Artificial intelligence in Italian law firms: 55% use it, the website lags behind

55.3% of Italian lawyers now use at least one artificial intelligence tool in their work. 19.2% use their firm's website to promote themselves. Both figures come from the same survey, on the same sample: they describe a profession that adopts a new tool quickly, while leaving behind an older and simpler one, being found online by someone searching for a lawyer by name.

What the Rapporto Avvocatura 2026 says

The figure comes from the Rapporto Avvocatura 2026, produced by Cassa Forense with the collaboration of Censis on nearly 31,000 questionnaires collected among members, presented on 29 April 2026 at the Chamber of Deputies. In 2025, the share of lawyers who said they used AI at work was 27.5%. In 2026 it more than doubled: 55.3%. Among lawyers up to 40 years old, adoption reaches 70.3%, against 38.8% for those over 65.

What holds back those who don't use it yet

44.7% of lawyers still don't use AI tools. The reason most cited by those who evaluated it and then dropped it is a lack of technical knowledge: 47.1% flag it as an obstacle. Fear of errors and perceived unreliability follow (42.8%), then general distrust (23.4%) and the established habit of working without it (21.9%). These are obstacles tied more to training than to cost: only 15.9% point to the price of the tools as the main barrier.

The firm's website is growing, but still lags behind

The same report also measures how law firms promote their activity, comparing 2015 with 2026. The channel that remains by far the first is word of mouth among clients: 85.3% in 2026, down slightly from 87.0% in 2015. Social and personal relationships follow at 69.3%, down from 76.3% eleven years earlier. The firm's website is instead the tool that grew the most over this span, from 13.4% to 19.2%, but it's still only the fourth most common channel: behind even social media used in general (10.4%, rising to 18.2% among those under 40, with LinkedIn as the leading platform).

Why the gap matters

An AI tool that summarizes a case file or searches for a ruling works inside a process the firm already has: it helps someone who's already a client, or who has already chosen that firm through a contact. It doesn't solve the problem of someone searching for a lawyer for the first time, with no name suggested by anyone, typing their area and their legal matter into Google. For that kind of search, word of mouth isn't enough, because someone searching online often doesn't have anyone to ask for a recommendation yet: what they find is what exists online. It's the same pattern that repeats in other sectors where internal automation moves faster than basic online presence: I wrote about it for construction in artificial intelligence in construction companies, a different sector with the same imbalance.

Where to start

For a law firm, the first step isn't choosing between artificial intelligence and a website: they're two investments that answer different needs. The website serves people who don't know the firm yet, and it matters most for firms with a recognizable specialty, labor law, family law, tax law, that someone can search for by subject, not just through word of mouth. I've written the market price ranges for a professional website in Italy in full in how much does a website cost: they depend on how many pages are needed and what the site has to do, there's no single figure that fits everyone.

If you want to work out whether your firm should start from the website or from a tool for internal work, get in touch and tell me how you work today: I'll tell you what's worth introducing first.