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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s here, and it’s reshaping industries across the board. One key area seeing a seismic transformation is the realm of legal and compliance. In a recent episode of the Risk Management Show, Chris Maguire, General Manager of Product and Industry at Thomson Reuters, shared invaluable insights on how AI is influencing workflows, decision-making, and strategic evolution in legal departments. Let’s delve into the highlights and explore how organizations can stay ahead in this rapidly evolving landscape.

Strategic Evolutions: Legal’s New Role in Risk, Policy, and Business Transformation

In 2025, the legal landscape is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by the rise of AI tools that go far beyond simple productivity hacks. While AI once promised to help lawyers write better emails or summarize meetings, its real impact is now felt in the heart of legal operations—where risk, policy, and business strategy intersect. Legal teams are not just adopting AI; they are redefining their roles within organizations, breaking down silos, and taking the lead in business transformation.

AI Legal Compliance 2025: From Efficiency to Systemic Change

AI legal compliance in 2025 is about more than just efficiency. According to recent industry surveys, 54% of general counsel offices are now using AI tools for compliance, outpacing law firms, which stand at about 45%. This shift signals a move from isolated tech adoption to a systemic overhaul of how legal and compliance functions operate. Increasingly, legal departments are merging with compliance teams, creating unified hubs for risk management and regulatory oversight. The days of siloed departments are fading fast.

Legal Team Workflow Transformation AI: Beyond the Inbox

AI is quietly transforming the workflows that underpin legal departments. Instead of focusing solely on surface-level tasks, such as email drafting, legal teams are leveraging AI to analyze and optimize the entire spectrum of their daily operations. This includes:

• Contract lifecycle management AI: Automating the drafting, review, and negotiation of contracts.
• Tracking and summarizing redlines and third-party changes across document versions.
• Extracting and comparing obligations, such as lease terms, across vast repositories of contracts (including SharePoint, Teams, and CLM platforms).
• Flagging risks and inconsistencies that might otherwise go unnoticed.

One legal team, for example, discovered that their new AI tool flagged an obscure lease clause that had slipped past human reviewers. This single insight saved the company six figures—an outcome that would have been nearly impossible without AI’s pattern recognition and data extraction capabilities.

Contract Lifecycle Management AI: The New Standard

Contract lifecycle management has become a central use case for AI in legal. Tools like those offered by Thomson Reuters now support every stage of the contract process, from drafting documents off term sheets to extracting key terms and summarizing redlines. AI can track changes across multiple versions, compare obligations, and even draft entire agreements. While these tools are not always perfect—sometimes producing results that are more amusing than accurate—they are rapidly improving and delivering tangible value.

• Redlining and Summarization: AI can quickly identify and summarize changes, helping legal teams keep pace with the rapid back-and-forth of negotiations.
• Obligation Extraction: AI tools for compliance functions can scan thousands of contracts to extract and compare critical obligations, such as payment terms or renewal clauses.
• Drafting from Term Sheets: AI can generate first drafts of contracts based on structured data, accelerating deal cycles and reducing manual effort.

AI Tools for Compliance Functions: Transparency and Explainability

As legal departments take on more compliance responsibilities, the need for transparency and explainability in AI tools has become paramount. Regulators and internal stakeholders alike demand that AI-driven decisions be clear and auditable. This is especially true in highly regulated sectors like finance, where explainability to regulators is not optional. Legal teams are now responsible for ensuring that AI tools meet these standards, integrating compliance checks directly into their workflows.

“We’re hearing from our customers that when they’re using AI, it needs to be explainable to the regulators who are looking at their industry, and explainable to the folks they’re working with internally.”

Expanding Horizons: AI’s Reach Beyond Legal

The influence of AI in legal is no longer confined to traditional legal tasks. Legal teams are increasingly overseeing AI use in adjacent areas such as HR and procurement. For example, AI is now being used to draft HR policies and employment agreements, with legal departments providing oversight and review. This cross-functional approach ensures that AI-generated documents meet both legal and business standards, further blurring the lines between legal, compliance, and operational functions.

In summary, the evolution of AI in legal is not about replacing lawyers—it’s about empowering them to play a more strategic role in risk management, policy development, and business transformation. As AI tools become more sophisticated and integrated, legal teams are positioned at the forefront of organizational change, driving efficiency, transparency, and value across the enterprise.

The Risk of Standing Still: What Happens When Legal Teams Ignore the AI Train

The legal landscape in 2025 is defined by rapid technological change, with artificial intelligence (AI) at the center of transformation. Yet, as AI-driven tools become more sophisticated and regulatory frameworks tighten, a surprising number of legal teams remain hesitant to fully embrace this shift. The risks of standing still are no longer hypothetical—they are operational, competitive, and, increasingly, compliance-related. Understanding the AI adoption risks in the legal field is now a critical part of any forward-thinking legal strategy.

Survey Says: A Strategy Gap with Real Consequences

Recent survey data reveals a striking disconnect: just under 50% of companies expect AI to drive transformational change in their legal and compliance functions this year. However, only 19% report having a well-developed AI strategy. This gap is more than a statistic—it’s a warning sign. In the same survey, companies with a formal AI strategy were found to be nearly four times more likely to report tangible benefits from AI tools, including improved workflows, better compliance, and enhanced risk management.

• 49%: Companies expecting AI to transform legal/compliance functions in 2025
• 19%: Companies with a robust, well-developed AI strategy
• 4x: Increased likelihood of seeing benefits with a formal AI strategy

The message is clear: Not having a real AI strategy is a risk in itself. Legal teams without a structured approach to AI are left playing catch-up, often reacting to change rather than driving it.

