Amid the excitement among in-house legal teams about deploying generative AI, there are a variety of tools they could choose to utilize.

Peter Krakaur, EY’s global law innovation and technology leader, recommends legal departments start by considering GenAI use cases that would also benefit the broader business.

He says that using the emerging technology to help provide regulatory compliance advice to colleagues in functions outside of legal is one approach that can be implemented.

For example, legal teams are exploring using GenAI to offer guidance to their organizations about product compliance, according to Krakaur.

General counsel and their legal departments are also examining how to use emerging AI to support marketing and external communication reviews, he says.

“Ideally, you're looking to automate your legal team, but you're also trying to advise the business,” Krakaur told Legal Dive. “So if you can start with some use cases that touch that interplay between legal and the business, you're going to start establishing that partnership with the business to really be a business leader and advocate for GenAI adoption as opposed to just the person who's providing the guardrails.”

Contracts

Krakaur says contract review and drafting is another area in which legal teams can adopt AI tools to support the business.

For example, a legal team could utilize technology to help the business review its supplier contracts, including to ensure they are compliant with evolving IP and data requirements in the area of AI.

“A lot of those contracts may not have been drafted in light of new regulations around GenAI,” Krakaur said. “So it's an opportunity, another event trigger if you will, that suggests that a way of partnering with the business is helping them rethink their contracting strategy using these capabilities.”

While Krakaur says his general preference is for legal teams to start deploying generative AI in the regulatory compliance realm, departments within organizations that produce large amounts of contracts may be best served by focusing on contracting use cases.

Tech stacks

Krakaur says there has historically been a difference between the enterprise technology the broader business uses and the legal-specific technology that a legal department deploys.

However, he says the introduction of generative AI tools has sparked discussions about how legal teams and their business colleagues could more frequently utilize the same technologies in their work.

“Both legal officers, as well as legal ops leaders, are seeing this as a potentially transformative opportunity to rethink [their] tech stack,” Krakaur said. 

“I'm seeing conversations with clients where they're interested to say, ‘Let me step back and not presume I should just look at the four best-of-breed legal technologies. What is the enterprise doing?’” Krakaur continued.