The spokesperson added: "With AI offering people countless ways to work more efficiently and effectively, the answer cannot be for organisations to outlaw the use of AI and drive staff to use it under the radar.
"Instead, companies need to offer their staff AI tools that meet their organisational policies and data protection obligations."
In the email, Hill Dickinson's chief technology officer said the law firm had detected more than 32,000 hits to the popular chatbot ChatGPT over a seven-day period in January and February.
During the same timeframe, there were also more than 3,000 hits to the Chinese AI service DeepSeek, which was recently banned from Australian government devices over security concerns.
It also highlighted almost 50,000 hits to Grammarly, the writing assistance tool.
However, it is not clear on how many occasions staff visited ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Grammarly, or how many staff visited repeatedly, as several hits could have been generated by a user during every time they used the websites.
The email to Hill Dickinson employees 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."