News You Can Use

The survey finds that AI adoption is accelerating: 61% of lawyers now use generative AI in day-to-day work (up from 46% earlier in the year). However, many firms are struggling to embed AI fully into strategy and operations, only 17% say AI is “embedded”. The dominant state is “we are experimenting but progress is slow” (39%), with some citing resistance, limited investment, or weak governance.

As we often tell our clients, AI adoption isn’t just about tools – it is about culture, trust, and operational integration. Rolling out our tech must go hand-in-hand with: leadership messaging and example-setting; training and support to improve confidence and reduce friction; embedding AI into key workflows (and not just pilots); explicit governance and AI policies.

OpenAI has built out a Contract Data Agent internally, a tool which turns contract documents into structured, searchable data. The system ingests various document formats, applies retrieval-augmented techniques, extracts key terms, and flags nonstandard clauses for human review. The goal is not fully autonomous contract judgement but a scalable, reliable assistant that boosts consistency and confidence, especially in regulated, high-stakes work.

This is the kind of applied agentic workflow we can benchmark and learn from. For AG, this shows the value in structured contract data extraction as a building block for higher-level tools (e.g. automated review, analytics). It also shows us that clients could (and will) build these solutions themselves. OpenAI are on the extreme end but as tech literacy and access to these tools increase we will see more clients self-serving aspects of legal work.

Bloomberg Law finds that Chief Legal Officers (CLOs/GCs) who leverage AI will increasingly shape the direction of legal teams, and the wider legal profession. The article suggests that AI is altering internal operations, external partnerships, and the very skillset required of legal leaders. As AI becomes embedded, questions of accountability and the boundaries between human judgment and AI assistance grow sharper.

When we build tools and create workflows, we have the opportunity to ensure our tools help legal teams retain control while benefiting from AI augmentation, and support GCs and legal leaders to embed “legal memory” for their institutional knowledge to be preserved and scaled. With clients, we can help shape conversations with clients about how AI shifts legal team structure and influence, as well as their relationship with their firms. Internally we can work to institutionalise knowledge within the firm, and become less dependent on individuals and more confident in systems and processes built with legal knowledge.