Ahead of her appearance on a panel session at the Australian Law Forum 2025, the lead legal counsel at Canva discussed practical ways to implement artificial intelligence (AI) for law departments.
Ahead of her appearance at the Australian Law Forum, Ellen Howard, lead legal counsel – privacy & business operations at Canva, said AI is a transformative force reshaping the legal profession.
Approximately 88 per cent of corporate legal departments believe AI can increase efficiency and productivity in their work, according to Thomson Reuters.
“AI automation has been transformative for routine processes, accelerating research, and making information sharing with the business more effective,” Howard told Lawyers Weekly.
Thomson Reuters studies estimated legal professionals could free up four hours per week within the next year and as much as 12 hours per week in five years’ time.
“AI is an absolute quantum multiplier for productivity and impact,” she emphasised.
Bots are gaining popularity as one of the key ways to optimise workflows with AI, said Howard.
“I’ve built four bots for different purposes, and I rely on three of them constantly,” she said.
“One I tuned specifically for research. It performs searches within very specific, narrow parameters, and cites things in a very particular way.”
The bot relays only the need-to-know information, allowing legal teams to ask external counsel highly targeted questions without needing a full briefing on the broader topic.
Additionally, Howard noted that AI should also be optimised to foster cross-collaboration throughout the entire team.
“I’ve also built a bot on top of a repository of external counsel advice – so that everyone on the team can benefit from the advice and see if the same or similar question has been asked,” she said.
By using the new technology, Howard noted that querying thousands of pages of advice now only takes seconds.
While AI has been revolutionary for the legal profession, human review is essential.
“AI only works if you know enough about the practice area or expected work-product to know if the AI outputs are any good,” she said.
“Anyone can type in ‘draft a privacy policy’ into ChatGPT and get something back, but only an experienced professional in that practice area would know if the result is good, what’s missing, what needs to be changed, clarified, etc.”
When getting started in AI integration, Howard advised: “Start slow, think about how you can simplify something for yourself or your team using AI.
“Once you understand the capabilities and limitations of AI better, more ideas for AI incorporation will follow.”
To hear Ellen Howard speak further on the transformative impact of AI on the legal profession, come along to the Australian Law Forum.
Run in support of principal partner Thomson Reuters, the event will take place on Thursday, 14 August 2025 at The Star in Sydney. Click here to buy tickets.