Operational and Competitive Risks: The Cost of Hesitation

The operational risks of ignoring AI are immediate and tangible. Legal departments that delay AI adoption often find themselves mired in manual processes, slower contract reviews, and inefficient workflows. In a field where speed and accuracy are paramount, these inefficiencies can quickly translate into lost business opportunities and increased costs.

From a competitive standpoint, the gap widens further. Firms leveraging AI-powered analytics, document review, and workflow automation are able to deliver faster, more accurate results to clients and internal stakeholders. Those without these capabilities risk losing ground to more agile competitors. In 2025, AI adoption risks in the legal field are not just about missing the latest technology—they’re about falling behind in the race for relevance and client trust.

Compliance and Regulatory Risks: The New Frontier

Perhaps the most significant risk for legal teams ignoring AI is compliance. With new regulations such as the EU AI Act and evolving state data privacy laws, the regulatory environment is moving faster than ever. AI legal compliance 2025 is not a static target; it’s a moving one, with enforcement actions and expectations increasing year over year.

Legal teams without robust AI strategies are more likely to miss critical regulatory deadlines, misinterpret compliance mandates, or fail to implement required controls. One recent anecdote illustrates this risk: A multinational corporation delayed its AI adoption, believing it could wait for clearer regulatory guidance. When a new compliance mandate was enacted, the company was unprepared. The result? A missed regulatory deadline, a tense board meeting, and a last-minute scramble to avoid penalties. This scenario is becoming increasingly common as AI regulations and enforcement accelerate.

Key AI Compliance Challenges for Legal Teams

• Keeping pace with evolving global and regional AI regulations
• Ensuring transparency and auditability of AI-driven decisions
• Managing data privacy and security in AI workflows
• Documenting and demonstrating compliance for regulators

Why a Thoughtful AI Strategy Matters

The data is unambiguous: Companies with a well-developed AI strategy are about four times more likely to realize business benefits. These benefits extend beyond automating emails or summarizing meetings. They include reimagining contract management, accelerating policy development, and proactively managing risk and compliance. In the current climate, risk and compliance trends demand not just adoption, but thoughtful integration of AI into legal operations.

Legal teams that continue to “wait and see” are not just missing out on efficiency—they are exposing their organizations to significant operational, competitive, and compliance risks. As AI compliance challenges become more complex and enforcement ramps up, the cost of standing still grows higher with each passing quarter.

Wild Cards & Mindsets: Growth, Misconceptions, and the Unexpected Upsides

As the legal world races into 2025, the conversation around Legal perspectives AI 2025 is no longer just about technical skills or compliance checklists. Instead, the real wild card is mindset—specifically, the willingness to experiment, adapt, and learn. The most successful legal teams are those that see change not as a threat, but as an opportunity to redefine their roles, influence business strategy, and deliver unexpected value.

The term “growth mindset” is often dismissed as a buzzword, but in the context of AI regulatory innovation, it is the dividing line between legal teams that thrive and those that fall behind. Forward-thinking general counsel and in-house leaders are embracing a culture of curiosity, continuous learning, and calculated risk-taking. This shift is not just about keeping up with new tools; it’s about fundamentally reimagining how legal work gets done and how legal departments contribute to the broader goals of the business.

One of the most striking developments in the evolving roles of general counsel is the proactive involvement in AI procurement and policy. Legal leaders are no longer just gatekeepers of compliance; they are shaping the rules and best practices for how their organizations buy and use AI tools. This includes advising on everything from third-party AI contracts to internal governance frameworks. By stepping into these strategic conversations, legal teams are positioning themselves as essential partners in corporate decision-making, not just risk managers.

A common misconception is that technical expertise is the primary driver of success in this new era. While understanding how to use AI tools is important, the real differentiator is a mindset of openness and curiosity. Legal professionals who are willing to try new approaches, learn from mistakes, and iterate quickly are consistently outperforming those who rely solely on traditional credentials or past experience. In the age of AI regulatory innovation, curiosity truly trumps credentials.

The practical impact of this mindset shift is already visible. Legal departments are increasingly taking on work—such as eDiscovery and supply chain risk review—that was once routinely outsourced to law firms. The results are surprising: in-house teams leveraging AI are not only completing tasks faster and at lower cost, but sometimes achieving better outcomes than their external counterparts. For example, some organizations have reported that their internal eDiscovery efforts, powered by AI, produced more accurate and timely results than those delivered by outside counsel. This is a clear signal that the future of legal jobs with AI is not about replacement, but about reinvention and value creation.

This evolution is also changing the way legal teams approach challenges. Instead of asking, “Can we do this?” the most innovative leaders are reframing the question: “How can we do this—eventually?” This subtle but powerful shift encourages experimentation and resilience, even when the available tools are not yet perfect. It also fosters a culture where learning agility and a willingness to try (and sometimes fail) become sources of competitive advantage. As the pace of change accelerates, these qualities are becoming as important as any technical skill set.

Integrating AI in corporate governance is no longer a theoretical discussion. It is a practical reality that demands both technical know-how and a flexible, forward-looking mindset. Legal departments that embrace this dual approach are not only navigating the risks of new technology—they are also uncovering unexpected upsides, from cost savings to improved performance and deeper strategic influence.

In conclusion, the unscripted revolution in legal services is being written by those who are willing to challenge old assumptions and embrace the unknown. The future belongs to legal professionals who combine technical competence with a relentless curiosity and a commitment to growth. As legal teams continue to break the mold, their greatest asset will not be a specific tool or credential, but the mindset that allows them to see—and seize—the opportunities that AI brings. The journey is just beginning, and the most exciting chapters are yet to be written.

TL;DR: AI is turning legal and compliance worlds upside-down. Get a strategy, stay curious, and expect a few bumps—and breakthroughs—on the road to 2025 compliance.