This article is based on a presentation at Womble Bond Dickinson’s AI Intensive: Playbook for Innovation and Risk Mitigation virtual summit, which took place May 20. The panel included Marina Carreker, Founder, Galleon Strategies and Former President, Howso; Bill Koch, Chief Knowledge & Innovation Officer, Womble Bond Dickinson (US); Jude Ogene, General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer, OpenNode. The event was moderated by Womble Bond Dickinson Partner Mark Henriques.
If 2023 was the year of, “What is AI?” and 2024 was the year of “Be afraid of AI,” then 2025 is the year of “If you aren’t using AI, you are already behind.”
That was the message of Womble Bond Dickinson’s AI Toolkit for Leaders: Use Cases, Benefits and Guardrails presentation. In outside law firms and legal departments, AI already is being employed for a range of purposes, including:
- General: client alert drafting, correspondence drafting, legal research drafting, translation, audio to text transcription, proofreading/prose polishing, redline changes analysis
- Transactional: key terms extraction, material changes summarization, contract markup
- Litigation: transcript analysis, timeline generation, complaint evaluation, court decision analysis
One ongoing challenge for in-house counsel is to be seen as trusted business partners, not just as “the place business goes to die,” Ogene said. A1 can help legal leaders be seen as strategic, business-focused partners.
AI knowledge can set lawyers apart from their peers. Attorneys can leverage AI to do lower-level work in a much smarter way.
“AI allows in-house lawyers to move up the value chain and use your traditional strengths of analytic skills and get the AI to do the coding for you. My experience has been that causes your colleagues to look at you in a different way,” Ogene said.
Likewise, the companies that embrace this technology responsibly are starting to pull away.
“The period of waiting on the sidelines until the dust has settled has passed,” Carreker said. “The technology changes so fast; you can’t wait until the right time.”
She added that everyone feels intimidated by AI. “There’s no other way to get your arms around it other than to start using it as much as you can,” Carreker said.
“You can’t put your head in the sand and run away,” Henriques said.
Hot Topics in AI for Company Leaders & In-House Counsel
Koch said he is interested in the deepening of generative AI platforms.
“The advent of these platforms is exciting. We’re looking at one tool that isn’t built around just one use case,” he said. “It’s a way to operationalize AI at a law firm in ways that aren’t just specific for a small team. It allows everyone to have access to generative AI.”
Womble also uses a generative AI platform called Lega, which includes a governance component. “Lega allows a ramping up of capabilities and puts it in the hands of people,” Koch said. “We’re continuing to be nimble.”
Risks of Not Using AI?
Much has been made about the potential pitfalls associated with artificial intelligence. Carreker said the risks of not using AI may outweigh the risks of using it.
She said that if employees aren’t allowed to use sanctioned AI platforms at work, they will use AI with work data in unsanctioned ways.
“It creates a ‘Shadow IT’ problem,” she said. Such activities can compromise data security. Keeping AI use in house allows companies to better protect important data.
In addition, having official AI tools allows employees to share best practices for AI use and to use AI collaboratively to tackle major projects, not just individual tasks.
“You can’t do anything at scale without enterprise tools,” Koch said. “Scale is what generative AI is really good at, and it’s powerful.”
The Impact of AI Natives
Business and legal leaders also need to take a long-term look at AI in the workplace. While the technology may be relatively unfamiliar to current team members, for those more recent college graduates—and younger—AI is a familiar, comfortable tool.
Ogene said, “Someone in AI told me, ‘You are on your way to AI fluency; your kids are AI natives.’”
Carreker said the gap between the two groups can be shocking in the workplace. She said a university recently conducted a survey that found half of the campus’s computers connected to an AI platform in just one hour.
Carreker also called attention to the challenges that will arise when these AI natives join workplaces whose AI preparedness lags behind. When those people get into the workforce, she said they will want to work for companies that embrace generative AI.
“It’s like when the Internet came around,” Henriques said. “You can’t just not use the Internet at work.”
The differences in AI proficiency also will increasingly define how work teams collaborate. What happens if one person is an advanced AI user and their teammates don’t really use AI?
Team leaders need to be aware of these differences and consider them when making team assignments. Such differences also point out the need for organization-wide training on AI use, the panelists said.
Getting Comfortable with AI
So if AI is here to stay, legal leaders and business executives need to get used to it.
Ogene said he has trained ChatGPT on his writing style and found that it does a pretty good job replicating it.
“It knows I like to put quotes from musical artists, so it’ll throw in a quote from Kendrick Lamar or something like that. You could also use it to build contract management systems, and say, ‘These are the things you want to flag.’ Being able to leverage these tools frees me up and creates a lot of enterprise value. I get to do the higher-level stuff that I’m excited about,” he said.
