In the offices of lawyers and accountants, artificial intelligence is used to search for rules and rulings and to summarise documents: case files, deeds, financial statements and payslips. These are papers that clients hand over assuming they will stay within the firm.
A survey by the Observatory on Professionals and Digital Innovation of the Polytechnic University of Milan captures the phenomenon. Out of 1,768 questionnaires, the share of firms that introduced security measures after adopting AI stops at one fifth.
Where Artificial Intelligence Has Entered
The use of AI outside firm management systems concerns 36 per cent of law firms, 39 per cent of accountants, 42 per cent of labour consultants and 47 per cent of multidisciplinary firms. Above 29 staff the figure reaches 62 per cent, while below three it stays at 27 per cent.
How it is used says more than the adoption rate. Legal and case-law research covers 82 to 87 per cent of cases, document analysis and summarisation about half, while client-facing chatbots remain between 4 and 6 per cent.
None of these uses is marginal, because they all involve the content of case files. Outside the perimeter of the management system, that upload leaves no traceable record.
The Gap Between Large and Micro Firms
Alongside the 20 per cent figure there is a second one: fewer than a quarter of firms have defined access protocols by level of experience. The first-year trainee and the senior partner often see the same things.
Among large firms, measures introduced after AI rise to 72 per cent. The same firms use AI outside the management system in 62 per cent of cases, and 89 per cent have at least four of the six basic technologies.
According to the survey, this is a gap of scale, not of awareness. The head of a micro firm knows the value of a case file as well as a partner in a firm of thirty staff, but lacks someone to translate that knowledge into a configuration.
Costs and Low-Cost Measures
Average annual technology spending is 10,500 euros for a law firm, 14,450 for an accountant and 29,330 for a multidisciplinary firm. In Italy there are 69,210 accounting firms and 297,000 staff, with an average of 4.3 people per firm.
Within that budget, the survey notes, there is no room for a dedicated security role. Defining access protocols by level requires someone to design them, apply them and update them at every arrival and departure of a trainee.
Some measures, however, cost little. A register of the tools in use, a written ban on pasting client documents into free public tools, and a clause in the privacy notice on the use of AI all require few resources. The correct sequence, according to the survey, starts from the register, because without knowing what is in use every other measure works blindly.
Original article: tomshw.it
