Legal workflows demand precision and auditability. While general-purpose AI tools can assist with document review, they aren’t designed to follow the structured processes legal teams rely on to evaluate risk and maintain consistency.
Building on our recent announcement of agentic capabilities in Word, today we are introducing the Legal Agent in Microsoft Word. Whether you are generating redlines or reviewing counterparty changes, the agent handles tedious work, so legal professionals can focus on high-impact decisions.
How the Legal Agent works
The Legal Agent was built in close collaboration with legal engineers to reflect how contracts are reviewed and negotiated. Instead of relying on general AI models to interpret commands, the agent follows structured workflows shaped by real legal practice, managing clearly defined, repeatable tasks like reviewing contracts clause by clause against a playbook.
The agent applies edits in the document through a purpose-built insertion algorithm to drive consistency regardless of how each edit was introduced. The agent’s redlining engine understands the structure of a Word document, not just visible text. It understands and structures Microsoft 365 document format into a representation that preserves formatting, lists, tables, and tracked changes. From there, the agent applies a deterministic resolution layer over the edits, including author-specific changes, instead of relying on an LLM to generate every revision directly. This provides a more reliable foundation for handling complex contracts while helping reduce latency and cost.
What the Legal Agent Does
Understand complex legal documents. The Legal Agent analyzes the full agreement, drills into specific clauses, and compares versions to spot risks and obligations. It also provides citations that link directly to the source language, so reviewers can quickly verify responses.
Draft precise edits. Tell the Legal Agent what to change, and it produces negotiation-ready redlines with tracked changes across relevant sections, minimizing unnecessary edits and preserving original formatting.
Negotiate with confidence. The agent works inside documents that already contain tracked changes, separating prior revisions from new proposals, so negotiation history is retained.
Review contracts against your playbook. The Legal Agent flags non-conforming provisions and recommends edits to align with internal standards and approved language from your playbook. Apply suggestions one-by-one or across the document.
Maintain trust and control. View supporting citations for each suggestion from the agent and review all edits before approving. The agent keeps tracked changes and can also insert comments explaining the changes.
Keep sensitive workflows secure. The Legal Agent runs within Microsoft 365 security, compliance, and governance controls your organization already uses for legal documents and standards.
Early signal from legal professionals
Early customer feedback shows strong interest in how the Legal Agent supports legal workflows in Word. Legal professionals value its domain expertise in inspecting citations, working with tracked changes, and reviewing documents against internal playbooks while maintaining full control. For legal teams, it’s crucial that their AI tools fit into established review processes without compromising security and confidence in the document.
Get Started
The Legal Agent is available today in Word on Windows desktop through the Frontier program in the US. Legal Agent appears directly in the agents’ dropdown menu within Copilot in Word. No installation is required; however, users may need to restart Word to see the agent.
Join Frontier to get early access to Microsoft’s latest AI innovations.
Note: The Legal Agent does not provide legal advice or professional determinations and is not a substitute for the judgment of a qualified legal professional. AI‑generated content may be inaccurate. Users are solely responsible for reviewing, verifying, and deciding whether to rely on any output before taking action.
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