How to build an in-house legal function using AI

If you’re the first lawyer at a fast-growth company, you’ll face high workloads, limited resources, and huge pressure to keep pace with sales. AI can give you a head start by helping you set up processes that are fast, scalable, and business-friendly.

Here are eight ways to use AI when building your legal function.

1. Intake

Control how requests reach you. Work with IT to spin up a simple form or Slack integration. Tools like Jira now have AI plugins to help triage requests, though legal-specific tools are even better.

2. Workload Management

AI can categorise requests, flag urgent ones, and visualise your workload. This helps you spot bottlenecks and prioritise more effectively.

3. Contract Playbooks

Start small with spreadsheets, then use AI tools to turn them into scalable playbooks. These tools can analyse your agreements, surface patterns, and suggest industry-standard clauses.

4. Contract Reviews

AI can speed up negotiations by comparing contracts to your playbook, flagging deviations, suggesting edits, and even redlining. Word plugins are a good entry point before investing in full CLM platforms.

5. Legal Research and Tasks

Think of AI as the smartest intern you’ve ever had. It can draft summaries, translate documents, prepare outlines, and support briefings — often integrated into tools you already use.

6. Self-Service Resources

AI can help you create FAQs, policies, and playbooks for the wider business. Some tools even let you spin up a Slack bot to handle routine questions automatically.

7. Build Your Legal Front Door

Use AI to create a single, easy-to-navigate hub with your intake process, templates, FAQs, and team information. Notion is a good place to start.

8. Track Your Performance

AI tools can help you capture and present data on turnaround times, contract volumes, and other KPIs. This makes it easier to prove your value and argue for more resources.

Final thought: AI won’t build the function for you, but it will accelerate every step of the journey. Use it to stay lean, focus on revenue, and show the business that Legal is a driver of growth, not a bottleneck.

Subscribe to my biweekly newsletter for more practical insights on building and running effective in-house legal functions, delivered straight to your inbox.