September 15, 2025 – Law360 recently featured insights from Pratik Patel, VP of Innovation at Elevate, on the legal industry’s measured approach to generative AI adoption.

Pratik draws a clear distinction between firms simply buying AI and truly operationalising it. While generative AI performs a multitude of general tasks well, he notes that true precision and value comes only when lawyers and their teams train these tools using precedent work product and domain-specific content.

In addition to his quotes in the article, Pratik shares the following insights on why true firm-wide adoption may be lagging:

• Most firms do not invest in parallel bandwidth and AI teams to support each practice area in their setup and training of each use case.
• In some cases, client-imposed restrictions (both purposefully and accidentally) limit the use of Generative AI unless certain requirements or disclosures are met.  This alone hinders the ability of the firm to use these products firm-wide, even if the solution has been implemented.

Building on these points, he outlines a path forward: law firms should focus on targeted use cases in specific practice areas and invest in the people infrastructure needed to support that (bottoms up-and-across approach more than top down-and-across). Without this on-the-field focus, AI initiatives risk becoming thin and superficial, serving more as blanket marketing tools for firms rather than driving meaningful outcomes.

As a key architect of Elevate’s innovation strategy, Pratik continues to advise law departments and law firms on moving beyond pilot programs, transforming curiosity into capability, and capability into competitive advantage.

Read more here.