More than half of Victorian lawyers now use artificial intelligence in legal practice, according to research released by the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner on 30 October.
The voluntary survey of 2,221 lawyers found adoption increased from 37% in 2025 to 55% in 2026. Among AI users, 79% relied on general-purpose products such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot, while movement towards legal-specific tools was comparatively modest.
Adoption has not produced equivalent changes in pricing. Only 26% of AI users in fee-charging practices reported reducing client fees because of AI. Meanwhile, 46% of client-facing lawyers said clients had arrived with inaccurate or misleading AI-derived information, and 41% had received AI-generated documents requiring correction. Client AI use increased the work required for 46% of respondents and reduced it for 19%.
These are self-reported survey results, not independently measured productivity or pricing outcomes. They nevertheless challenge the assumption that greater AI use automatically lowers the cost of legal services.
The more consequential shift may be from producing work to verifying it. If AI accelerates initial research or drafting while creating additional checking and correction, conventional measures based principally on elapsed time may fail to capture where professional value is created. Firms will increasingly need defensible ways to record verification, correction and the lawyer’s adoption of the completed work.
Sources: VLSB+C report; VLSB+C summary.
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