The cost of doing nothing: why legal tech matters in 2026

Bringing in new legal technology comes with an upfront investment, but for many in-house legal teams, the bigger cost is doing nothing at all.

When legal teams rely on manual processes, disconnected systems or underused tools, the impact is felt across the business. The right technology can help streamline work, reduce bottlenecks and give legal teams the visibility they need to operate more strategically.

How can legal teams save time with automation?

Time is one of the most vital resources for in-house lawyers, but legal departments are becoming increasingly time-poor. A lot of your time is spent on manual and repetitive tasks, which is why so many in-house teams are turning to tech to help automate that work.  

AI is now a key part of how modern in-house teams manage growing workloads without increasing headcount. Rather than replacing lawyers, AI is helping legal teams reduce the amount of time spent on repetitive, process-heavy work so they can focus on higher-value legal and commercial priorities.

Here are just a few of the most common use cases for AI in legal tech:

• Contract review and redlining support

• Clause and obligation extraction

• Contract summarization

• Drafting first-pass agreements and emails

• Repository search and reporting

• Legal intake and workflow automation

• Identifying trends, risks and bottlenecks across contract portfolios

This frees in-house lawyers to focus on more complex, strategic and higher-value work. In turn, legal teams can become more proactive business partners, improve responsiveness across the organization and demonstrate greater commercial impact.

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According to the 2025 Thomson Reuters Future of Professionals Report, professionals expect AI to save around five hours a week on average – equivalent to roughly 240 hours every year – and 80% of law form professionals expect the future of their industry will be transformed by artificial intelligence.  

Without implementing these types of technologies, you risk slowing down your team's growth, not delivering on the actual value of your department, and falling behind in an increasingly competitive legal landscape.

AI tools can also improve how time-consuming legal research can be – they can search huge databases or contract portfolios at great speeds, provide concise summaries and up-to-date information, and streamline project management. This adds value by introducing efficiencies and improving the analysis and prediction of trends. AI tools can also accelerate decision-making processes and reduce oversights and errors, leading to better employee retention, improved morale and higher productivity.

Implementing these tools and automations means you can free up time and save money with specific tasks being completed at scale rather than high-value lawyers, ultimately removing the cost of manual work and overloaded legal teams.

How does AI improve contract management for in-house teams?

AI-powered contract lifecycle management (CLM) tools are becoming an increasingly important part of how modern in-house legal teams manage contracts at scale. Rather than relying on manual processes and disconnected systems, legal teams can use AI-enabled CLM tools to make contract review, management and reporting more consistent, efficient and visible across the business.

Today’s CLM platforms help teams review contracts faster, identify potential risks or non-standard clauses, surface key obligations and renewal dates and support compliance with internal policies and legal standards. This helps reduce manual effort and improves confidence in the accuracy and consistency of contract processes – for example, AI tools show accuracy rates of up to 94%.

CLM tools also enable in-house legal teams to gather substantial amounts of data on their contract portfolio. Using this data, teams can quickly identify problematic clauses, track trends across agreements and surface contracts that might need renegotiation or further review – and the tools can help teams inform other departments of this quickly.

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AI can also support more proactive risk management. With algorithms that can analyze patterns across historical data, AI tools can help legal teams identify recurring risks,  bottlenecks or compliance gaps earlier in the process. That allows issues to be addressed more quickly and helps organizations make more informed decisions across the contract lifecycle.

Is legal technology worth the investment?

While adopting new technology does require upfront investment and internal buy-in, many in-house teams are finding that the long-term operational benefits outweigh the initial time and resource commitment. Successful adoption isn’t just about implementing AI – it’s about identifying the right use cases, embedding technology into existing workflows and making sure teams have the processes and support needed to use it effectively.

When implemented well, AI-powered CLM tools can deliver significant returns by reducing manual work, improving contract visibility, accelerating turnaround times and helping legal teams scale support more efficiently. For example, when Matillion implemented their CLM solution, they reported a 4000% ROI.

More importantly, legal technology creates capacity. By streamlining repetitive and process-heavy work, in-house lawyers can spend more time on strategic initiatives, business partnering and higher-value legal support. This helps legal teams operate more proactively and demonstrate measurable value across the business.

As legal workloads continue to grow, many businesses are recognizing that technology isn’t just a “nice to have” efficiency project. It’s increasingly becoming part of how modern legal teams improve responsiveness, support the wider business at scale and build more consistent contract processes over time. For more information about the true return on investment for a CLM tool across different use cases, read our full article by clicking below.

Avoid the cost of doing nothing by partnering with Summize

Businesses that partner with Summize for their CLM quickly start seeing value from their investment. From building your business case to driving long-term adoption, we work closely with your team to help make sure your CLM rollout delivers measurable results.

• The start of your journey: Our team works with you to build your business case, identifying your highest-impact contract use cases, prioritizing business needs and demonstrating where a CLM solution can deliver operational and commercial value.

• Hands-on implementation: We take a collaborative, sprint-based approach to implementation to help teams drive adoption quickly and start seeing success in as little as four weeks.

• Continued success: Your relationship with us doesn’t stop after go-live. You’ll have regular check-ins and quarterly reviews with a dedicated Customer Success Manager focused on helping you achieve your contract and CLM goals over time.  

To get started on your Summize journey, book a personal demo with our contract experts. We'll listen to your existing contract challenges and demonstrate where Summize can combat the cost of doing nothing.