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Speaking recently at a LexisNexis-hosted event, one general counsel outlined a three-pronged approach her team has adopted in driving efficiency across the business, whilst also effectively managing risk.
Late last month, LexisNexis hosted its AI Summit 2026 in Sydney, which explored what the future of legal AI looks like, including how it should be governed, where professional accountability sits, how its value should be measured, and what becomes more valuable as technology makes some forms of legal production faster and less costly.
One panel session – featuring WaterNSW general counsel and company secretary Vanessa Bourne, Vocare Law director Timothy Whincop, and Bond University associate dean of teaching and learning, associate professor Wendy Bonython – unpacked how to scale AI whilst also maintaining control.
In discussion of how AI usage is manifesting in legal workplaces, Bourne said that legal teams like hers have been successful at utilising new technologies for personal productivity gains, but that the “next frontier” is organisation-wide agentic AI use for workflow processes. Identifying how law departments can extract greater value across business functions that are interacting with each other is what will be essential in the near future, she said.
When asked how teams like hers can balance board or executive-level directives for efficiency gains whilst also asking the legal team to manage emerging risks, Bourne said that there are “three limbs” that help provide the necessary assurances for the C-suite: “it’s the people, it’s the governance guardrails, and the technology itself”.
Firstly, she detailed, human interrogation and critical thinking in the face of AI outputs is fundamental, thereby requiring that in-house lawyers are “appropriately skilled, understand the risks, and know what to look out for”. Secondly, Bourne said that while her organisation allows for experimentation with AI, there’s a “ring fence” around what workers can and can’t do. Finally, she said that the organisation “has been quite clear” about the tools that her team is using; “at the moment, that’s LexisNexis Protégé and Copilot”.
Further on the people limb, Bourne reflected that she “had a lot of anxiety two years ago” as she felt she knew nothing about AI and was falling behind, but what she has since discovered is that “everyone’s on a journey to understand”. To this end, what she’s looking for in the lawyers that make up her team is the professional skillset that’s long been valued by employers: that is, analysis, critical thinking, problem-solving, and work that is up to a certain standard. “Those human skills and professional skills are more important than ever now,” she said.
Regarding the second and third limbs, Bourne recounted staff within her organisation setting up their own agents to undertake work once they had access to tools, including her legal team, in which lawyers created agents to pull previous pieces of legal advice into a shared location, and build a space whereby those lawyers could ask questions. However, she said, risks were identified with “unfettered agent creation” across the organisation, and as a result, restrictions were put in place.
“As a legal team, we've put our hand up to be part of the pilot program that looks at ensuring, as an organisation, we're building those foundational guardrails around the development of agents for use in workflows and cross-team collaboration,” she said.
“We're just at the very early stage of that at the moment, so we can't use AI for that sort of agent workflow at the moment, but we can use AI for the LexisNexis tool and the functionality available within that, because we have confidence around the system. We know that the information we're putting in is as secure as we've got.”
Ultimately, Bourne noted that the journey of scaling AI while maintaining control is a continual process, whereby individuals are expected to bring their professional standards and judgment, that the organisation is offering sufficient training and time to get used to new tools, and that implemented policies are developing alongside the technology and what those tools are being used for. Whilst teams like hers are at an “important part of our development [whereby they are] building knowledge and understanding”, the associated risks nor the imperative for “critical output” cannot be ignored. To this end, she said, experimentation cannot come at the expense of the customer experience, financial stability, or organisational reputation.
