The future of legal work?

Put governance in place for use of AI

When it comes to Generative AI, the General Counsel (GC) is responsible for both its safe introduction to the entirety of the organization and in using the technology to improve legal service delivery. The legal department can play a leading role, working closely with risk, IT, data, HR and other corporate functions, to establish governance and risk frameworks for Generative AI’s safe and ethical use. This is an opportunity for the legal department to both enable board-level strategic priorities for the business and accelerate business growth, while also building confidence in adoption within the legal department.

Get lawyers using Generative AI

It is only through using the technology that lawyers can identify how it can best be applied to meet the needs of their legal team and wider business. Legal teams should be given access to Generative AI tools to experiment and learn through targeted proofs of concept. Ongoing focus is needed on training, feedback, best practice sharing, and adoption to move the department forward collectively. Legal leadership teams should be included in these endeavors. This will equip them with a foundational understanding of the technology and its impact to set a positive vision for the future and support teams through inevitable change.

Evaluate and prioritize use cases, and then develop/refresh your digital roadmap

Legal teams should start to identify and evaluate use cases with light touch governance. As priority use cases emerge, legal departments should re-appraise (or develop) their digital roadmaps, assessing the extent to which current technologies have the capabilities to meet their needs. This requires that legal departments understand both the organizational technology landscape, available enterprise tools, as well as the legal technology market to understand the art of the possible. Lean on external partners to support these endeavors: they bring vital external perspectives and methodologies that will be increasingly important as corporate functions compete for investment.

Focus on hygiene

Use Generative AI to make data clean up exercises easier and more cost effective. Identify the data that is critical for solving your business problems. This could be data in your document repositories, from the wider business, external market data, or data from external law firms. Test Generative AI’s ability to extract insight from this data and identify what data improvements are needed to leverage Generative AI in the future and begin actioning them.

Plan for the long-term

With Generative AI evolving at such a rapid pace, long-term planning can feel very challenging. However, it is important for leaders to consider the strategic implications of the technology on the wider business, the internal workings of your legal department, and on your external partners. Focus first on these three areas and plan for the long term.