What Legal Teams Need to Know About ISO/IEC 42001

Brightflag’s Michael Dineen writes that ISO/IEC 42001 is the International Organization for Standardization and International Electrotechnical Commission‘s new standard for artificial intelligence (AI) management systems. In contrast to ISO/IEC 27001, which focuses on information security, ISO/IEC 42001 addresses the safe and ethical management of AI systems. 

It is becoming a de facto standard for evaluating AI vendors and applies to all types of AI, from rule-based automation to generative AI.

Instead of relying on vendor assurances, the ISO/IEC 42001 standard provides legal teams with a documented foundation for judging whether an AI system meets their compliance and governance expectations. As legal teams are often responsible for approving or blocking new technologies, ISO/IEC 42001 provides a forward-looking framework that complements internal governance models.

ISO/IEC 42001 also strengthens due diligence and helps insulate the organization from potential reputational and regulatory risk. In addition, while AI use cases expand across legal workflows, the ability to assess system accountability and ethical data use becomes increasingly central to operational decision-making. 

To earn ISO/IEC 42001 certification, organizations must address key areas, including demonstrating transparent, explainable decision-making, embedding strong practices to identify and mitigate bias, and ensuring system accountability and auditability.

ISO/IEC 42001 provides a shared language for evaluating risk and clarifying what responsible AI should look like in practice, from explainable decision-making to bias mitigation and continuous model oversight. By grounding AI evaluation in an internationally recognized standard, legal ops professionals can adopt AI without compromising on governance, transparency, or ethical responsibility.