The legal regulator commissioned the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) to analyse the size and shape of the legal sector workforce and model changes to the occupational structure in legal services due to increased demand and productivity.

The Law Society has estimated a four per cent decline in the number of people working in the legal profession by 2027, but the IES says there could be a further seven per cent reduction if the adoption of new technology leads to a higher rate of productivity growth.

The increasing take-up of artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation has “the potential to have a large impact on the legal services sector”, the report warns.

In particular, these technologies could be used to automate review of legal contracts to prepare litigation cases; scan legal documentation in bulk to enhance document drafting and case citation checking; utilise natural language processing to make legal research more efficient; and use machine learning to draw research and insight from large amounts of legal data.

Business-to-business firms are “likely to be heavily affected due to large amounts of data processing which is currently undertaken by paralegals and junior solicitors”, the report adds.