Location
Hilton Waikoloa Village, Hawaii
Event Website
https://hicss.hawaii.edu/
Start Date
7-1-2025 12:00 AM
End Date
10-1-2025 12:00 AM
Description
In the realm of professional services, the introduction of new technologies often meets with initial skepticism and resistance. This is notably observed in the legal sector, where many practitioners are resistant towards new technologies. Given the sensitive data and consequences of wrong advice, Generative AI (GenAI) may even have a more difficult stand in legal domain. Grounded in Innovation Resistance Theory, this study aims to explore the factors driving legal practitioners’ resistance towards GenAI through semi-structured interviews with 16 legal professionals in German-speaking region (DACH) and their influence on three forms of resistance, i.e., postponement, opposition, and rejection. We obtained a comprehensive list of factors and found that particularly risk and tradition barriers have significant effect on legal professionals’ resistance. Moreover, we contribute to theory by identifying "conditional resistance" as a new form of resistance and provide practical implications on how to enable better diffusion of GenAI in legal domain.
Recommended Citation
Nasir, Muhammad Akash Bin and Matt, Christian, "Can Generative AI even Climb the High Mountains? An Identification of Resistance Factors and Forms among Legal Practitioners" (2025). Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2025 (HICSS-58). 7.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/hicss-58/in/regulatory_landscape/7
Can Generative AI even Climb the High Mountains? An Identification of Resistance Factors and Forms among Legal Practitioners
Hilton Waikoloa Village, Hawaii
In the realm of professional services, the introduction of new technologies often meets with initial skepticism and resistance. This is notably observed in the legal sector, where many practitioners are resistant towards new technologies. Given the sensitive data and consequences of wrong advice, Generative AI (GenAI) may even have a more difficult stand in legal domain. Grounded in Innovation Resistance Theory, this study aims to explore the factors driving legal practitioners’ resistance towards GenAI through semi-structured interviews with 16 legal professionals in German-speaking region (DACH) and their influence on three forms of resistance, i.e., postponement, opposition, and rejection. We obtained a comprehensive list of factors and found that particularly risk and tradition barriers have significant effect on legal professionals’ resistance. Moreover, we contribute to theory by identifying "conditional resistance" as a new form of resistance and provide practical implications on how to enable better diffusion of GenAI in legal domain.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/hicss-58/in/regulatory_landscape/7