Ongoing Dialogue Sets Up In-House Team for AI Adoption Success

In-house counsel voices have become an integral part of corporate conversations about implementing artificial intelligence. Those discussions range from learning about employees’ individual experiences to addressing agenda topics in the boardroom.

As you use these insights to guide executive leadership on AI implementation, here are some operational considerations to build a strong foundation.

Feedback Loop

Collecting broad feedback across the organization can encourage buy-in and surface new use cases. Even where a team has previously identified multiple use cases, cultivating a precedent of continuous feedback encourages technology adoption, provides an opportunity for education and training, and develops a forward-looking innovation mindset.

It also opens the door to discuss the subtle but important distinction between replacing roles through technology and implementing technology to amplify individual capabilities and execute on outcomes. Collecting feedback can lead to discussions that keep messaging optimistic and goal-oriented, define expectations in a period of change, and promote a collaborative environment.

For example, I led an initiative implementing a contracts management and commercial templates system. The legal team set up a series of open forum meetings for department leaders and their invitees to share initial objectives and receive feedback. In addition, we coordinated meetings with each of the leaders and asked them to designate a single point of contact who could communicate in-progress goals and provide ongoing feedback.

Once our primary objective was set, the process of vetting several vendors provided an opportunity to explore historical data trends and incorporate data analytics. This analysis involved our legal team, commercial teams, and vendor teams, and through it we learned that other groups were interested in tracking contract sections. The legal team came away with a greater understanding of department goals and further developed an opportunity to pursue additional long-term gains for the organization.

All this occurred before we had invested significant time and energy into the software integration, and receiving frequent feedback meant we could incorporate requests early into our project management scope and timeframe.

Pilot Program

Pilot programs are an early step in implementation, and in-house counsel can ensure the company gets the maximum benefit from them. Selecting simple use cases can promote additional feedback and provide more time to evaluate regulatory requirements. Consider ways to use resources efficiently:

• Could a subset of documents be used to test the software, limiting enterprise involvement while still receiving enough data for meaningful feedback?
• Is there a small group who is well-suited to try out earlier versions of the software?
• Is there a portion of the software that could be implemented before intensive customization is required?

Consider another vantage point: derisking scenarios for testing software and use cases.

• Could a neutral set of data be used to test the software?
• Could fake or anonymized data be used to test analytics?
• If anticipated data uses will require consumer disclosures, could software methodologies be validated by the engineering team before the disclosure changes are required?
• Do certain scenarios trigger prudential or regulatory review? If so, are there any scenarios that could be initiated in limited scope, before oversight is triggered, and still achieve employee and operational feedback?

As the legal and regulatory leader, take special care with certain AI applications as they may require greater compliance effort up front. For example, some AI technology includes the ability to collect data analytics for predictive purposes, which can provide powerful marketing insights targeting certain audiences. In this situation, a company is treating one group of individuals differently from another group, which may trigger additional legal, prudential, and regulatory requirements.

Crafting a pilot program that accomplishes the business value without triggering these requirements will help avoid additional risk until it is truly necessary. The pilot program period also creates a defined space for all groups to proactively consider compliance requirements going forward using real-time insights from the pilot.

Regular Review

Technology changes fast. Today’s technology setup won’t and shouldn’t look the same 12 months from now, and hopefully not six months from now either.

Plan future check-ins for usage and user experience. In my experience, a quick pulse survey is important to gauge if an initiative is generally aligned with expectations but doesn’t do enough to understand of how technology is impacting employee experiences. There should be continued discussion forums with the full leadership team reinforcing corporate priorities through this initiative.

Feedback also can alert in-house counsel on evolving compliance and regulatory needs. For example, a gradual shift in using different data sets may now require greater privacy disclosures and corresponding data governance adjustments. And the vendor’s adjustments to the software may create new risks, requiring potential contractual changes. Ensure you have created a framework for ongoing reviews along with the compliance and audit teams.

Implementing AI is an exciting business opportunity and a chance for you as a leader to lean in as a key adviser and embrace a long-term perspective. With these strategies, the legal team will be a critical part of this AI paradigm shift.

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

Author Information

Amy Yeung has served in senior and executive legal leadership, counseling fast-growth private and Fortune 1000 public companies. Yeung has also served in leadership capacities in legal operations, DEI, and innovative leadership, including in her current positions as past chair of the Law Department Management Network of the Association of Corporate Counsel and a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management.

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