How in-house legal teams are actually using AI today (and where to start)

Over the past six months, one topic has featured in almost every conversation Clario CEO Richard Kohinga has had with General Counsel and Heads of Legal.

How can legal teams become more efficient through the use of AI?

The pressure is rarely coming from legal alone.

Boards, CEOs and executive teams are increasingly asking every business function to improve productivity, operate more efficiently and demonstrate how emerging technologies can support growth.

Legal teams are no exception.

As a result, many General Counsel are actively exploring where AI can create value within their function.

The challenge is that legal teams are all at very different stages of the journey.

At Clario’s recent General Counsel and Heads of Legal roundtables, we asked attendees to rate their team’s AI maturity on a scale from 1 to 10.

Very few participants rated their teams between 8 and 10.

Most sat somewhere between 4 and 6.

In other words, they had started experimenting. They could see the potential, but they had not yet embedded AI into legal workflows at scale.

The good news is that the teams making the greatest progress are not necessarily those with the largest budgets or the most sophisticated technology.

They are the teams that have identified practical use cases, created a clear implementation plan and focused on helping their lawyers adopt new ways of working.

Where legal teams are using AI today

Across our roundtables and client conversations, several practical use cases consistently emerged.

These are not futuristic applications. They are solving everyday legal problems.

Drafting and first-pass documents

Many lawyers are using AI to create first drafts of:

• Commercial contracts.
• Policies and procedures.
• Board papers.
• Internal legal advice.
• Compliance documentation.

The value is not in replacing legal judgement. It is in eliminating the time spent staring at a blank page.

Contract review and summarisation

Legal teams are using AI to:

• Summarise lengthy agreements.
• Extract key obligations.
• Highlight unusual clauses.
• Identify potential risks.
• Compare contracts against preferred positions.

For teams dealing with large contract volumes, even modest efficiency gains can create meaningful capacity.

Internal legal knowledge and precedent retrieval

Many legal teams are exploring ways to use AI to surface internal knowledge more effectively.

• Finding precedents.
• Accessing previous advice.
• Retrieving policy guidance.
• Answering common legal questions.

A recurring observation from legal leaders was that valuable legal knowledge often exists within organisations but remains difficult to access quickly.

Legal intake and triage

AI can help:

• Categorise requests.
• Route matters to the right lawyer.
• Prioritise work based on risk.
• Improve visibility of legal demand.

For busy in-house teams, this can have a significant impact on responsiveness and workload management.

The biggest mistake legal teams make

One of the clearest themes from our roundtables was that many legal teams start with the technology instead of the problem.

• They compare tools.
• They attend demonstrations.
• They experiment with prompts.
• Then momentum stalls.

As one Head of Legal observed:

“We spent months talking about AI before we identified a single process we wanted to improve.”

The most successful implementations start somewhere else.

They begin by identifying repetitive, time-consuming activities that create friction for lawyers and internal stakeholders.

The technology comes later.

What should in-house legal teams do to start using AI?

The legal teams making progress are not waiting for a perfect enterprise-wide AI strategy.

They are starting small, creating capacity and building confidence through practical use cases.

1. Find the right talent

• Identify AI champions within the legal team.
• Second in AI or legal technology specialists.
• Create capacity so lawyers have time to focus on innovation.
• Ensure someone owns AI adoption and implementation.

For some teams, the smartest first step is not buying technology. It is creating capacity.

2. Map the workflows where AI can help

Start with the work that is repetitive, high-volume or process-heavy.

• Contract reviews and templates.
• Email drafting.
• Inbox triage.
• Policies and procedures.
• Internal guidance.
• First drafts of routine advice.

The practical starting point is simple: map the work, identify the pressure points, then test AI against one or two specific tasks.

3. Build your AI library

Strong AI adoption depends on good inputs.

Start building a library of:

• Prompts.
• Playbooks.
• Templates.
• Preferred positions.
• Clause banks.
• Policies.
• Guidance notes.

Over time, this creates a more useful AI environment that reflects how your legal team thinks, drafts, reviews and manages risk.

4. Start with Copilot if confidentiality is the concern

• Leverages existing Microsoft investments.
• Sits within the Microsoft ecosystem.
• Often easier to approve from a security and confidentiality perspective.
• Provides a low-friction starting point for many legal teams.

For teams with a higher risk appetite, ChatGPT and Claude can also be powerful tools.

The key is not to start with the most sophisticated platform. It is to start with a tool your organisation is comfortable using.

5. Ask AI for help

• Create AI assistants and agents.
• Build prompt libraries.
• Map workflows and intake processes.
• Draft implementation plans.
• Identify risks and governance requirements.
• Create training materials.

You do not need to have all the answers before you start.

Sometimes the best first step is asking the tool how to take the next one.

AI capability is becoming a competitive advantage

The legal teams making the greatest progress are not necessarily hiring AI specialists.

They are building AI capability within their existing teams.

As one GC commented:

“We don’t need every lawyer to become an AI expert. We need lawyers who are willing to rethink how the work gets done.”

Governance still matters

While enthusiasm for AI is growing, legal leaders remain appropriately cautious.

Key areas include:

• Data security.
• Privacy.
• Human oversight.
• Acceptable use policies.
• Vendor assessment.
• Quality assurance.

The most mature organisations are balancing innovation with practical controls.

What this means for General Counsel

For GCs and Heads of Legal, AI is increasingly becoming a capability question rather than a technology question.

The opportunity is not replacing lawyers. It is reducing low-value work, improving consistency and creating additional capacity.

The legal teams making the greatest progress are investing in:

• AI-capable people.
• AI-enabled workflows.
• The right technology foundations.

Where Clario can help

Every legal team’s AI journey looks different.

At Clario, our focus is on intelligent resourcing.

We help legal teams:

• Create capacity through experienced legal secondees.
• Access legal operations, legal technology and AI specialists.
• Build and deploy AI agents.
• Redesign workflows and processes.
• Reduce administrative burden.
• Accelerate AI adoption safely and effectively.

Importantly, we recognise that many of the best AI insights come from other General Counsel and Heads of Legal who are facing similar challenges.

One of the most valuable things we can do is connect legal leaders with one another, helping them learn from shared experiences, avoid common mistakes and accelerate their own adoption journey.

The bottom line

Most in-house legal teams are no longer asking whether AI matters.

They are trying to work out how to adopt it in a way that creates genuine value for their team and the wider business.

The teams making the strongest progress are not chasing every new tool or trend. They are focusing on practical use cases, building internal capability and embedding AI into everyday legal work.

In other words, they are treating AI as a business improvement initiative, not a technology experiment.

And that is where the real opportunity sits.