Microsoft launches Copilot for Legal with over 20 legal AI skills

On October 16, Microsoft President and Vice Chair Brad Smith announced Copilot for Legal, a set of more than 20 legal-specific AI skills for commercial customers worldwide. The capabilities are delivered as legal plugins for Microsoft Copilot, covering tasks such as contract drafting, agreement review, obligation tracking and case timeline organization.

According to Microsoft's blog, the skills are integrated in Microsoft 365 Copilot across Word desktop and the Cowork cross-app workspace. In Word, Copilot can review contracts against playbooks set by an organization, flag clauses that need attention and propose edits in track-changes mode. It can also draw on approved templates or historical agreements in SharePoint to draft new contracts and legal memos. Cowork targets more complex workflows, extracting obligations, deadlines and trigger conditions across contracts, emails, meeting notes and files, comparing agreement terms, building case timelines, and turning meeting content into formal minutes and resolutions.

Microsoft also announced plugins built with legal technology companies including Bloomberg Law, Thomson Reuters HighQ, DocuSign, Harvey, Relativity, iManage and NetDocuments, spanning legal research, document management, e-signature, e-discovery and deal management. Microsoft said the tool is designed to assist legal professionals, not replace their judgment, and that AI-generated citations, conclusions and revision suggestions still require human review.