When AI Starts Doing the Work: How In-House Legal Teams Must Adapt

AI is moving beyond answering questions, drafting documents, and assisting lawyers. The next evolution is AI agents that can execute work, manage processes, and make decisions within defined boundaries. For in-house legal teams, this shift could fundamentally change how legal work gets done, how teams are structured, and how lawyers spend their time.

Giving AI the ability to perform legal work requires more than adopting new technology. Legal departments must rethink how they design workflows, organize institutional knowledge, delegate responsibilities, and maintain appropriate human oversight.

On Monday, November 9, 2026, Stephanie Corey, Co-Founder and CEO of UpLevel Ops, and Gil Banyas, COO and Co-Founder of Chamelio, explored the shift from AI assistants to forward-deployed AI agents that operate within legal workflows using business context and institutional knowledge.

Through practical examples involving contract intake, legal requests, policy questions, compliance processes, and other routine legal work, the speakers discussed where AI agents can deliver meaningful value, what legal teams need to have in place before deploying them, and how to maintain control as AI takes on greater responsibility.

Key takeaways and topics covered included:

• Understanding the shift from AI assistants to AI agents: What distinguishes agents that execute legal work from traditional AI tools, and what this means for in-house legal departments.
• Identifying opportunities for AI-driven execution: Evaluating which legal tasks, workflows, and decisions can be delegated to AI agents and where human judgment remains essential.
• Preparing legal workflows and institutional knowledge: Structuring processes, policies, and information so AI agents have the context and guardrails needed to operate reliably.
• Establishing oversight and accountability: Maintaining visibility into AI-driven work, setting up appropriate approval and escalation processes, and addressing risks when agents make mistakes.
• Rethinking the structure of the legal department: Considering how AI agents may change staffing needs, responsibilities, resource allocation, and the role of in-house counsel.
• Building a practical roadmap for adoption: Assessing legal team readiness, identifying suitable starting points, and developing an approach to piloting and scaling AI agents.

Audience:

‍This program was designed for general counsel, chief legal officers, in-house counsel, legal operations professionals, and legal department leaders exploring, implementing, or scaling AI within their organizations. It was particularly valuable for those responsible for legal technology, workflow automation, knowledge management, AI governance, and legal department strategy.

Sponsored by Chamelio.

The recording is now available for on-demand viewing via our paid CLE library—In-House Connect On-Demand.