Artificial Lawyer View On The Microsoft Legal Agent

Microsoft has well and truly entered legal tech with its Legal Agent – see previous AL story. So, why does this matter? Well, Anthropic’s entry into legal tech, via a series of increasingly intentional steps, caused a huge reaction across the market. Now, Microsoft has joined in as well, and quite intentionally too, with a product branded as a ‘Legal Agent’ and designed to handle a whole range of legal tasks.

Is this about the same as the Claude for Word move? Arguably it’s a lot greater in impact, because – as we all know – 99% of legal work is done in Word. And this is made by the company that made Word. This is not a third-party app. It’s the real thing. 

You may then say ‘But, we have MS Copilot, and it’s not great.’ True, (although apparently getting better now).

As noted explicitly by Microsoft, this ‘was built in close collaboration with legal engineers to reflect how contracts are reviewed and negotiated’.

Copilot is a general tool that lawyers can use as best they can for legal work.

Legal Agent is a specific, professional tool, designed ‘by legal engineers’ – many of whom came from legal AI company Robin.

In short, where before Microsoft was both within the legal world, but not really into legal tech, this is really a legal tech tool, designed by experts who actually used to work at a legal tech company.

Ironically, if Robin AI had not gone under, this move may not have happened – or at least not so soon.

One can also assume that the Claude for Word plugin has also potentially sped things up.

Will this change the legal world?

Well, reviews of Claude for Word are mixed – but then, competitors will of course be negative about rivals. That’s to be expected. And whatever is there now can improve and also with customisation can deliver a lot more. 

But, even so, as noted, this is something else. This is a Microsoft legal tech product, made from the most foundational code upwards to work inside Word, and built by – at least some – people who are deep into the world of legal tech already.

In short, this is a whole different ballgame.

The question now is: what do lawyers think of its performance?

We shall soon find out.

Either way, there are now two tech giants quite intentionally targeting legal tech.

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Richard Tromans, Founder, Artificial Lawyer