Legal departments 'flooded' with AI correspondence

Updated / Tuesday, 27 Oct 2026 06:01

Getty

The legal departments of companies are being "flooded" with AI-generated correspondence, according to new research.

The study, carried out by law firm Dentons, indicates that employee grievances, customer complaints and GDPR requests are now routinely drafted using AI tools - which it said "has placed a significant burden on in-house legal teams".

The findings are based on interviews with senior in-house lawyers at ten companies in the US, UK and Ireland, including Irish-based firms eir, Flipdish, Mastercard, Gilead Sciences, Uniphar, and Wayflyer.

According to Dentons, most of the companies interviewed said the issue is not with reading the increase in AI-generated correspondence but "rather working out which parts of it matter".

It said some in-house teams have turned to AI to deal with the "sheer volume" of AI-generated submissions.

One of the respondents, Chief Legal and People Officer with the financing platform Wayflyer Deirdre McCarthy, said AI can produce so much content that "sometimes looks good, but may not always be good".

"So, you can end up with people spending a lot of time just trading red lines because they're putting it into their AI tool," she said.

The research, carried out by Dentons’ Dublin-based technology, media and telecommunications team, is aimed at finding out more about how in-house legal teams are using AI.

It noted that "almost every interviewee" said AI was being used for "narrow, well-scoped repetitive tasks, rather than being given free rein to take on legal work".

The study found that "many companies emphasised the importance of centralising legal data", while "a number use a wide variety of AI tools to work with that data".

Carlo Salizzo, Technology Partner with Dentons in Ireland and co-author of the research, said it "shows that in-house legal departments are not replacing employees with AI, but they are finding ways to use AI to help staff be more productive, including using AI tools to help cope with a raft of AI-generated submissions".

In fact, the report said "almost nobody we spoke to" is using AI to replace a role or a function.

It said that "where it is adding value, it is more often by automating tasks such as invoice review, contract checking, customer screening and other repetitive tasks, rather than by replacing core legal work such as research, drafting and judgement calls".

Meanwhile, according to David Kirton, who co-authored the report, "most companies have found that the advent of AI has meant that good governance requires the expertise of multi-disciplinary teams".

The research also suggests there have been "significant changes in the relationship between external counsel and in-house lawyers (with AI advances), with the latter exploring alternatives to the billable hour".