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Lawyers Build AI Agents: The Future of Legal Work
25 Sep
Summary
- Companies train non-technical staff to create AI agents.
- Legal teams are now designing AI tools, not just using them.
- AI adoption yields significant time savings and cost reductions.
Technology investor Prosus challenged its entire workforce, including accountants, salespeople, and lawyers, to build 30,000 AI agents by late 2025. By May 2026, this initiative had resulted in over 60,000 agents. Senior leaders participated in intensive AI development sessions, with legal teams creating specific tools. David Tudor, group general counsel at Prosus, noted the transformative experience of building a regulatory scanner tool without a coding background.
Gitte Groenewold-Wong, head of group legal at Prosus, emphasized that senior leaders' actions, not just tone, drive AI adoption. Her team, consisting of nearly 50 professionals, built 298 AI agents shared on the company's platform. Many European legal teams featured in the 2026 FT Innovative Lawyers report are now creating their own AI applications. Remote's legal team is trained in software engineering, contributing to compliance software, while Spain's Repsol legal group provides 100 annual training hours in programming and AI for its nearly 200 lawyers.
Repsol's legal department has reframed its role from 'doing the work' to 'designing how work happens,' leveraging AI for better analysis and quicker responses. The team estimates saving over 22,000 hours and cutting external legal spending by more than €360,000 on a single matter, with savings exceeding AI investment. Prosus's legal team handles increased volume and complexity without adding staff. UK-based Revolut is adapting its external law firm assessments, prioritizing firms transparent about their AI use and benefits.
Revolut's legal team can now handle more work internally, leading to a strategic reassessment of external legal spending. Requests to instruct outside firms are data-driven, considering turnaround, quality, and cost. Law firms are also evaluated on their technology adoption, requiring transparency in AI utilization. While Revolut anticipates increased overall spending due to growth, the focus is on smart resource allocation and maximizing value.
