Morae Global: 67% of Legal Leaders Say AI Verification Costs Are Eliminating Efficiency Gains — Root Cause Is Ungoverned Data

Morae Global Corporation (research by Coleman Parkes, 850 senior legal professionals, US/UK/Australia/Middle East, February–March 2026) released findings on August 1 showing that only 33% of senior legal professionals trust the results of AI-assisted legal work, while 67% are concerned that human verification and oversight costs may outweigh AI's efficiency benefits. The data foundation is the problem: 80% agree effective AI use depends on high-quality, well-governed data; 77% say poor information quality undermines AI outcomes regardless of tool quality; yet only 26% of legal leaders feel fully or very confident their legal information is prepared for effective AI analysis. Nearly one in three organizations has no formal governance framework for AI-generated outputs. 71% have formal records-retention and governance policies, but only 30% are confident those policies are being applied. For KM directors, this is the evidence base for the governance investment conversation: the "verification tax" — human checking that consumes AI's efficiency gains — is a downstream symptom of KM infrastructure that was not built to support AI-scale querying and is now being asked to.