We’ll be honest, when we first heard of AI agents last year, our imaginations ran wild, and we were convinced that we were going to have robots sitting next to us at our workplace. Our fantasy world did come crashing down, when we realised that was not true– oh how boring! What was so different about Agentic AI from anything we had seen before? Why did Sam Altman refer to Agentic AI as ‘super-competent colleagues’ when we couldn’t even see them? We did some digging to understand what AI agents mean. Research is easy these days and we quickly understood that Agentic AI is an artificial intelligence system, and what makes it special is that it is able to autonomously plan, orchestrate workflows, make decisions and execute tasks within preset boundaries with minimal human intervention. There were three words that were exciting for us again – ‘autonomous’, ‘execution’ and ‘boundaries’, and that’s what got our Legal Ops minds giddy with happiness and this time, it was real. We spoke with a few experts who have used AI agents in other sectors, and they gave us more ideas on what AI agents could do in the field of law.
Before we dive into some use cases for Agentic AI in the legal industry, let’s talk about the key factors that make 2025 such an exciting time for AI in law:
1. Openness to the use of technology– Without naming the client and showing my age, fifteen years ago, a client invested a million dollars in a then – shiny Contract Lifecycle Management tool (now retired!), later had to outsource their entire contracting process to a legal services provider because their in-house team refused to use the tool. Fast forward to 2025, there is a genuine enthusiasm amongst attorneys on embracing technology to make their work more efficient. Today technology is not merely a tool but a ‘super-competent colleague’ (Thanks, Sam!). General Counsels and law firm partners are proactively seeking use cases for AI and want to be viewed not just as embracers of technology but trailblazers in their fields.
2. Technology is maturing quickly – Large language models have matured within the last 18 months and are today able to provide reasons and generate legal arguments. In addition to this, there is no limitation on AI models one can use, and multimodal agents have become a reality. Finally, you can provide business context and long-term memory to the AI architecture which allows AI agents to adapt to the dynamic business environment we all work in. We recently worked with a European law firm, where the legal professionals proactively used their personal logins to access AI technologies, thus delivering efficient solutions to their clients.
3. Increase in data size– The sheer volume of data in any organization is only getting bigger and more complex, and using manual brute force is not feasible anymore. Not long ago, I managed legal services delivery centres of over 1200 legal and non-legal professionals. I remember the days when there were large-scale projects, we would scramble to hire over 100 law graduates within a period of 1-2 weeks, however such models are not sustainable today. Clients are demanding lower fees and are expecting firms and service providers to use technology to bring the costs down and ensure speed of delivery. Using Agentic AI with an overlay of human supervision is going to achieve sustainable savings and efficient delivery.
4. Minimal or no training– Agentic AI executes tasks autonomously with the human in control. This means we don’t need to learn new tools – it integrates seamlessly with our existing workflows, such as e-mails, Word documents, and communication platforms like Teams and Slack. This drives adoption far quicker than any legal tech tools we have seen in the past, which required multiple training sessions and feedback loops.
5. Truly 24/7 global and consistent workforce– As organizations expand globally, legal teams can truly serve their customers round-the-clock without having to keep up with time zones. AI agents can make ‘follow-the-sun model’ a reality and will ensure consistent output based on the defined guardrails and company policies.
6. Economic & Regulatory pressures – With most of the world economies in a spin and regulatory frameworks across industries are changing rapidly, making compliance a moving target. Clients are looking at new ways to address the compliance challenges while keeping their costs under control. For years organizations had to spend large sums of money, time and effort to review legacy contracts with every change in regulation. This process has been transformed by AI tools, becoming increasingly efficient and cost effective with evolving technology.
Don’t take our word for it –market.us’s AI Agents Market report January 2025 report predicts the Global Agentic AI market size to be around USD 196.6 billion in 2034 from USD 5.2 Billion in 2024, growing at a CAGR of 43.8% during 2025 – 2034. The report further lists Legal and Compliance as one of the Key Agent Roles. So, what can these AI agents do within Legal and Compliance sector. We think the question should be – how do we want to leverage AI agents in our industry?
