Hilary Angrove, the founder of contract law firm Angrove Law.Stacy BLOUNT/Supplied
In a system where time is money, AI could reshape how legal professionals do their jobs and how they charge for it.
Surveys suggest that many legal professionals are using artificial intelligence. Nearly 90 per cent of Canadian lawyers said their firm is piloting or integrating AI tools, according to a 2025 survey from Best Lawyers, an organization that ranks legal professionals. Hours-long administrative and legal research tasks can be conducted by AI in a fraction of the time it takes a person to complete.
Some lawyers are welcoming AI, pointing to its efficiencies and saying it could lead to lower legal fees for clients. Other lawyers are wary, worried that the new technology fast being adopted by the profession poses a host of potential problems to both lawyers and the clients they serve.
AI could save hundreds of dollars for people seeking legal support, according to Hilary Angrove, the founder of contract law firm Angrove Law. The price tag of administrative or paralegal work can be $175 an hour, she said – and that’s on top of the cost of a lawyer.
AI’s impact is larger in document-heavy professions, making law ripe for transformation
At Ms. Angrove’s firm, AI is used to send e-mails, schedule meetings and fill out government forms that can take three to eight hours for a person to complete. Using AI for administrative tasks helps Ms. Angrove’s team operate more efficiently, which allows them to work for a lower flat rate instead of the hourly rate most lawyers use.
For example, Ms. Angrove said a prenuptial agreement can cost $2,000 to $3,000 at her firm, compared with $5,000 at a firm operating on the billable hour.
“A huge part of my job is finding efficiencies for my team so that we can provide legal services at an accessible price,” she said.
The technology is becoming more popular, according to Matthew Peters, who leads the AI adoption strategy as the national transformation leader at business law firm McCarthy Tétrault.
“Every firm is either looking at or has one tool,” he said. McCarthy Tétrault uses three AI programs to handle tasks such as legal research, developing questions for witnesses or preparing drafts. AI can produce higher-quality work by catching information that people miss, Mr. Peters said, and it can cut hours off the time it takes to do legal work. On some tasks, he said, AI has cut down 10 hours of work to one hour.
”The hour is obviously the human review,” he said.
Spending too much time on administrative tasks compared with legal work has been identified as a key pressure in the sector, with more than 80 per cent of firms reporting it as a moderate or significant challenge in a 2024 report by Thomson Reuters Institute and the Canadian Bar Association.
Cutting time can translate to cutting fees.
“If you’re billing in the traditional way, on an hourly basis, the efficiencies flow directly to the clients,” Mr. Peters said.
The pricing changes brought by AI could push lawyers away from the billable hour toward fixed-fee models, he added.
Ms. Angrove, whose firm already operates with that pricing, said flat rates benefit people seeking legal support.
“People want to know what to expect,” she said. “Especially with how expensive it is right now just living, buying groceries, people need to budget.”
But clients may not see a lower price tag quite yet, according to Amy Salyzyn, a University of Ottawa law professor who studies the ethics of technology and access to the justice system. There isn’t clear evidence of shifting legal fees, she said, and even if there were, it’s unclear if they would drop enough to be affordable for those most in need.
Opinion: The future of AI will be decided by trust, not speed
“The jury’s still out on that question,” Dr. Salyzyn said.
In the meantime, legal professionals can be wary of AI. Nearly three-quarters of respondents to the Best Lawyers survey said they were slightly or moderately concerned about the risks AI poses to their practice.
Those concerns include security issues around putting clients’ confidential information into AI tools or AI reproducing discrimination in the legal system, Dr. Salyzyn said. There’s also the possibility of AI making mistakes.
In a 2025 case, a judge said in a Federal Court decision that the applicants’ lawyer drew on two precedent cases and a test which had been “hallucinated,” or made up, by an AI legal research tool.
“The use of generative artificial intelligence is increasingly common and a perfectly valid tool for counsel to use,” the judge wrote in a decision. “However, in this Court, its use must be declared and as a matter of both practice, good sense and professionalism, its output must be verified by a human.”
Generative AI can also be flawed for people who can’t afford legal aid and represent themselves in court, according to Kathy Batycky, a member of the Canadian Bar Association’s access to justice subcommittee. Those people could turn to AI, which could make up cases or simply not understand complex legal issues, she said.
“You have to double-check all the cases,” Ms. Batycky said, adding she is reluctant to use AI in her practice as a family lawyer. “It’s too risky.”
Anthropic’s release of AI tools for lawyers prompts massive legal-tech sell-off
Ms. Angrove said several clients have asked her team to review AI-generated contracts, which she said are always missing information or made for the wrong jurisdiction.
“The user doesn’t know how to prompt properly,” she said. Lawyers, on the other hand, have the education to become the “ultimate prompter.” That’s why the legal profession is still needed, Ms. Angrove said, even though jobs will likely be lost as AI gains popularity.
The change could pose an existential issue for the future of the field, as entry-level research and drafting work done by law students is no longer necessary.
“How do we actually develop the next generation of lawyers, if a bunch of the tasks that have been used to develop their skills are going away?” Mr. Peters of McCarthy Tétrault said.
Dr. Salyzyn said there is concern among her law students about what their future field will look like. However, she said AI may change the type of work that lawyers do, but not the public demand for them.
“I’m optimistic that there will always be a place and an important role for that human judgment, for that human connection when it comes to the delivery of legal services.”