Beyond the Hype: 10 Practical Ways GCs Can Start Deploying AI Today

There’s a lot of noise about AI in legal. For many GCs, the harder part is figuring out what’s practical, what’s safe, and what’s worth doing first.

If you’re evaluating AI for your team, it helps to start with a short list of specific workflows where it can reduce cycle time or improve consistency without creating new risk.

Below are 10 concrete areas where legal teams are often moving from exploration to implementation.

Phase 1: The Low Hanging Fruit (Efficiency & Triage)

Start here to build confidence and show quick ROI with minimal risk.

1. The "Plain English" Translator

Complex legal concepts often get lost in translation when they hit business stakeholders.

• The Application: Use secure LLMs to translate dense legalese into executive summaries for the C-Suite or "plain English" FAQs for employees.
• The Win: Fewer back-and-forth questions, faster alignment, and less time spent translating legal guidance into business language.

2. Automated Triage and Routing

A lot of delays start at the front door, when requests come in without enough context.

• The Application: Implement AI at the intake layer (email/Slack) to analyze incoming requests, tag them by urgency and type (e.g., "NDA," "Employment," "High Priority"), and route them to the correct attorney or playbook.
• The Win: Less time spent routing requests, and more time spent on the work that actually needs legal judgment.

3. Legacy Contract Audits

Most companies are sitting on a mountain of PDF contracts that are unsearchable and unmanaged.

• The Application: Use AI to ingest thousands of legacy PDFs and extract key metadata (renewal dates, indemnity caps, change of control clauses) into a structured dashboard.
• The Win: A faster read on exposure and obligations, without turning it into a months-long manual review.

Phase 2: The Co-Pilot Layer (Drafting & Review)

Once the team is comfortable, move to augmenting the actual legal work.

4. The First Draft Accelerator

Staring at a blank page is the most expensive time for a lawyer.

• The Application: Configure AI tools to generate the first draft of routine documents (NDAs, SOWs, termination letters) based on your specific playbooks and precedents.
• The Win: Attorneys can start from a solid draft and spend time on judgment and negotiation, rather than first-pass writing.

5. Redline Triage

Reviewing third-party paper is tedious and repetitive.

• The Application: AI tools can pre-screen incoming contracts against your playbook, flagging exactly where the counterparty deviates from your standard terms and suggesting fallback clauses.
• The Win: Review time goes toward the clauses that matter, with fewer cycles on repeatable boilerplate.

6. Knowledge Retrieval (The Brain of the Department)

Questions like “Who handled a similar deal last year?” can turn into a lot of time spent searching and asking around.

• The Application: Create a secure "chat with your data" layer. Allow attorneys to query the department’s shared drive, like: Show me the last three times we agreed to a limitation of liability over $5M.
• The Win: Faster answers from prior work, and less reliance on finding the one person who remembers where something lives.

Phase 3: Building the Operating System (Enablement, Measurement and Planning)

Use AI to protect the business and shape strategy.

7. Training and Standardization

Keeping work consistent is hard when guidance lives in people’s heads or scattered docs.

• The Application: Use AI to turn playbooks, prior redlines, and policy into practical training materials: short scenario-based modules, clause-by-clause explanations, and “why this matters” notes. Pair that with standardized outputs (approved clause positions, fallback language, and intake checklists) so common work comes in and goes out in a consistent format.
• The Win: Faster ramp for new team members, fewer preventable errors, and more consistent work product across the department.

8. Commercial Velocity Enablement

Legal is often on the critical path for revenue, especially when contracting volume increases.

• The Application: Use AI to route common deal patterns to the right playbooks, auto-populate drafts from structured inputs, and flag redlines that are likely to stall a deal. Combine this with self-serve paths for low-risk paper and clear escalation rules for exceptions.
• The Win: Shorter contract cycle times, fewer stalls on standard deals, and a smoother handoff between Sales, Procurement, and Legal.

9. KPI-Ready Value Reporting

Even when AI helps, it can be hard to show impact in a way that resonates with Finance and business leaders.

• The Application: Instrument workflows so Legal can report outcomes: cycle time by contract type, SLA attainment, self-serve deflection, outside counsel spend avoided, and throughput per attorney. Use AI to categorize work and generate regular summaries that tie activity to business outcomes.
• The Win: Legal can show value in the language of KPIs, make resourcing conversations more concrete, and prioritize work based on measurable impact.

10. Planning and Insights Into Legal Workforce Allocation

Most legal teams don’t have a clear view of how capacity is being spent across work types, business units, and risk levels.

• The Application: Use AI to classify matters, intake requests, and contract work by category, complexity, and business impact. Then translate that into a workforce allocation view, like: Where are our attorneys spending time? What should be handled by self-serve, ops, or outside counsel? Use the data to forecast demand, rebalance portfolios, and justify headcount or tooling.
• The Win: A clearer picture of where time goes, which supports staffing decisions and makes resourcing conversations with Finance and business partners more concrete.

The Path Forward: Think Augmentation, Not Automation

The goal isn’t to replace legal judgment. It’s to reduce the repetitive work around it, so the team can spend more time on the decisions that require experience and context.

Look for a provider that can guide you through multiple applications to reduce integration and relationship-management noise.

Sandstone integrates your workflow from intake through execution. Using AI to process and triage intake, surface relevant context, and orchestrate surgical redlines and natural language drafting, Sandstone is the AI-native home for legal work. Request a demo.