The Rise of AI in Legal Operations

Artificial intelligence (AI) in legal ops is becoming one of the most practical tools legal teams have to streamline work, improve visibility, and scale their impact.  

From smart intake routing to real-time dashboards and automated workflows, AI is making everyday legal processes faster, more efficient, and easier to manage.

Let’s explore how AI is being used across legal operations today, the tools making it possible, and how platforms like Checkbox are helping teams put it all into action.

AI Applications in Legal Ops

AI plays a very hands-on role in legal operations, showing up in tools that legal teams use every day. Being increasingly integrated into in-house legal software solutions, AI helps manage requests, automate workflows, and surface insights—all in real time.

Here are a few areas where AI is making a clear impact:

• Legal Intake & Triage Software: AI-powered intake tools can automatically categorize and route incoming requests, reducing bottlenecks and ensuring matters land with the right person from the start.

• Contract Management: Within some contract lifecycle management (CLM) software platforms, AI can identify key clauses, flag missing terms, and even recommend redlines—speeding up review and negotiation cycles.

• Legal Chatbots & Self-Service: Legal AI chatbot software is helping business users get quick answers to common questions or guiding them through workflows without needing to loop in legal every time.

• Real-Time Insights: Legal analytics and dashboard software now uses AI to provide deeper visibility into matter progress, team workload, and performance trends—helping legal operate more strategically.

• Workflow Automation: AI is enhancing legal workflow automation software by dynamically adapting flows based on inputs, risk level, or matter type.

Examples of AI-Driven Workflows

So, what does all of this actually look like in action? Here are a few examples of how legal teams are using AI to simplify and scale their day-to-day work:

Example 1: Automated NDA Generation

Instead of reviewing the same low-risk contracts over and over, teams are using contract lifecycle management software to automate the entire NDA process—from intake to approval—based on pre-set rules and AI-powered clause detection.

Example 2: AI-Powered Intake via Chatbot

Legal requests often start in places like Slack or Microsoft Teams. And with a legal AI chatbot integration, users can submit requests directly within those tools via a conversation. The AI then automatically identifies key details, triages the request, and creates a new matter—no separate forms, no switching platforms.

Example 3: AI-Suggested Workflow Routing

Lawyers can use AI to suggest the most appropriate workflow based on the request’s context—like contract type, business unit, or risk profile. For instance, a low-risk vendor agreement might be routed through a self-service automation flow, while a complex commercial contract gets escalated to legal for review. The AI learns from historical data to improve routing over time, ensuring requests are handled by the right process, every time.

Benefits of AI in Legal Ops (Speed, Cost, Risk)

The value of AI in legal operations comes down to three big wins: speed, cost, and risk.

🏎️ Speed → AI eliminates manual, repetitive tasks—like categorizing requests, routing matters, or updating stakeholders—which means legal teams can respond faster without burning out. With AI-driven intake and workflow automation, legal can move at the pace of the business.

💵 Cost → By automating high-volume, low-risk work (like NDAs or policy reviews), legal teams reduce the need for outside counsel or additional headcount. And with AI handling the heavy lifting on routine tasks, lawyers can focus on higher-value, strategic work.

⚠️ Risk → AI helps standardize how work is handled, ensuring the right processes are followed every time. Whether it’s enforcing playbooks, escalating based on risk, or keeping an audit trail of every step, AI reduces the chance of things slipping through the cracks.

Additionally, platforms like Checkbox that combine legal intake, workflow automation, matter management, and real-time dashboards in one place, provide legal teams with the added benefit of visibility—helping them track performance, demonstrate value, and continuously improve.

AI Tools Available on the Market

For in-house legal teams exploring AI, there’s a growing landscape of tools—ranging from general-purpose assistants to purpose-built legal ops platforms. Here’s a look at some of the most common options and how they stack up:

ChatGPT & Generative AI Assistants

Tools like ChatGPT are gaining traction for drafting emails, summarizing legal content, and brainstorming contract language. They’re not legal-specific, but with the right prompts and oversight, they can support research, ideation, and internal productivity.

Checkbox

Designed specifically for legal ops, Checkbox offers AI-powered intake and triage software, legal workflow automation software, legal matter management software, and real-time reporting dashboards—all in one platform. It integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, DocuSign, and more, allowing legal teams to automate routine work, route matters intelligently, and track performance across every request.

LawVu

LawVu helps legal teams centralize contracts, track lifecycles, and manage approvals. While it includes some intake and matter tracking features, it’s more focused on document-centric workflows, with AI primarily used to streamline contract review and document handling.

Microsoft Excel + AI Plugins

Believe it or not, many legal teams are still relying on spreadsheets to manage intake and track matters. With new AI plug-ins and Copilot integrations, Excel is becoming more powerful—but it’s still a manual-heavy, siloed approach that lacks the real-time collaboration and workflow logic of dedicated legal ops platforms.

How to Successfully Integrate AI

Integrating AI into legal workflows doesn’t have to be a massive transformation—and it shouldn’t be. The most successful legal teams take a phased, focused approach that prioritizes usability and business impact.

Here’s how to get started:

Step 1 – Start with a high-volume, low-risk use case:

Think NDAs, marketing reviews, or vendor intake. These are ideal candidates for automation and AI-powered triage, delivering quick wins without regulatory complexity.

Step 2 – Choose tools that integrate with how your team already works:

Look for platforms that connect seamlessly with your existing systems—like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and email—so users don’t need to switch contexts or learn a new interface.

Step 3 – Prioritize no-code configurability:

Legal teams shouldn’t have to wait for IT support to launch or update a workflow. Tools like Checkbox empower legal to own and evolve their own processes without code.

Step 4 – Ensure visibility and feedback loops:

Use built-in dashboards and legal analytics to track adoption, identify bottlenecks, and continuously improve your workflows. AI is most powerful when paired with data you can act on.

Step 5 – Educate and empower your team:

AI adoption is as much about change management as it is about technology. Give your team context, set expectations, and highlight how AI will support—not replace—their work.

Remember, the goal isn’t to “AI everything.” It’s to make your legal ops function more scalable, data-driven, and aligned with the pace of the business.

How Can Checkbox Help

Checkbox is a leading intake, workflow automation, and matter management software for in-house legal teams that brings AI into legal operations in a way that’s actually usable.

From AI-powered intake that works directly in existing tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, or email, to automated matter creation, smart routing, and real-time dashboards, Checkbox helps legal teams take control of their workflows without adding complexity.  

Everything—from triage to approvals to document generation—can be automated using a no-code builder, so legal ops teams can launch solutions without waiting on IT.

What makes Checkbox different from other legal software is how seamlessly AI is embedded across the platform. It’s not just a layer on top—it powers how requests are understood, how decisions are made, and how insights are surfaced.

And arguably the most important feature, Checkbox gives legal teams a single source of truth for all matters, greater visibility into workload and performance, and the ability to scale their impact.

Want to see Checkbox’s AI capabilities in action? Book a demo today.