Beyond Contract Review: The Untapped Use Cases for Legal AI

Why the future of Legal AI isn't just in the contract—it's in the business context.

The "Contract Review" Trap

Legal AI has officially arrived, but for many teams, the implementation feels a bit like using a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store. We’ve spent the last few years obsessed with "efficiency in redlining," optimizing the 50-page MSA or the complex indemnity clause. While important, this narrow focus has led legal teams into a trap: we’ve ignored the broader ecosystem of legal risk and value that exists outside of the contract.

We have heard the complaint many times that legal can feel like a "bottleneck". While some may point to drawn-out contract reviews as the reason for this reputation, we think the more likely culprit is the hundreds of legal “micro-asks” that flood into Slack and email every day, like the questions from HR, the marketing copy reviews, and the product team pings.

At Sandstone, we believe the next era of legal tech isn't about better chatbots; it’s about "Context in Motion." To become truly strategic, legal teams must move beyond the signature line and apply AI to the entire business environment.

Use Case 1: HR & People Ops

From Onboarding to Offboarding

The Pain Point: High-volume, repetitive documents like offer letters, option agreements, and severance packages are the "silent killers" of legal productivity. They often require manual "sanity checks" to ensure compliance with a patchwork of ever-changing state labor laws.

The AI Opportunity: Rather than a lawyer manually checking if a non-compete is enforceable in Illinois versus California, an AI-native operating system can centralize company context and cross-reference it against live legal databases.

• Automated Triage: AI agents can flag deviations in "standard" employment terms before they ever reach a lawyer’s desk.
• Compliance at Scale: Instantly updating offer letter templates based on the applicable state .

The Value: Faster hiring cycles and a massive reduction in the risk of employment litigation. Legal moves from being a "hurdle" in the hiring process to a seamless part of the People Ops workflow.

Use Case 2: Sales & Revenue Operations

Accelerating the Deal Desk

The Pain Point: Sales teams live in Salesforce and Hubspot; Legal lives in email and CLMs. This "context-switching tax" slows down deals as information is lost in the handoff. Legal often lacks the commercial context—Is this a must-win Tier 1 deal?—to prioritize correctly.

The AI Opportunity: By integrating legal intelligence directly into Salesforce and Slack (or other work collaboration tools), AI can automate the "Intake-to-Execution" pipeline.

• Commercial Awareness: The AI agent extracts the deal's strategic importance from Sales notes and applies the appropriate "playbook" automatically.
• Self-Service for Sales: For standard NDAs or low-risk renewals, AI can provide immediate "Guardrail Guidance," allowing Sales to move forward without a manual legal review.

The Value: Increased deal velocity. When Legal understands the "Why" behind the "What," they can stop being detectives and start being deal-closers.

Use Case 3: Marketing & Brand Protection

The "Gatekeeper to Growth"

The Pain Point: Marketing teams move at the speed of social media trends. However, legal reviews for ad copy, influencer contracts, and trademark usage often take days. This friction leads to two outcomes: either Marketing misses a viral window, or they "go rogue" and publish content that could create trademark or regulatory risk.

The AI Opportunity: Embedding brand guidelines and regulatory guardrails (like FTC disclosure requirements) into the creative workflow.

• Real-Time Copy Review: An AI agent can scan marketing campaigns and copy to flag high-risk claims, such as "guaranteed results" or "best-in-class", suggesting safer alternatives that maintain the punchy tone.
• Influencer Management: Automatically reviewing and "red-flagging" influencer agreements for exclusivity clauses or ownership rights that don't align with the company's standard risk profile.
• Trademark "Look-alikes": Using AI to quickly cross-reference new product names or slogans against existing IP portfolios to catch obvious conflicts before they reach a trademark attorney.

The Value: Radical marketing agility. When the legal "Green Light" is automated for low-to-medium risk content, Marketing can launch campaigns in hours rather than weeks, all while the brand stays protected from public gaffes or regulatory fines.

Changing the Narrative

The shift from being a "Cost Center" (reacting) to a "Value Center" (enabling growth) requires a change in tools and mindset.

We challenge you to look at your inbox from the last week. How many of those requests were actually about a complex commercial contract? More likely, they were questions about "how we do things here." That is your AI opportunity.

The most innovative legal teams won't be the ones who redline the fastest; they’ll be the ones who feel omnipresent because they’ve integrated legal intelligence into every department. At Sandstone, we’re building the operating system that makes this possible—turning your legal expertise into a competitive advantage.

Is your legal team reactive or strategic? The difference is context.