Our second annual survey of leaders in the legal function shows that while almost all organizations are using AI in some capacity, legal leaders are slightly more cautious about it than their peers in other functions across the C-suite, and are more comfortable with a measured pace of development and the board’s level of involvement.

Executives across functions indicate that AI is rapidly becoming a part of daily business and is being measured for its contributions like any other investment.

Across functions, it’s still hard for companies to find the AI talent they need. As leaders seek to use AI for a broadening range of tasks and projects—eventually rewiring business processes across the enterprise—we expect high demand for AI-specific expertise at all levels to continue for three to six years. 

In the long run, it seems likely demand will follow a pattern similar to that in earlier waves of computing innovation, from personal computing to cloud, in which specific technical expertise was in high demand during the transition, but then declined as the relevant knowledge became a part of every person’s role. In other words, we expect that basic working knowledge of AI will be as fundamental an expectation for senior leaders as being digitally savvy is today.