ChatGPT works for most of his needs as an in-house counsel, Ogene said, but he is exploring other AI tools.
“I’m amazed at what I’m doing with an LLM (large language model) that isn’t coded specifically for legal work,” he said, adding that AI gives users the chance to do many things at once, but users must input good information.
“In some cases, you could have a few good prompt engineers who could share these prompts with the entire organization,” Koch said.
Carreker said companies that are the most successful at AI adoption are the ones that have figured out how to broadly share knowledge of how to use it. Simply developing a small number of “super users” isn’t enough. She recommends creating a Slack channel where people can ask questions and share ideas.
Another strategy is to build cross-functional teams that include technical, legal, and business stakeholders to address integrating AI into organizational strategies and workflows.
Koch agreed, saying, “No one person is going to have all the keys to unlock how generative AI is used. It’s a community approach.”
AI Guardrails
In addition to data privacy concerns, AI can introduce algorithmic racial and gender-based biases, exposing companies to risks. So companies need to set guardrails to protect themselves, their employees, and their customers and clients from AI-created problems.
This starts with establishing clear guidelines, policies, and controls for AI use within the organization. Companies should ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations, such as the American Bar Association’s guidance.
AI tools and vendors need to be evaluated for transparency, accountability, and fairness. Companies should establish a feedback loop to monitor AI performance and make iterative improvements.
The panel suggested that companies explore enterprise versions, rather than retail versions of AI platforms. The enterprise versions have safeguards built in. Also, users should use nuanced, highly specific prompts—and that’s where a business leader’s knowledge comes into play.
One strategy is to ground prompts in documents, so that AI draws from documents as citations. That way, the user can check the work against the source documents. This is particularly helpful in a legal setting, where case documents can be used.
Finally, users need to check the work to make sure it meets their needs. AI tools make mistakes, so users must be diligent to watch for them.
“It still depends on the individuals using the tools correctly,” Carreker said.
She recommends companies provide basic training in how LLM tools work. Users need to understand how the tool works in order to decide whether something is an appropriate use for AI, she said.
AI Tools on the Horizon
In the law firm and legal department setting, Koch points to DraftWise. This is a contract review and analysis tool, with knowledge management capabilities and generative AI.
Such tools utilize GenAI to extract key language from contracts and provide a first draft based on playbook guidance. They provide a second set of eyes on key areas of contracts and create efficiency in preparing a first draft while marking-up contracts for negotiation.
“I’m also interested in computer use agents. It’s a new-ish capability. You pair it with a reasoning model that can actually click through and make decisions for you,” he said. “There are risks involved, obviously, and you want to be careful. But it’s something I have my eye on to automate workflow.”
Henriques noted he is using AI to create a cross-examination outline for an upcoming case. He likened this approach to a “super intern” that knows the case file.
Another tool to watch is so-called “Vibe Coding”. This refers to user-friendly large language models like ChatGPT and Claude that are now able to transform plain-language requests into working computer code, enabling novice programmers to cobble together programs.
Final Thoughts on AI for Legal & Business Leaders
Koch said the scale of AI gives it tremendous potential to improve work processes. “Experimentation on the micro level allows us to scale as an organization,” he said.
Carreker said lawyers and business leaders shouldn’t fear AI: “Just jump right in. At least get your mind around it so that you can engage with it as an informed business leader.”
“As you use these tools, you’ll find an infinite way to use them,” Ogene said. “The water’s warm and you’ll be just fine.”
Key Takeaways
- AI is already transforming legal work by streamlining tasks like contract review, legal research, and transcript analysis, allowing professionals to focus on high-value strategic activities. Organizations not utilizing AI risk falling behind competitors.
- Responsible AI adoption requires proactive management, including the use of sanctioned tools, clear guidelines, and cross-functional collaboration to mitigate risks like data breaches and biases.
- AI fluency is becoming a critical differentiator for legal and business leaders, with younger, AI-native professionals driving innovation and demanding integration of generative AI in workplaces.
- Shared knowledge and community-driven strategies, such as cross-functional teams and accessible training resources, are vital for successful enterprise-wide AI adoption.
- Establishing AI guardrails, including robust data privacy measures, transparent tool selection, and iterative monitoring, ensures ethical and reliable AI use while aligning with industry standards.
- Emerging tools like generative AI-based reasoning models are opening exciting new possibilities for efficiency, from contract analysis to workflow automation.
- Experimentation and hands-on engagement with AI are essential for business leaders to understand its potential and integrate it effectively into organizational strategies.
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