Why Upskilling Must Lead Your GenAI Strategy and Transformation

Much has been written about generative AI’s disruptive potential in legal services, but far less attention has been paid to the people driving that transformation. For in-house legal teams navigating today’s volatile regulatory and technological landscape, upskilling is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s the cornerstone of a truly effective artificial intelligence strategy.

While supporting corporate legal departments adopt GenAI tools and workflows, we’ve seen one pattern emerge repeatedly: The difference between inertia and success isn’t the technology itself. It’s whether your team is prepared—and empowered—to use it.

Since adopting a company-wide GenAI platform, our most engaged adopters haven’t been limited to data scientists or technologists. Some of our most creative and impactful use cases have come from legal analysts, project managers, client-facing teams, and graphic designers.

That experience has shaped a key belief: Generative AI doesn’t replace expertise, it amplifies it. But that amplification only happens when legal departments prioritize talent transformation alongside technology adoption.

Why Legal Ops Must Lead. Most legal departments already understand that GenAI has the potential to increase productivity, reduce repetitive tasks, and accelerate time to insight. But too often, the instinct is to delegate upskilling to the IT department or wait until after a tool is purchased. That’s a mistake.

Upskilling needs to be proactive, not reactive. Legal operations teams are uniquely positioned to lead GenAI enablement efforts because of their cross-functional visibility, process ownership, and change-management expertise. Upskilling can’t live in a silo. It must be built into how teams work, communicate, and solve problems together.

Who Should Be Upskilled First? It’s tempting to focus GenAI training solely on tech-forward roles, but that underestimates where the value lies. Some of the most critical early adopters are those closest to the business problem, not the software.

For legal departments, that means prioritizing:

• Legal operations professionals, who are often the connective tissue between legal, compliance, and business units
• In-house counsel, especially those involved in contracts, litigation strategy, and regulatory response
• Business-side stakeholders who regularly collaborate with legal and can identify inefficiencies ripe for automation

The key is to identify individuals who understand your processes and pain points and who are curious enough to experiment with new solutions.

What Should Legal Professionals Learn? Upskilling in the age of GenAI isn’t about turning lawyers into programmers. It’s about building fluency in new forms of communication and analysis. At a baseline, every legal team should focus on three core areas:

• Prompt engineering: Crafting effective prompts is a learnable skill, one that can dramatically improve the quality and accuracy of GenAI outputs.
• Responsible AI usage: Legal teams must understand how to apply GenAI within ethical, legal, and data governance boundaries, including how to manage confidentiality, bias, and explainability.
• Domain-contextual analysis: The ability to apply legal and business judgment to GenAI outputs is what separates useful insights from risky shortcuts.

As legal professionals develop these skills, they become more effective and resilient in the face of rapid change.

How to Build Programs That Stick. One of the biggest risks with any transformation initiative is “change fatigue.” A training approach should emphasize structured enablement over one-off events.

Here are a few best practices legal departments can follow:

• Start with guided pilots: Let teams test GenAI tools in a controlled setting, using real workflows to identify value early on.
• Tailor training by role: Different personas require different learning paths. Legal analysts need hands-on scenario-based training; leadership may need workshops focused on risk and governance.
• Celebrate wins: Highlighting early successes helps build momentum and makes abstract tools feel real and relevant.
• Foster a culture of experimentation: Not every use case will succeed, and that’s okay. Upskilling should be framed as an ongoing journey, not a one-time fix.

The results speak for themselves. I’ve found that upskilled employees are more productive, more engaged, and more likely to stay. When people are invited to work with AI, rather than fear being replaced by it, they embrace the future more readily.

For legal departments facing growing workloads, increasing complexity, and rising expectations, GenAI offers a powerful set of tools. But these tools don’t transform teams—people do. And the organizations that prioritize talent as a strategic asset will be the ones that thrive in this next chapter of legal innovation.

Generative AI isn’t a job killer; it’s a work transformer. But only if your team is given the chance to lead the change.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

Author Information

Subroto Mukerji is chief executive officer of Integreon, a leading global provider of tech-enabled legal, creative, and business solutions.

Write for Us: Author Guidelines