More Than Half of Victoria's Lawyers Now Use AI, but Only a Quarter Have Cut Client Fees

More than half of lawyers in Australia's state of Victoria have reported using artificial intelligence (AI) in their work, according to a new study, but just over a quarter say they have reduced client fees as a result of efficiency gains.

The 2026 census of 2,221 of the state's lawyers, conducted by the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner's legal services research centre, found AI use in legal practices rising from 37 percent to 55 percent in the last year.

While the 2025 report found AI use was highest among those under 30 years of age, in 2026 this disparity had largely disappeared, although usage remained low for those aged 60 and over.

Use varied sharply by field. AI use was most common in trade practices (85 percent), banking and finance (78 percent) and information technology and telecommunications (78 percent), while it was used much less in criminal law (29 percent), family law (45 percent) and administrative law (46 percent).

Although there are AI tools designed specifically for legal services, 79 percent of lawyers reported using consumer chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Copilot. Legal-specific tools alone were used by 22 percent of respondents.

The increased use of AI has not translated into lower fees for most, the survey found, with just 26 percent of lawyers saying their use of AI had resulted in lower client fees. Reduced fees were more likely to be reported by those working for business clients (34 percent) compared with individual fee-paying clients (23 percent).

Some lawyers (18 percent) reported that AI had enabled them to take on work that would previously have been uneconomical.

Principal researcher and report co-author Dr Georgie Rychner said fee reductions in corporate and big firms could be attributed to the fact that clients in those settings are repeat users of legal services. They have a high level of legal capability, she said, and are perhaps using AI in their own work, so they better understand and can advocate for lower prices, whereas that is not seen as much in the community legal services sector.

Rychner said the efficiency gains from using AI were not as high as expected, but noted that in the 2025 survey 89 percent of practitioners said they had taken steps to verify the accuracy of AI output, which might have negated the gains.

The survey also found a rise in clients using AI for their own legal research: 46 percent of lawyers reported their clients arriving with inaccurate or misleading information, and 41 percent presented AI-generated documents that required correction. Nearly half of lawyers said client AI use increased the time and effort required, compared with 19 percent who said it led to a reduction.

Rychner said lawyers are hearing that clients are more frequently arriving with misleading or inaccurate information about their legal problems, more so than with a better understanding of them, adding that more research is needed to understand client perspectives.

Courts and legal practitioner bodies across Australia have been grappling with the rise in AI use among lawyers and the public since 2023. A Victorian lawyer last year was the first in the country to face sanctions over false citations, being stripped of his ability to practise as a principal lawyer. Investigations were also launched by regulatory bodies in Western Australia and New South Wales in similar cases.

The federal court in April issued new rules around using generative AI, while the chief justice of the high court, Stephen Gageler, said last year that the use of AI-generated content in legal cases had reached an "unsustainable phase."