Polish Lawyers Embrace AI, But Trust Still Lags

Artificial intelligence has become a daily tool in Polish law firms and corporate legal departments, but trust in it still lags far behind how widely it is used. That is the main finding of the first edition of the AI Trust Index 2026, a report Wolters Kluwer Polska compiled from the views of nearly 400 legal professionals.

The survey, conducted among lawyers working at law firms and in-house legal departments, set out to answer three questions: how AI is actually used in practice, how its answers are verified, and how much lawyers trust what the tool produces. The report's authors stress that the technology's future in the profession will be decided not by how fast it develops, but by its ability to build real trust in day-to-day work.

Scale of adoption

The data show that AI has stopped being an experiment at law firms. More than four out of five respondents use it regularly, and more than half do so every day, most often for legal analysis, case-law research, building arguments, drafting contracts, and reviewing documents. This shows the technology has moved into the routine tasks that used to take up most of junior lawyers' time.

The gap between use and trust

The most telling figure in the report is the gap between how widely AI is used and how much it is trusted. While four out of five lawyers use AI, only one in three says they fully trust its results. As many as 90 percent of respondents admit they verify the tool's answers, and two-thirds do so every single time, without exception.

That caution is not incidental. Among the main barriers, respondents cite the risk of hallucinations, meaning the generation of false information, concerns about data security, and the risk that confidential material entered into the system could be exposed. All three factors bear directly on a lawyer's professional liability, since they are the ones who face the consequences of passing incorrect information to a client or a court.

What comes next for the profession

At the same time, the report shows that lawyers do not see AI as a threat to the profession but as a tool that will play an increasingly large role in it. 42 percent of respondents expect AI to become their "right hand" in daily work within the next year. Yet more than a third of those surveyed still cannot clearly judge how reliable the tools are, showing that the question of the technology's maturity in this profession remains unresolved.

Wolters Kluwer Polska runs the AI Trust Index alongside its global Future Ready Lawyer survey, which covers the US, Chinese, and nine European markets, including Poland. In the global edition, 92 percent of respondents use at least one AI tool, and more than half of law firms reported revenue growth of 6 to 20 percent after adopting it.

What it means for the Polish market

For Polish law firms and legal departments, the report's findings carry practical weight. Since nine out of ten users verify AI output anyway, and nearly a third worry about client data leaks, investment in legal AI tools should go hand in hand with clear review procedures and information security policies, not just license purchases. Firms that ignore this trust gap risk ending up with AI tools used only halfheartedly, with no real impact on the quality or speed of their work.

The report also fits a broader trend, echoed by other studies in the legal sector worldwide, of AI moving from the pilot phase into responsible deployment. Trust, once treated as secondary to mere access to the technology, is now becoming the main criterion law firms and corporate legal departments use to evaluate the AI tools they buy.