Law firm Hill Dickinson has restricted employee access to artificial intelligence tools following a “significant increase” in usage.

The global firm, which specialises in commercial law and employs more than a thousand people worldwide, warned its workforce in an email sent by a senior director about using AI tools.

It highlighted that that much of the staff usage was not in accordance with the firm’s AI policy and said that in future, access to such tools will only be granted through a request process.

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Hill Dickinson’s chief technology officer, who sent the email, reported that in the space of just seven days in January and February, there had been more than 32,000 hits on the ChatGPT chatbot and 3,000-plus hits on the Chinese AI service DeepSeek.

In the same timeframe, writing assistant tool Grammarly had nearly 50,000 hits.

However, it is unclear how often employees visited ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Grammarly, or how many times individuals revisited these sites, as multiple hits could have been registered each time a user accessed the websites.

The email to employees, seen by the BBC, said: “We have been monitoring usage of Al tools, particularly publicly available generative Al solutions, and have noticed a significant increase in usage of, and uploading of files to, such tools.”

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