Artificial intelligence has already become part of our everyday work lives—often without us realizing it. When we search the web, AI-generated summaries appear before traditional search results. We routinely interact with various chatbots and other AI-powered applications. Yet for most organizations, certainly most law firms, AI's real potential is still largely untapped.
You've likely noticed how Microsoft is building Copilot throughout Microsoft 365. In Microsoft Office, Copilot icons are woven throughout Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams, ready to draft emails, summarize documents, and answer questions with a simple click. A common question I hear from lawyers is if Copilot is safe to use. Microsoft has made clear commitments around customer privacy and data protection, and Microsoft 365 Copilot does not use your firm's data or Copilot prompts to train its AI models. Lawyers can use Microsoft Copilot appropriately within their firm's Microsoft 365 environment with confidence that they are acting in a manner consistent with their confidentiality obligations.
Free Copilot answers questions, Paid Copilot understands your Firm
Copilot works very differently depending on your licensing level. The basic, free version of Copilot is called "standard access." This is a basic chatbot that provides an experience similar to publicly available AI tools. Free Copilot primarily works with information you explicitly provide or content you currently have open.
With business accounts, a $30/month/user Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on gives you access to a newer, more powerful AI model with more features. More crucially, the paid Copilot can see and reason across your Microsoft 365 information—emails, files, meetings, and chats—within the permissions that you already have. This is the single biggest difference. Free Copilot works only with what you show it. Paid Copilot works with your Microsoft 365 data across the broader context of your work. Many of my clients find tremendous value in Copilot subscriptions, though they often limit them to a subset of their employees.
Copilot Studio: Custom Agents plus a Pay-as-You-Go Option
Microsoft's Copilot Studio allows you to create customized AI workflows that can include advanced features such as autonomous agents that run in the background to perform defined tasks automatically rather than waiting for user input. These agents operate strictly within defined triggers, instructions, and permissions set by the firm. As with any firm system, appropriate governance and oversight remain essential.
Copilot Studio can also provide advanced AI functionality across your firm to be accessed by everyone in the firm using a pay-as-you-go model, where usage is billed per interaction rather than per user. A small fee is charged per use for those without the full Copilot subscription. This can be a very cost-effective way to leverage AI across your firm's information without requiring a full Copilot license.
The following are some real-world examples of how our clients are leveraging Microsoft Copilot Studio:
Empowering Employees with an HR Bot
We have created simple HR bots for several firms where an "Ask HR" conversational agent ("chatbot") taps into the employee handbook and other HR documents to reliably and accurately respond to routine employee questions based on approved internal content 24/7.
Automating Legal Document Generation
Many law firms spend hours drafting routine documents such as demand letters and other correspondence. Various legal document automation solutions have been available for a long time. We're in early stages working with firms to implement more flexible AI-powered legal document generators that use the firm's sample documents and templates together with natural language instructions to address unique legal scenarios with high-quality, customized documents. As with any AI-assisted legal work, appropriate human review remains critical. Early work on this is promising.
The Road Ahead
For most law firms, adopting AI should be an evolutionary, not revolutionary proposition. Tools like Microsoft Copilot can be introduced thoughtfully to enhance existing workflows while remaining consistent with professional responsibilities and confidentiality obligations. If you have any questions or thoughts about using AI in your practice, please feel free to email me at dkinsey@totalnetworks.com and I'd be happy to talk with you.