How AI summaries help UK and Irish legal teams save time, cut costs, and improve outcomes (1)

This guide covers the key challenges driving AI adoption in law, the benefits it provides, the risks and how to mitigate them. It also explains why Vizlegal’s accuracy-first AI summaries are a natural entry point for streamlining legal research without changing existing workflows.

1. The challenges driving AI adoption in legal practiceLawyers are increasingly navigating lengthy legal texts, scattered sources, and escalating expectations. The real constraint is time: court deadlines, client updates, and complex research all compete for the same hours, so every extra page read, and every extra system checked takes away from what really matters.

Judgments are long and getting longer

According to a Judiciary working-group report, in the UK, “typical” oral High Court judgments average 20–30 pages once transcribed, while complex written judgments often exceed 100+ pages. The Autonomy v Lynch decision, for example, ran well over 1,000 pages. In Ireland, the High Court delivered 691 written judgments in 2023, with a further 337 from the Court of Appeal, underscoring the sheer amount of material practitioners must review.

Research time stacks up fast

This volume translates directly into time. In a 2024 Thomson Reuters survey of 606 private-practice lawyers, 34% said they spend over an hour per day on legal research, with 10% dedicating two hours or more. What’s more, research is often fragmented across databases, intranets, and websites, taking up valuable effort before the reading even begins.

Clients expect faster, clearer updates

Client expectations amplify these pressures. Communication, responsiveness, and efficiency are stronger drivers of client satisfaction than “value for money” alone, demonstrating the importance of clear, timely updates. In-house teams also prioritise tools for faster drafting and automation, signalling demand for concise, client-ready explanations that don’t sacrifice nuance.

Together, these challenges make AI legal technologies – and particularly AI summaries – a necessity rather than a luxury in a competitive market. Next, we outline the key benefits of AI tools for lawyers.

2. What legal teams gain by integrating AI

AI legal technology can cut hours of research time. But it’s not just about speed: by providing structured overviews and highlighting key developments, AI summaries let lawyers focus on strategy, improve service quality, and reduce the risk of oversight.

Less reading, more doing

AI reduces the reading and retrieval load, so lawyers can move faster with less manual effort. Tools like AI research assistants and AI summaries convert multi-hour reads into minutes, freeing up time for higher-value activities. Crucially, 77% of surveyed legal professionals said adding generative AI to their research tools would make a positive difference, with estimated time savings of 200 hours per year.

Insights that guide strategy

The primary applications of generative AI in the legal field include research, analysis, and document automation. With predictive analytics and argument-mining tools, lawyers can identify trends in outcomes, judges, and courts, strengthening case strategy and decision-making.

Communication that clients notice

Clients respond well to clear and timely communication. Firms that convey issues using plain language improve client satisfaction. AI that can deliver concise case overviews in natural language and improve turnaround times directly lifts perceived value.

Of course, in law, the benefits of AI hinge on accuracy. A single overlooked detail can undermine client trust, change the outcome of a case, or even expose a firm to liability. That’s why AI tools must be judged not only on speed, but on the reliability of their output.

3. Vizlegal’s accuracy-first AI summaries

While many AI tools promise efficiency, Vizlegal’s AI summaries were built with an accuracy-first philosophy to ensure they are consistent, trustworthy, and fit for real-world practice. That’s one of the reasons they’re trusted by over 1,700 legal professionals across Ireland and the UK. Vizlegal was named BIALL Supplier of the Year 2023 by The British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, reflecting its outstanding service to the legal community. It is widely used across chambers, firms, and public bodies, including by the Bar of Ireland’s 2,200 members.Key benefits of Vizlegal’s AI summaries include:

●  Accuracy-first philosophy: Unlike generic AI tools that risk “hallucinations” or invented content, Vizlegal prioritised reliability from the start, running a rigorous testing programme in which thousands of outputs were reviewed and refined in collaboration with practitioners.

●  Structured clarity: Each judgment is distilled into a 500-word overview, divided into clear sections (Background, Facts, Analysis, and Conclusion) and tagged by legal topic. This mirrors how lawyers naturally read judgments, reducing the time needed to understand a case.

●  Seamless workflow integration: Summaries are embedded within Vizlegal’s platform, so practitioners can instantly see the context of a case while searching, track appeals through alerts and timelines, and compare rulings across courts.

●  Proven time savings: Users describe the summaries as “scarily good”, “a game changer”, and “immensely useful”. Hours of reading are reduced to minutes, freeing up time for deeper analysis and strategy.

●  Breadth of coverage: With over 22,000 Irish court judgments already summarised, Vizlegal offers one of the largest and most consistent collections of AI-generated summaries across practice areas.

●  Designed for lawyers: From the interface design to the tone of the summaries, everything is tailored to how legal professionals actually work. This lawyer-centred approach is a key reason adoption has been so strong among Irish practitioners.In short, Vizlegal’s AI summaries show how AI legal technology can save time and enhance insight responsibly: augmenting, rather than replacing, lawyers’ expertise.

4. Action steps: integrating AI responsibly

For many firms, AI summaries are the natural, low-risk first step to adopting AI. Here are some practical steps to get started:●  Start with demos: See Vizlegal’s AI summaries in action and test how they fit your workflow.

●  Use as a research aid: Leverage summaries to quickly identify cases worth deeper review.

●  Stay engaged: Always validate AI outputs and citations – as a lawyer, your role as an expert cannot be replaced.

●  Monitor and adjust: Track time saved and performance, and regularly refine how AI fits into your practice.

Start small: explore Vizlegal’s AI summaries on your current cases, validate the results, and then expand firm-wide.

5. Navigating accuracy and risk

The main risk with generative AI is that it is prone to “hallucinations”. Fabricated references and legal terms have already shown up in court, highlighting the dangers of relying on generic tools without verification.

In Reddan v An Bord Pleanála [2025] IEHC 172, for example, the Irish High Court remarked on “legal” phrases in the papers that “had all the hallmarks of ChatGPT”. Coverage of the decision made the same point: judges can and do spot AI artefacts, and they will not excuse them.Internationally, in Mata v Avianca, Inc. (S.D.N.Y., June 22, 2023), two lawyers were sanctioned after a brief contained six fictitious case citations generated by ChatGPT, which they later doubled-down on and used to generate fake decisions. This led to significant embarrassment, a $5,000 sanction against the firm, and formal guidance from the American Bar Association on the use of generative AI.

In practice, this means that AI can assist research, but responsibility for accuracy always rests with the practitioner. That’s why choosing tools built and tested for use in law matters.

Vizlegal’s AI summaries were developed in collaboration with practising lawyers and rigorously tested to ensure its outputs are consistent, trustworthy, and usable in real-world practice. By selecting tools designed for law, firms can adopt AI with confidence, gaining efficiency without compromising accuracy.

Conclusion

AI legal technology is more than a trend. When implemented thoughtfully, it offers a genuine strategic advantage. The right tools save time, reduce errors, and empower teams to work smarter, faster, and better. Vizlegal’s AI summaries exemplify this approach: structured, accurate, and designed with legal professionals in mind.

See why Irish and UK practitioners describe Vizlegal’s summaries as a game changer: Book your demo today.