Artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape the in-house legal function, just as it has done across a range of industries. From contract management platforms to predictive analytics, the promise is clear: greater efficiency, lower costs and the ability to generate new insights from previously untapped data. For general counsel and their teams, AI offers the chance to automate routine work and focus instead on the more strategic and judgment-driven aspects of the role. Yet these opportunities arrive hand in hand with risks—ethical, regulatory and practical—that must be managed with care.
The most immediate impact is being felt in areas such as contract lifecycle management, where tools can now automate review, redlining and data extraction at a speed and scale impossible for human lawyers alone. Legal research is becoming faster and more accurate, with systems able to surface relevant case law and regulatory material in moments. Meanwhile, regulatory monitoring can now be conducted in real time, keeping businesses informed of legal and compliance developments across multiple jurisdictions. Even workflows such as NDAs, employment contracts and procurement agreements are increasingly being streamlined by AI-driven automation. For many in-house teams, this means more time spent on higher-value work, such as shaping business strategy or guiding boards through complex regulatory environments.
The risks, however, are significant. AI systems, however sophisticated, can misinterpret nuance, and responsibility for legal decisions remains firmly with the general counsel. Bias, embedded in training data, has the potential to skew outcomes. Confidentiality is another pressing concern, with sensitive corporate data needing the highest levels of protection. And there is the danger of over-reliance: treating AI as a replacement for legal judgement rather than a tool to support it risks undermining the very expertise companies rely on their in-house teams to provide.
For these reasons, a balanced approach is essential. General counsel are advised to begin small, using AI to automate repetitive, low-risk tasks before scaling its application. Human oversight of outputs must remain non-negotiable, ensuring that errors or oversights are caught before they have consequences. Vendor selection, too, demands careful scrutiny, with transparency, security and compliance credentials central to the decision-making process. And perhaps most importantly, legal teams themselves must be educated about both the potential and the limitations of AI, so that they can deploy it confidently and responsibly.
Looking ahead, the most effective general counsel will not see AI as a substitute for human expertise but as a way of amplifying it. By marrying human judgment with AI-driven efficiency, in-house legal functions can deliver advice that is not only quicker and sharper but also more closely aligned to the needs of the business. In a world where the pace of change shows no signs of slowing, that combination may prove decisive.
