology provides to solve the tough eDiscovery challenges that used to have no good answer. We are thrilled to see growing interest and openness to these tools by lawyers and eDiscovery professionals in the trenches.”