The developments worth knowing before you practice.
CURATED BY THE
TECHNOLOGY LAW STUDENT ASSOCIATION
This week was less about flashy demos and more about how legal teams organize work. New tools are putting AI into intake, research, drafting, and contract review, but the common thread is the same: trusted sources, defined workflows, and a lawyer responsible for the result.
LEGAL MODELS
Z.ai announced GLM-Legal, a legal-focused model aimed at contract review, evidence analysis, and compliance. Its benchmark results are vendor-reported.
Why it matters: Specialized legal models make it more important to ask what data, testing, sources, and review process sit behind the answer.
Read Z.ai's announcement ↗IN-HOUSE PRACTICE
Legora's new Intake product turns requests from Slack, Teams, and email into tracked work. It can use a team's playbooks and skills, while routing decisions back to accountable lawyers.
Why it matters: Legal AI is changing process design, not just research and drafting. Learning how matters are scoped, routed, and reviewed will be a real practice skill.
Explore Legora Intake ↗SOURCE TRANSPARENCY
LexisNexis described how its repeatable AI skills for tasks such as contract comparison, due diligence, complaint analysis, and deposition summaries draw on attorney-created Practical Guidance.
Why it matters: The key question is not whether AI can produce an answer. It is whether the workflow reflects legal practice and gives the lawyer a way to verify it.
Read LexisNexis' explanation ↗WORKPLACE TOOLS
Microsoft announced more than 20 legal-specific skills and new partner plugins for work in Word and Copilot Cowork, bringing legal workflows into familiar Microsoft environments.
Why it matters: Legal AI is increasingly embedded in the tools lawyers already use. Reviewing AI-assisted drafts, tracked changes, and supporting sources will matter as much as prompting.
Read Microsoft's announcement ↗CONTRACTING
Harvey's workflow compares draft clauses with approved positions, flags exceptions, and lets legal teams refine their playbook as they learn from live negotiations.
Why it matters: Contract AI is becoming less about replacing judgment and more about consistently applying standards, escalation paths, and precedent.
Read Harvey's update ↗Watch how firms and legal departments build audit trails, source transparency, and escalation rules into these new tools. “Human in the loop” only works when the human has a clear job to do.