Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Legal Practice in India: Evidence from an Empirical Study of Legal Professionals

Abstract

India’s legal profession has adopted artificial intelligence tools at a striking pace, yet the statutory framework governing that adoption remains anchored in legislation that predates modern AI by decades. This paper reports primary empirical findings from a survey of 229 Indian legal professionals carried out in April 2026, constituting the empirical chapter of a doctoral dissertation on progressive and protective approaches to AI regulation in the European Union and India. The survey reveals that 94.4 per cent of respondents already use AI tools professionally, while 76.4 per cent regard India’s existing regulatory framework as inadequate or significantly inadequate. Professional demand for governance is specific and strong: 93 per cent support mandatory disclosure of AI use to courts and clients, 90.4 per cent favour Bar Council of India ethics guidelines, 84.3 per cent back compulsory AI ethics training, and 74.7 per cent endorse mandatory auditing of AI systems deployed in court proceedings. Against these findings, a mean AI-preparedness score of only 2.67 on a five-point scale points to an urgent professional-readiness deficit. The data provide direct empirical support for the thesis’s first hypothesis — that India’s reliance on pre-AI statutes creates structural governance gaps — and ground the original Responsible Acceleration Model proposed as a context-sensitive governance framework for the Indian legal profession.