Artificial intelligence is moving from experimentation to becoming an operating layer for corporate legal functions, with automation increasingly influencing research, contracting, compliance and the role of the general counsel, according to Zameer Nathani, group general counsel, DNEG.
Delivering the chairperson address at the ETLegalWorld’s AI-Powered Legal Transformation Summit 2026, Nathani said legal professionals need to prepare for three major shifts over the next two to five years: accelerating adoption of AI, evolving regulatory and governance requirements, and a fundamental redefinition of the value lawyers bring to businesses.
Rather than looking at AI only through the lens of technology, Nathani urged legal leaders to consider how adoption patterns will affect operations, governance responsibilities and individual career progression.
“AI adoption is here to stay,” he said, while cautioning that legal teams will need to find the right balance between moving too quickly without adequate verification and moving too slowly while the profession transforms around them.
AI adoption moves deeper into corporate legal workflows
The first major shift, Nathani said, will be the growing use of automation across day-to-day legal operations.Citing projections for India over the next two years, he said 79% of corporate legal executives expect advanced automation to deliver a strategic market advantage, while 70% of in-house legal teams are expected to adopt automated platforms for research and analysis. He also highlighted expectations that 66% of enterprises will deploy automated compliance tools for areas such as data privacy protection.
The transformation is expected to extend to legal technology budgets globally. Nathani cited projections suggesting that corporate legal-tech spending could expand significantly over the next two years as organisations build automation into their legal functions.
At the same time, the relationship between corporate legal departments and external law firms could become more transparent. Nathani said in-house legal leaders are increasingly seeking disclosures from law firms about the technologies and AI tools being used to produce legal work.
Self-service legal work could become mainstream
Nathani cited projections indicating that 50% of inbound legal requests in India could eventually be resolved through self-service automated workflows, reducing the need for lawyers to manually respond to routine questions from functions such as marketing, sales and human resources.
Standard commercial contracts could undergo a similar transformation.
He said around half of routine contract revisions, including work on non-disclosure agreements, memoranda of understanding and other standard documents, could increasingly be handled through automated software playbooks.
Globally, Nathani expects a similar transition towards self-service contracting technology, with legal systems becoming capable not only of handling standard revisions but potentially updating templates as underlying laws and regulations change.
Governance becomes a bigger part of the GC mandate
The second shift identified by Nathani concerns regulation, compliance and governance.
As regulatory obligations increase across data privacy, cybersecurity, employment and corporate compliance, technology is likely to become a more significant part of monitoring and managing those requirements.
Nathani cited projections that 65% of legal functions could deploy digital systems for ongoing regulatory compliance monitoring over the next two years, while 51% of legal teams rank cybersecurity among their leading structural vulnerabilities. Regulatory complexity itself is also emerging as an operational concern for general counsels, he said.
At the global level, Nathani expects the general counsel’s relationship with senior leadership and boards to strengthen significantly. He cited projections indicating that as many as 92% of general counsels could be interacting directly and regularly with corporate boards within the next two years.
Over the next five years, the operating infrastructure of legal departments could also become increasingly technology-driven.
Nathani said 60% of legal functions in India could operate unified, technology-led intake and routing systems, where requests are automatically directed to the appropriate contract, regulatory, intellectual property or litigation workflow.
Instead of every request landing directly with a lawyer, technology could classify the issue and route it to the relevant system or expert. Automated systems could similarly accelerate recurring compliance cycles across corporate filings and regulatory reporting.
Globally, Nathani cited projections that one out of every two standard internal business legal queries could eventually be answered automatically without direct intervention from human counsel.
The lawyer’s value proposition is changing
The third shift is likely to be more personal for legal professionals: the skills that create value inside an organisation are changing.
Nathani argued that corporate lawyers will increasingly be expected to contribute outside the traditional boundaries of legal advice.
He cited projections that 75% of corporate legal leaders could manage expanded non-legal strategic advisory responsibilities over the next two years.
Those responsibilities could span business development, corporate strategy, leadership, crisis management, operational efficiency, expansion and engagement with governments and other stakeholders. For legal professionals, Nathani said this means understanding the business itself will become increasingly important.
The rise of AI does not necessarily translate into shrinking legal teams, Nathani argued.
Instead, he pointed to the potential growth of specialised, technology-integrated legal roles as companies increase their reliance on automated legal operations.
Over the next five years, he cited projections of a 16% expansion in technology-driven professional legal operations, alongside a significant compensation advantage for professionals possessing advanced legal technology expertise.
Nathani highlighted projections suggesting that professionals who build capabilities in areas such as AI, automation and legal technology could command materially higher compensation premiums.
For individual professionals, Nathani noted that career progression will increasingly depend on the ability to work with technology rather than compete against it.
For Nathani, AI adoption, governance transformation and the redefinition of legal value are therefore not separate trends. Together, they represent the next phase of the corporate legal profession, one in which technology handles a growing share of routine execution while lawyers move further towards strategic judgment, governance and enterprise leadership.
Today, the AI-Powered Legal Transformation Summit 2026 by ETLegalWorld has brought together general counsel, in-house legal leaders, and technology innovators, in Bengaluru, to chart the next phase of legal transformation in an AI-driven world.
