According to GC AI Prompting Class survey data collected weekly, in June 2024, the majority of lawyers never used AI (56%). By December 2025, the majority were using it daily or hourly (55%). With good reason! GC AI recently conducted a study on ROI (return on investment) based on customer-reported outcomes, and the results show that in-house legal teams using dedicated legal AI are seeing outsized productivity gains and cost savings.
Specifically, in-house counsel GC AI users report reclaiming more than one-third of their work week and a 14% reduction in outside counsel spend. One driver of time savings is improved accuracy, with users reporting 21% greater accuracy from GC AI than they get from generic tools like ChatGPT. Purpose-built legal AI enables lawyers to work faster and with greater precision, delivering substantial ROI. Estimate your ROI here.
Key Results - AI Drives Productivity for In-House Lawyers
Legal teams in GC AI's study reported:
14 hours of time savings on legal tasks returned per user per week, on average
5+ hours per day reclaimed by power users, defined as respondents in the 90th percentile and above for hours saved per day
14% reduction in outside counsel spend
21% greater accuracy compared to generalist AI tools
These gains were reported consistently across respondent titles and roles, from general counsel, associate general counsel, in-house counsel, and legal operations professionals. Taken together, the data shows GC AI makes in-house counsel's lives better by replacing hours of internal work and outside counsel spend with faster, higher-quality in-house work.
See below for a deeper dive on methodology, what GC AI surveyed, and how GC AI is thinking about in-house as the best place for legal AI.
The Estimated Savings: $252,000 Annually
Survey participants reported a 14% reduction in outside counsel spend after adopting GC AI.
According to the ACC Law Department Management Benchmarking Report, nearly half of corporate legal budgets go to outside counsel and alternative legal service providers. In the report, 101 companies were surveyed, ranging from small companies ($112k outside spend) to Fortune 500 enterprises ($41.4M outside spend). The data shows the median company spends $1.8 million annually on outside counsel. A 14% reduction translates to $252,000 in annual savings for the median company. Those savings alone exceed the cost of AI software - like GC AI. Legal leaders at companies should be asking, “Which work should never go to outside counsel again?”
A few customer perspectives on time and cost savings:
“I don’t need to call a copyright lawyer for this question anymore. I have a copyright lawyer on my phone or on my desktop.” - Wendra Liang, Legal Counsel at Vercel.
“Finally pulled the trigger and you immediately saved me 5k. Just paid for the whole year's subscription.” - General Counsel, Advanced Fission Clean Energy Startup.
“We couldn’t do our job without GC AI. The use cases are so broad - from comms to contracts to strategy - it pays for itself in weeks.” - Cameron Clark, Head of Legal at Arc’teryx.
GC AI Power Users
In the study, power users reported reclaiming up to 25 hours per week across drafting, research, and routine advisory tasks, without adding headcount or compromising quality. Customers describe feeling more in control of their workload for the first time in years, a theme consistently heard from GC AI customers.
Sharon Johnson, CLO at MODE Global, says, “I would not be able to do this enormous amount of work that has been increasing in the supply chain area... The only reason I am able to function [and] do as well as I am right now is [GC AI].”
Why Legal AI Wins: In-House Context Matters
Users rated GC AI’s outputs as 21% more accurate on a relative basis than generalist AI tools like ChatGPT.
Accuracy reduces rework, accelerates adoption, and builds trust. In high-stakes legal environments, speed without reliability is not a win. Generalist AI optimizes for plausibility. Legal work requires precision, context, and accountability. GC AI customers report that purpose-built legal AI delivers productivity gains without sacrificing accuracy.
“The reason so many legal professionals are turning to GC Al over generic Al tools is the same reason in-house people prefer to work with colleagues than outside counsel, the output is contextual and actionable. It's ready to use. No need to distill it, rewrite it and labour over making it sound like yours.” - Privacy Officer, $800M revenue language learning app
“GC AI is infinitely better than regular ChatGPT. I’ve run fairly complex research through it and it’s been correct every time so far.” - Associate General Counsel, Finance Platform
What Do GC AI Customers Do With a Third of Their Week Back?
GC AI customers report that time saved is more time they can spend on:
Strategic advising and earlier involvement in deals
Proactive risk planning instead of reactive cleanup
Cross-functional collaboration with product, sales, and finance teams
Customers also report achieving a more sustainable workload that allows them to deliver higher-quality work with less burnout.
“The time savings are real - but the bigger win is no longer having to punt items to the backlog if I don't have time to manually handle something end-to-end. One week in, and it’s already more than paid for itself.” - Natalie Kim, VP of Legal at Omnidian.
Beyond productivity, GC AI customers often report achieving greater work-life balance.
“Thank you, GC AI, for saving my sanity this morning. You helped me quickly draft an amendment to a contract that would have taken me an hour to do by hand. It saved my sanity because I can now get to the beach to take a surf lesson with my son.”- VP of Legal, Biotech Startup
Legal AI Adoption as a Competitive Imperative
For CLOs, GCs, and legal operations leaders, legal AI has crossed from experimentation into execution. Purpose-built legal AI is now a present-day driver of ROI, improving productivity, reducing external spend, and increasing accuracy at the same time. Teams waiting to learn how to incorporate legal AI into their workflows risk falling behind.
“I almost wept with joy today after I installed the beta GC AI add-on in Word. I gave the tool agreed upon deal points and asked it to suggest redlines, and then could click on "apply" buttons that marked up the agreed in tracked changes. I think I just saved $5k in legal fees in 5 minutes, or an hour of my personal time. Probably both,” said Ashley Good, Associate General Counsel at Vuori.
Founder Note:
“Other companies talk about ROI. We have the data. GC AI users reported gaining one-third of their workweek back, a 14% reduction in outside counsel spend, and 21% greater accuracy compared to generalist AI models. This is legal AI that understands in-house work and gives customers back both time and budget.” says Cecilia Ziniti, three-time General Counsel, Founder and CEO at GC AI.
Methodology
ROI analysis was based on a structured survey of more than 100 active GC AI customers in December 2025, capturing self-reported data on time saved, perceived accuracy versus generalist AI tools, and changes in outside counsel spend. This study measures real-world usage.