Microsoft makes its play to become the home of legal AI

Microsoft is making a bigger push into legal AI, launching more than 20 specialist capabilities within Copilot and bringing some of the sector's leading technology providers into its platform.

The new Copilot for Legal, announced on Thursday, builds on legal AI capabilities Microsoft first made available in April, including tools for reviewing and drafting contracts within Word - where lawyers still spend much of their working day.

The launch is part of a concerted push into legal AI by Microsoft. Earlier this year, the company hired 18 employees from UK legal tech startup Robin AI, including its former chief technology officer and director of AI.

The expanded platform adds more specialist workflows and integrations with third-party providers, including Harvey, Legora and DeepJudge, as Microsoft seeks to make Copilot a central hub for legal work.

Built in

Rather than requiring lawyers to work in a separate application, Microsoft is embedding its new capabilities into software they already use.

In Word, Copilot can review agreements against a firm's playbooks, identify clauses that need attention and propose amendments using native tracked changes. It can also draft contracts using approved precedents stored in SharePoint.

The company is also extending legal workflows into Copilot Cowork, where users can delegate more complex tasks spanning multiple documents, emails and meetings. These include comparing terms across agreements, tracking contractual obligations and building case chronologies.

Microsoft says around 1,800 users have used its legal AI capabilities since their initial release in April, a relatively modest number given the company’s vast customer base.

Connections

Perhaps more significant for the legal technology market is Microsoft's decision to bring specialist providers into Copilot through a new range of plugins.

Alongside Harvey and Legora, the integrations include document management providers iManage and NetDocuments, legal technology companies Litera and Juro, and e-discovery platforms Relativity and Everlaw.

The integrations are beginning to roll out through Microsoft's plugin registry, with more expected to become available over time.

Race to the hub

The approach could make Copilot an increasingly important gateway to legal technology, allowing lawyers to access specialist tools without switching between applications.

Harvey and Legora are pursuing similar strategies themselves, opening their platforms to third-party tools as they compete to become the main interface through which lawyers work. Harvey launched a connector library in June, while Legora announced more than 30 integrations this week.

General-purpose AI companies are also moving in this direction. Anthropic's Claude for Legal combines specialist legal plugins with third-party integrations, while OpenAI is bringing legal capabilities into ChatGPT through Astra for Law, alongside a growing range of connectors to other software.