Lawise

What the Next Wave of AI Predictions Means for Legal Teams, HR, and SMEs:

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Over the past two years, AI in legal has been dominated by experimentation. Tools were tested, pilots were launched, and many solutions promised to “transform legal workflows.”

The next phase will look very different.

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Recent AI predictions point to a structural shift: AI is moving from experimentation to necessity. In legal tech, this shift will be driven less by novelty and more by cost pressure, speed requirements, and accuracy expectations — especially in high-cost countries like Switzerland.

At Lawise, we see several developments becoming decisive.

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1. Legal AI Adoption Will Expand Beyond Lawyers

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The first wave of legal AI focused almost exclusively on lawyers serving lawyers: drafting assistance, contract review, workflow optimization inside law firms.

The next wave will be broader — and larger.

AI tools like Jurilo are increasingly adopted by:

HR managers
CFOs and finance teams
Executives and operations leaders
SMEs without in-house legal departments
Public-sector administrators

These users don’t want legal theory. They need clear, correct answers they can act on immediately.

As legal questions become more frequent — and budgets tighter — non-lawyers will no longer escalate every issue to external counsel. Instead, AI becomes the first line of legal clarification, with lawyers stepping in only when needed.

This is not about replacing lawyers.
It is about using legal expertise more efficiently.

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2. Cost Pressure Is Now a Primary Adoption Driver — Even in Switzerland

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For a long time, Switzerland was seen as relatively immune to cost pressure in legal services. That is changing rapidly.

Across enterprises, public institutions, and SMEs, we see:

Flat or shrinking headcount
Increasing regulatory complexity
Higher expectations for response time
Strong pressure to reduce external legal spend

Legal departments are expected to do more work with fewer resources — and to deliver answers faster.

AI tools that reduce research time from 30–90 minutes to seconds are no longer “nice to have.”
They are becoming economically necessary.

This shift strongly favors solutions that:

Deliver immediate answers
Reduce dependency on external counsel
Scale across many internal users

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3. Accuracy Will Matter More Than “Workflow”

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Many early legal AI tools focused on workflow: task management, document routing, internal collaboration.

What we now observe is a change in priorities.

Enterprises and governments increasingly favor:

High factual accuracy
Traceability to legal sources
Up-to-date legislation and case law
Clear reasoning, not just text generation

A beautiful workflow is useless if the answer is wrong.

As AI moves into operational and compliance-critical contexts, accuracy becomes the differentiator — not UI polish or automation promises.

This is especially true for:

Labor law decisions
Termination and compliance questions
Tax and social security topics
Public-sector use cases

Legal AI will increasingly be evaluated like other critical systems:
Can we trust the output — yes or no?

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4. Data Sovereignty and Compute Independence Are Becoming Strategic

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Another major trend is the growing demand for:

Data sovereignty
Local or regional compute
Independence from opaque black-box models

Enterprises and governments are becoming more cautious about where:

Legal data is processed
Sensitive questions are stored
Models are trained and operated

This favors architectures that:

Combine AI with controlled knowledge bases
Allow regional or sovereign deployment
Reduce dependency on a single hyperscaler

Legal AI is not just a productivity tool — it is increasingly seen as part of core digital infrastructure.

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5. Time-to-Answer Is Becoming a Competitive Factor

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In many organizations, legal delays are no longer acceptable.

Decisions need to be made:

During meetings
In HR processes
In operational workflows
Under time pressure

AI enables legal answers at the moment of decision, not days later.

As labor costs rise and teams stay lean, organizations must:

Reduce handoffs
Avoid bottlenecks
Enable self-service where possible

The winners will be solutions that integrate speed, correctness, and clarity — not just automation.

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What This Means for Legal Tech Going Forward

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The next phase of legal AI will be defined by five principles:

Broader adoption by non-lawyers
Clear economic impact
Accuracy over hype
Sovereignty and trust
Immediate usability in real decisions

At Lawise, this is exactly the direction we see with Jurilo:
a legal AI designed not just for specialists, but for the people who actually need legal clarity — fast, reliable, and grounded in Swiss law.

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The era of experimentation is ending.
The era of practical legal AI has begun.

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