Microsoft introduced a Copilot version that’s optimized for the legal industry through pre-packaged AI skills and plugins for connecting to important industry data sources.
The company positions Copilot for Legal as a superset of the previous Legal Agent. The new copilot supports in-depth document work in Word, as well as work across files and processes in Cowork, plus it connects to the key data sources and systems that attorneys and legal staff utilize in their day-to-day work.
Microsoft’s new software arrives in the wake of the recently introduced Google Gemini Enterprise for Legal, which similarly offers pre-built legal skills and industry software connectors; one difference is that Google developed its software in partnerships with law firms.
In Microsoft’s case, the company said it developed legal AI functions with legal engineers whose role is to translate legal practices and workflows – grounded in actual legal tasks and documents — into the product.
Legal Skills Out of the Box
In Word, Copilot for Legal supports experiences built directly into the document that help legal professionals review, refine, and act on their work. In Cowork, legal professionals can delegate multi-step work across agreements, emails, meetings and files, such as comparing key terms across agreements, and building case chronologies. Work IQ functions as the intelligence layer that connects Copilot and agents to each organization’s knowledge, context, and people.
Reusable AI-powered skills — instructions and context that teach agents how to run specialized tasks — in a legal context can be applied to contract review and redlining, legal research, and more.
Specific capabilities Microsoft is delivering include:
- Understanding legal documents by analyzing full agreements while drilling into specific clauses and comparing versions to spot risks and obligations
- Making precise edits, which involves telling Copilot what to change so it produces redlines with tracked changes across relevant sections
- Running playbook‑based contract reviews, addressing conflicts and recommending edits to align with internal standards and approved language
- Drafting new contracts, telling Copilot to generate new drafts based on templates or previous contracts
- Kicking off workflows to draft documents, create presentations, update spreadsheets, and write emails from within Word and Cowork
Microsoft’s Copilot for Legal documentation provides a full list of skills and it includes some important caveats:
- Copilot is not jurisdiction-aware by default. Recommendations may not reflect the law applicable in a given jurisdiction
- Outputs reflect model training data and may not incorporate live legal databases or account for recent legislative or regulatory changes
Since the product incurs no new costs, there’s little reason not to test it, one expert said. “For organizations sitting on Copilot seats and still debating the business case, this is a concrete one. Contract review is document-heavy, repetitive and expensive. That’s exactly where the value shows up,” said Sriram Srinivasan, Microsoft Licensing Specialist at Quadbridge Inc., in a LinkedIn post. “If your legal or contracts team is already in Word all day, this is worth a look this quarter.”
Connected Legal Systems
Providing access to the key systems that legal professionals rely on in their work is a core feature of Copilot for Legal. New plugins developed by partners span legal research, document and transaction management, agreements, specialized AI, electronic signatures, and e-discovery. Below are some of the key plugins offered, while there’s a full list here:
- Legal research: Bloomberg Law, Trellis, and Descrybe Legal Engine
- Document, matter, and transaction management: iManage Work, NetDocuments, HighQ from Thomson Reuters, and LegalZoom
- Agreements and electronic signatures: Docusign, Adobe Acrobat Sign, LawVu, and Dropbox Sign
- Specialized Legal AI: Harvey, Legora, and DeepJudge
- E-Discovery and Legal Intelligence: Everlaw and Relativity
Tom Smith
Analyst
Cloud Wars, Agent and Copilot
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