8th January 2026
4 min read
Practical AI, Not Sci-Fi
How Legal Teams Can Use AI with Confidence
Zak Chester
Chief Product Officer
Artificial intelligence has become one of the most talked-about topics in legal and public sector work. New tools appear weekly, headlines promise transformation, and there’s an increasing sense that organisations need to “do something” with AI... quickly.
At Iken, we think that instinct needs reframing.
The question isn’t how fast you adopt AI, or even how much of it you use. The real question is what purpose it serves, and whether it genuinely supports the people doing the work.
Start with the work, not the technology
Legal and public sector teams don’t struggle because they lack technology. They struggle because their time and attention are stretched across competing demands: case work, administration, operations, and reporting: all under pressure to deliver high-quality outcomes with limited resource.
When we look at case management, we tend to think in four interconnected areas:
Case work: the expertise-led work of case owners and supporting staff
Case administration: time recording, information capture, and maintaining case records
Case operations: building workflows, templates, and processes that support consistent delivery
Business operations: reporting, insight, and understanding performance at scale
AI is often positioned as a solution for case work, summarising documents, drafting content, or interrogating large volumes of text. In many respects, that area is already well served. There are excellent tools available that help professionals interact with complex information more quickly and confidently.
Our view is that case management software shouldn’t try to replace those tools. Instead, it should support and complement them.
"There’s a lot of pressure right now to ‘do something’ with AI in legal and public sector work. Our view at Iken is actually quite simple. AI shouldn’t be the objective. It’s one possible solution to a problem, and often not the only one."
Zak Chester
Chief Product Officer
AI is a solution, not the objective
At Iken, our philosophy around AI mirrors our broader product philosophy: support people in their roles, reduce unnecessary drudgery, and help teams focus on the value only they can bring; judgement, expertise, and perspective.
That’s why we’re cautious about positioning AI as an end goal.
Something artificially intelligent is a possible solution to a problem, not the problem itself, and shouldn’t be the objective. If a challenge can be addressed more simply, more reliably, or more transparently without AI, then that’s probably the better approach. This is true of any new technology.
The purpose of AI in a case management context, in our view, is narrow but powerful:
Making case administration easier and faster, so professionals spend less time on repetitive tasks
Simplifying case operations, so teams can focus on improving services rather than managing tools
This is where we see the most meaningful opportunity.
"Where we see the most value is in using tools, including AI, to reduce the admin and operational burden around case work."
Zak Chester
Chief Product Officer
Where case management and AI genuinely intersect
Case work (drafting, summarising, analysing documents) is already an active area for legal AI, and rightly so. Business operations, too, benefit from established reporting and business intelligence tools.
Where we believe case management systems like Iken can add the most value is in case administration and case operations.
Examples include:
Supporting more accurate and timely time recording, improving capture and accountability
Speeding up case intake, reducing friction at the very start of a matter
Creating clear, consistent case summaries drawn from structured case data
Supporting workflow building and information capture without adding complexity
This isn’t about removing people from the process. It’s about reducing the background effort required to keep work moving, so teams can focus on service delivery and improvement.
Experiment thoughtfully and govern properly
For public sector teams especially, experimentation with AI must always sit alongside strong governance.
Information security and privacy are non-negotiable. Any exploration of AI tools needs clear boundaries, clear ownership, and a shared understanding of risk.
One of the most effective approaches is to start with well-defined use cases. Form a hypothesis, test it carefully, and evaluate the outcome. Learning where AI doesn’t add value is also useful albeit without the added productivity benefit of where it does.
Sharing those findings internally across teams and roles helps build collective understanding and avoids fragmented adoption.
It’s also important to be honest about cost. AI has economic implications, from licensing to skills and oversight. It also doesn’t bring human judgement, contextual understanding, or lived experience, and it shouldn’t be treated as a substitute for them.
"If you can make case administration easier and simplify operations, you free people up to focus on what really matters: judgement, expertise, and service delivery."
Zak Chester
Chief Product Officer
Avoiding the wrong habits
Perhaps the biggest risk we see is expectation.
AI won’t solve every operational challenge. It won’t fix unclear processes. And it won’t remove the need for professional oversight. Treating it as a universal answer could create more problems than it solves.
A more sustainable approach is simpler... understand the requirement, test carefully, measure the outcome, and decide what genuinely improves productivity.
That’s the mindset we bring to our own product development and operations, and the one we encourage our customers to adopt.
Practical AI isn’t about science fiction. It’s about using the right tools, in the right places, for the right reasons and always in service of the people doing the work.
"That’s what practical, purpose-led use of AI looks like to us, and it’s the approach we take in our own product development."
Zak Chester
Chief Product Officer
Learn More
If you’d like to learn more about how Iken supports local authority legal and governance teams, get in touch or explore our latest case studies from councils across the UK.
