The Shift Has Already Happened: How Legal's Relationship with AI Changed
Two years ago, the dominant argument in the legal industry was whether AI had any place in the profession at all. That debate is over.
Analysts are now calling 2026 the year AI moves from an “interesting tool” to “operational infrastructure”. The speed at which that narrative has changed tells you everything about where the industry is heading.
Key takeaways
- The legal profession's central question has moved from "can we trust this?" to "how do we integrate this properly?"
- AI adoption across IP practice has risen from 57% in 2023 to 85% in 2025.
- Firms are not just trialling AI tools, they are expanding its use across full workflows. Practitioners using Solve Intelligence grew ~560% in 2025 alone.
- Clearer regulatory guidance has removed one of the most significant psychological barriers to adoption.
- The profile of firms now adopting AI has changed: these are not early experimenters, but some of the most demanding legal professionals in the world.
How the conversation changed
Cast your mind back to 2023. AI discussions in the legal industry were largely defensive. Concerns about client confidentiality, professional liability, and data security dominated. Technology providers had everything to prove, and few law firms were willing to make the first move to adopt tools.
That has changed fundamentally and the early adopters have found themselves with a competitive edge in using these tools.
Firms that once refused to engage with the topic are now actively championing AI adoption across their workflows, not to replace their teams, but to enhance what those teams can do. Baker Donelson's 2026 AI Legal Forecast put it plainly: if 2024 was the year of AI hype, 2025 was the year of AI accountability. Additionally, research across the industry consistently shows that AI adoption among legal professionals has moved from a minority of early experimenters to a clear majority. What was once a concern is now a strategic priority and AI is on every legal team's agenda.
Regulatory clarity removing a major barrier
The competitive dynamic has sharpened. In a profession where efficiency and output quality are commercially critical, the cost of being behind (and not adopting AI) is no longer theoretical.
For patent practitioners specifically, the USPTO's revised guidance in November 2025 provided meaningful clarity: AI sits firmly in the category of tools to assist practitioners. That removed the ambiguity that had made many cautious about how deeply to engage AI in their workflows. Clearer positions from bar associations and policymakers have helped ease remaining concerns. Practitioners now have a framework within which to operate - and one of the most significant psychological barriers to adoption has been lifted.
How decisions are being made
Over the last couple of years, a lot has changed in how firms approach AI procurement.
Inbound interest has grown substantially, with practitioners and firms reaching out having already identified a need and done their own research. Word of mouth - through conferences, referrals, and peer recommendations - has done more to drive adoption than any vendor outreach could. Practitioners are now championing specific solutions internally, rather than waiting to be persuaded from the outside.
What we see in practice are initial conversations that move quickly into rigorous due diligence and structured procurement. When global firms are not merely enquiring but implementing tools into day-to-day workflows for active client matters, it reflects a level of institutional confidence that simply did not exist a few years ago. It also demonstrates their commitment to advising clients on this matter.
The speed of decision-making has also compressed dramatically. Because prospective clients arrive informed, the internal debate about whether AI is appropriate has already occurred, which means conversations move directly to: “how quickly can we implement Solve?”
From single task to full workflow
Customers are not just sitting idle on these tools. Our team at Solve Intelligence has had the pleasure of partnering with global and boutique firms to roll out our software across practice groups, bringing more of their workflow into the platform over time, and increasing engagement across users, ensuring we are building a platform that users interact with daily rather than as an occasional tool for a specific task. The breadth of work now being done through Solve has widened considerably. From drafting and prosecution to invention harvesting and claim charting, including Freedom-to-Operate analysis and litigation support - the goal has always been to cover the entire patent lifecycle.
Proof of value is real and visible. Legal teams deploying AI at scale have consistently demonstrated measurable efficiency gains on complex tasks. Independent research reported by Legal Futures highlights that AI contract review achieves 94% accuracy compared to 85% for manual review, and completes the work in a fraction of the time. Within legal circles, that kind of evidence spreads quickly - and peer credibility has driven more adoption than any marketing ever could. These are efficiency metrics that the patent profession can also strive for when using specialized tools.
What we are seeing at Solve Intelligence
At Solve Intelligence, we have a privileged vantage point on this shift. Our AI platform is purpose-built for patent professionals - one of the most demanding, high-stakes areas of legal practice. It is a space where the hesitation that once slowed broader legal AI adoption has largely dissipated. The growth our team has seen over the past three years reflects the broader shift in the market.
Our customer base has grown to over 500 IP teams and thousands of users worldwide. What the team has built in the last few months alone surpasses what was achieved in our first year. This is not a gradual upward curve. It is acceleration.
The number of IP professionals using Solve Intelligence grew by approximately 560% in 2025. We see significant growth ahead.
What is coming next
When Solve Intelligence launched Claim Charts in December 2025 - purpose-built for patent litigation and high-volume IP analysis, covering everything from invalidity to infringement mapping, the response reflected exactly what we had been seeing in those early conversations. The question had shifted from "does AI belong here?" to "what can it do next?"
The enthusiasm among patent teams has been consistent: not just in one-to-one conversations, but across the industry events and conferences we attend throughout the year. We are building on that enthusiasm, expanding our partnerships with law firms and in-house IP teams as we develop the go-to platform for patent practice.
What this means
The 500+ teams we work with globally, across multiple jurisdictions, firm sizes, and practice areas, have invested in Solve, and they have stayed because it delivers on ROI.
Patent professionals are not a cohort who adopt technology for its own sake. The work is too consequential, and professional standards too exacting, for anything less than genuine value. When that group engages with real curiosity - asking which products, updates, and innovations are next - it signals that the shift is substantive rather than superficial.
To conclude, IPWatchdog recently noted that AI is beginning to influence patent practice in meaningful ways, with the clearest gains coming in exactly the work our clients do every day. That observation matches what we see across our own platform.
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