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By Mahala Miller, Corporate Legal
In-house legal departments are turning to generative AI (Gen AI) technology as more than an IT upgrade—it is quickly becoming a transformative force.
The adoption of Gen AI tools in corporate legal departments rose sharply last year, with 44% of in-house legal leaders reporting they are now using Gen AI (up from 28% a year ago), according to a March 2025 survey by FTI Consulting.
The Law360® Pulse 2025 AI Survey found that AI adoption is also accelerating in the broader legal industry, with usage jumping to 54% this year, up from 35% in 2024.
The individuals who are driving this innovation in most organizations are the legal operations professionals. A key message from the 2025 CLOC Global Institute is that corporate legal ops teams are stepping into a strategic role by championing AI tools that streamline workflows, elevate legal teams and unlock the path to becoming the “Department of Yes.”
During the event, an insightful CLOC Solutions Lab hosted by LexisNexis® featured Lyndsey Van Benschoten, Legal Operations Director at HCA Healthcare, along with Jeni Turner, Esq., from LexisNexis. The session explored how legal operations leaders can harness AI tools, such as Lexis+ AI® and LexisNexis Protégé™, to streamline workflows, reduce low-value tasks and position legal departments as enablers of business strategy.
Ms. Van Benschoten began by sharing her experience with choosing a specific AI solution for her legal department. She explained that HCA created a focus group comprised of representatives from each team, tasking the group with reviewing demonstrations and conducting trials of various products to assess which tools the team members would most likely use. Ms. Van Benschoten emphasized the importance of understanding the specific AI use cases for the various groups in your corporate legal department — and then ensuring that the solution you choose is aligned to those specific needs and use cases.
The presenters then discussed five real-world AI use cases for corporate legal departments:
One of the most tedious legal research tasks — analyzing statutes across jurisdictions — will soon be improved using legal AI tools. Instead of being limited to one jurisdiction, corporate legal professionals will be able to recognize up to three jurisdictions and apply them to their prompt, resulting in significantly enhanced efficiency.
Legal AI platforms allow users to upload previous contracts, clauses and policies, then generate new work product based on past language, analyze content for missing or redundant elements, and improve the quality and consistency of legal documents while minimizing redundant review. This reduces time spent on repetitive drafting and enhances the value of prior legal work.
LexisNexis has pioneered the incorporation of agentic AI—technology that is capable of autonomous task completion—into legal research. Agentic AI works across all platforms and tools, customizes outputs based on user interaction, and uses grounding data and model cross-validation to improve draft accuracy. This represents an exciting shift from passive AI to interactive, personalized AI that helps corporate legal teams complete tasks faster and with higher quality.
Perhaps the most stunning use case for Gen AI is in document drafting and review. Legal AI tools enable team members to draft entirely new clauses and documents from scratch, as well as quickly modify existing contracts in response to updated laws or business needs. This functionality helps legal teams move beyond research into real-time drafting, saving hours on routine work while boosting quality control.
Some corporate legal professionals are accustomed to using spoken language to dictate their observations and legal insights regarding client matters. In a coming release, the Protégé™ tool is expected to feature an innovative voice-activated legal assistant enabling hands-free interaction with AI tools, natural language commands to retrieve or generate legal content, and personalization capabilities that deliver improved accuracy. This personalized AI voice assistant will simplify access to AI capabilities and increase adoption of AI tools by users who may be less comfortable with traditional interfaces.
The CLOC Solutions Lab session wrapped up with the presenters reinforcing a few key messages for legal ops leaders, chief among them the understanding that AI is no longer optional—it is now a strategic imperative for legal departments looking to do more with less. Legal operations teams that take ownership of AI implementation in their departments are driving meaningful corporate impact while elevating their own role within the organization.
LexisNexis® offers AI-powered legal tools for corporate legal teams, including legal research, drafting, summarization and document analysis tools that deliver on the potential of Gen AI technology. The platform delivers answers to your in-house legal team that are grounded in the world’s largest repository of reliable and exclusive legal content from LexisNexis, with industry-leading data security and attention to privacy. This ensures that the answers you obtain from your prompts are accurate and based on the most up-to-date information, providing confidence in the quality and integrity of your search results.
All of these resources are accessible to in-house legal teams via Lexis+® General Counsel Suite, an all-in-one information resource that provides in-house counsel with a vast collection of legal resources, breaking business and legal news, and Practical Guidance content.
Click here for more information about Lexis+ GC Suite or to register for a free 7-day trial.