Microsoft Is Hiring a Lawyer to Bring AI to Its Legal Department

Microsoft seems to wish to put its authorized division on AI steroids.

The corporate is searching for a principal authorized engineer to assist form how its attorneys use synthetic intelligence. The rent will construct brokers, sharpen prompts, and practice attorneys in Microsoft’s Buyer & Associate Options group, which helps the corporate’s business enterprise, in response to a job description posted on LinkedIn this week.

A Microsoft spokesperson didn’t reply to a request to remark.

For many years, attorneys had been the company world’s tech holdouts, cautious of instruments that might get even a single element unsuitable. Synthetic intelligence is beginning to change that. Purchasers are pushing regulation companies to make use of instruments resembling Harvey and Claude for Legal to get work carried out quicker and, ideally, cost much less for it.

That very same stress is shifting in-house. Authorized groups are betting that software program might help them edit contracts and write insurance policies, permitting them to do extra early work themselves and ship outdoors counsel issues which might be additional alongside. That would shrink their legal bills.

Microsoft might need somebody on the within steering that effort.

“This can be a function for a builder. You’ll ship actual functionality quite than advise from the sidelines, companion instantly with engineering, and keep shut sufficient to attorneys and paralegals to design with them quite than for them,” the corporate wrote within the job description.

Microsoft has the benefit of constructing a few of these instruments itself. In a weblog publish, the corporate stated its attorneys use Copilot, its flagship assistant, to hurry up routine work. One use case is contract assessment. Copilot can evaluate a draft with comparable agreements, flag points, and counsel edits that match with the corporate’s insurance policies, the corporate wrote.

Microsoft has additionally begun rolling out Harvey throughout Company, Exterior, and Authorized Affairs, its broader authorized group.

Microsoft’s job posting is among the clearest indicators but that the authorized engineer function is catching on inside corporate legal departments.

The job has already come into vogue at startups promoting software program to regulation companies. Authorized engineers are usually former attorneys with technical chops. They sit near prospects and assist form the corporate’s software program round the way in which attorneys truly work.

Final month, Palantir additionally posted a job description for an embedded authorized engineer. The rent will work instantly with Palantir’s attorneys to “rework high-touch, handbook workflows into scalable, automated options,” per the job description.

For its function, Microsoft is searching for somebody with a law degree and at the least seven years of expertise as a practising legal professional. “Fingers-on expertise with AI authorized instruments resembling Harvey or Copilot” is most well-liked, the corporate wrote. Base pay ranges from $147,000 to $278,900 a 12 months.