How Legal Firms Are Using Microsoft Copilot & AI to Free Up Partner Time

In the fast-paced world of legal services, time is everything. Partners and senior lawyers are at their most valuable when they’re advising clients, shaping strategy and driving growth. Yet too often, their day is filled with repetitive, administrative or routine tasks that, while essential, don’t make the best use of their expertise.

This is where AI and Microsoft Copilot are starting to transform the legal sector. By automating time-consuming processes, firms are freeing up thousands of hours that can be reinvested into client-facing work.

Where legal firms are gaining ground with AI

From drafting documents to managing deadlines, AI tools like Microsoft Copilot are being integrated into everyday legal workflows. Below are just a few of the key areas where firms are already seeing meaningful impact.

1. Document summarisation and drafting

AI can summarise lengthy depositions, prepare attorney bios and draft correspondence in a fraction of the time it would take manually. What used to take days or weeks can now be completed in hours.

2. Smarter contract drafting

Contract creation can be accelerated by allowing lawyers to pull in precedent clauses and trusted language directly within Word. This removes the need to search through libraries or manually copy and paste from old documents.

3. Legal research made seamless

Instead of switching between multiple databases, AI now enables lawyers to query legal resources directly within Microsoft 365 tools, instantly summarising statutes and case law.

4. Managing matters and deadlines

AI-driven agents can integrate with case management systems to automatically track deadlines, key tasks and client communications, eliminating the need for manual diary management.

5. Intelligent case & matter management

Routine workflows like filing, document management and client onboarding can be automated, while AI assistants help extract key actions, dates and contacts from case files.

The payoff for partners

The impact is clear: by cutting down on repetitive, low-value work, partners and senior lawyers can:

• Spend more time advising and meeting clients
• Focus on growth and strategy
• Improve responsiveness and turnaround
• Reduce stress and cognitive load

In short, automation is giving lawyers back their time.

Challenges to consider

While the benefits are huge, firms must also navigate:

• Data confidentiality and compliance
• Verifying outputs and avoiding errors
• Training and change management
• Integration with existing document and case management systems

The firms leading the way are combining innovation with strong governance to make AI a safe and strategic enabler.

The future of legal services

AI and Microsoft Copilot aren’t here to replace lawyers; they’re here to give them back the time to focus on what matters most: client relationships and complex legal work. The firms that embrace these tools early will gain a competitive advantage, improving efficiency, client satisfaction and profitability.

At RDS, we help professional services firms harness the power of Microsoft technology to reduce manual workloads, improve productivity and free up time for client-facing work. If you’d like to explore how Copilot and AI can work in your firm, get in touch with us today for a consultation.