Should You Trust Legal AI or Does It Need Human Oversight?

According to Gabor Melli of LegalOn Technologies, as artificial intelligence expands into legal departments, the key issue is whether to trust legal AI. Legal ops professionals must determine where AI can be relied upon and where human oversight remains essential. The distinction depends primarily on the complexity or simplicity of the task.

Legal AI excels in tasks that are structured and rule-based, where Natural Language Understanding and Natural Language Generation can perform efficiently. For example, in reviewing standard contracts, AI can accurately identify missing clauses, suggest revisions, and summarize terms. This makes it a valuable assistant for high-volume, repetitive work. The more clearly defined the task, the better AI performs, making it a suitable fit for tasks such as contract review and document summarization.

However, the effectiveness of AI declines sharply as task complexity increases. In nuanced legal situations, AI often lacks the contextual judgment needed to make sound decisions. Errors such as misinterpreting indemnity carve-outs or missing subtle liability shifts can lead to delays and serious consequences, underscoring the need for human review.

When researching AI tools, claims of reliability must be scrutinized. Metrics indicating a tool’s high accuracy level may reflect only simple tasks and could be misleading without any context. Legal teams should focus on how AI performs when human judgment is required and whether it is supported by expert-authored rulebooks, issue lists, and playbooks. Trustworthy AI systems are those designed with legal expertise embedded in their logic.

The most effective tools blend automation with human insight, ensuring accuracy and mitigating risk. As for the question of whether to trust legal AI, trust must be earned through transparency and reliability.