While we have listed 5 use cases in legal and compliance, it only scratches the surface. The possibilities are infinite and as we say at Ekamm8 – let’s unlock infinite solutions:
1. E-discovery and Managed document review– We will be honest again, we didn’t want to lead with this. However, if we are going to talk about any technology in the legal industry, we will be fooling ourselves not to think that e-discovery is truly the pioneer of all new technology. E-discovery technology is one of the most mature legal technologies and has kept up with the fast pace of changing data volumes, thus its adoption is widespread. While TAR and CAL have enabled making reviews faster, Agentic AI can conduct first level reviews while humans conduct QC. Agentic AI can further redact documents, create chronologies and summaries of documents where required, and escalate issues. Should the review protocol change midway, Agentic AI can speed up the process of applying changes across the dataset and meet deadlines with ease.
2. M&A due diligence – We love large scale, volume-based projects as they are ripe for technology. Due diligence always needs to be completed as of yesterday and the volumes of documents make it almost impossible to complete on time without throwing in an army of associates behind it. Agentic AI can conduct high volume due diligence within a matter of hours and help the legal team on the transaction by providing a due diligence report in the output format it prefers. If the senior partner asks for new information from 1000s of documents, that will be easily doable without teams having to pull multiple all-nighters to go through all the documents.
3. Third party due diligence (TPDD) – Most organizations have a large number of vendors, suppliers, contractors and business partners and need to monitor their risk profile to ensure they comply with relevant laws and regulations; maintain financial stability; are free from sanctioned entities, money laundering and criminal activities; and follow ethical labour and environmental standards. Agentic AI can automate TPDD and ensure compliance by monitoring global regulatory databases for sanctions, fraud and compliance violations on a real-time basis; track ESG compliance; detect fraud risks and generate a detailed due diligence report.
4. Ancillary to legal– Both law firms and in-house teams have a number of processes and workflows which do not impact the mainstream work of the attorney, however, are equally important to the functioning of the legal department and the law firm. These include processes such as client or matter onboarding, conflict checks, case management, billing and invoicing, budgeting and spend management, and client communication. Each of these processes can be automated through Agentic AI and make the running of a law firm and an in-house department efficient and seamless.
5. Contract management – This article would be incomplete if we didn’t mention the use of Agentic AI in contract management. Most in-house teams primarily spend a large amount of their time on redlining and negotiating contracts. With AI agents automating redlining and administrative aspects of contract management (follow ups, approvals, storage, renewals etc), the legal teams can focus on what brings the most value to the organization – spending time on negotiations with clients and working with the business to close the deal and grow revenue.
While the possibilities are boundless, we need to rein our excitement and ensure that we foresee the risks and challenges and address them while structuring Agentic AI solutions. We have listed some of the challenges which we help our clients address:
1.Ethical concerns – Agentic AI cannot replace human and must not function as an independent legal advisor. AI tools can read facts and generate arguments based on the information, but lack full understanding of complexities, context, nuances and moral implications of legal matters. It is therefore imperative that humans are in control of the final output and review the work undertaken by AI tools. Building guardrails and compliance within the systems is important and legal teams must provide oversight on how Agentic AI is trained for their organization
2. Client confidentiality and data security – Agentic AI systems used in legal settings must maintain strict data privacy and confidentiality standards to maintain attorney-client privilege. Security is paramount and breaches need to be prevented. Law firms and legal departments must implement robust cybersecurity measures, such as encryption, access control, and threat monitoring, to mitigate these risks.
3. Bias in AI models – Many AI models operate as “black boxes,” meaning their decision-making processes are not easily interpretable. This lack of transparency makes it difficult for legal professionals to identify and correct biases in AI-driven analyses. Ensuring that AI algorithms are explainable and interpretable is crucial for maintaining fairness in legal proceedings. To address AI bias, legal AI developers must implement bias detection and mitigation strategies, such as diverse training datasets, algorithmic audits, and human oversight. Regularly reviewing AI-generated outputs for potential bias can help prevent discriminatory legal assessments.
As with most things, AI can be used for ‘good’ or ‘evil’ – it all depends on we use it. We are not shouting ‘La Revolution’ from the rooftops yet, but 2025 is setting the foundation for redefining how legal services are delivered. We believe that Agentic AI can help law firms and legal departments service their clients in an efficient and sustainable manner. It will give attorneys the time to do what they do best – practice law and enable business!
