The robots are coming for our jobs. Or so the story goes. For commercial and technology contract lawyers, whose days are often spent deep in the linguistic nuance of agreements, the rise of artificial intelligence might feel like an existential threat. But this narrative, driven partially by hype but mostly by a misunderstanding of legal practice, misses the point. The future is not about replacement; it is about a material and necessary evolution.

We are entering the era of industrialised intelligence in legal services – the mass application of AI to automate and scale tasks that were once bespoke and time-consuming. For the contract lawyer, both in private practice and in-house, this does not mean extinction. Instead, it necessitates a fundamental shift in the contract lawyer’s role: from being the primary drafter and scribe to becoming the strategic advisor, legal architect, and guardian of increasingly automated legal systems.

Now | How AI is already remodelling the contracting landscape

This evolution is not taking place in a distant future - AI-powered tools are already moving from the fringe to the mainstream of legal practice. Automated review platforms can ingest thousands of agreements and analyse them in minutes, flagging non-standard clauses, identifying risks against pre-defined playbooks, and scoring overall compliance. In M&A due diligence, this is transforming a process that once required armies of junior lawyers into a targeted, data-driven exercise.

Beyond review, generative AI is becoming a common drafting assistant. AI can compare the substance of a contract against organisation-specific or system-determined standards and propose sensible drafting changes to address the discrepancies. A lawyer well versed in the details of a contract and its aims can utilise these tools to massively decrease the time spent on drafting, instead reviewing and confirming changes. The use of these new tools frees the experienced lawyer to focus on the high-risk and strategically important clauses.  

Perhaps most powerfully, AI is unlocking the value of contractual data. It turns static PDF contracts into dynamic, searchable data assets. Need to know every contract with a liability cap above £5 million, or which agreements prohibit personal data being exported outside the UK without the customer’s consent? AI can provide a significant part of the answer instantly, enabling legal teams to manage risk proactively across their entire contract portfolio rather than reactively, and laboriously, one document at a time. It also means that organisations can, at last, understand their contracts at an individual level and also at a functional and cross-organisation level. 

This development is already cutting two ways – you know what is in your contracts, but so do your counterparts. The previously impenetrable 300 page contract can now quickly be summarised, the key elements extracted and acted upon by empowered contract owners. The importance of contracting well is increasing, because contracts are not sitting in a drawer but actually being understood and used.

Next | The evolving functions of the future contract lawyer

The current changes are significant but are only the first part of the fundamental re-shaping of the contract lawyer's core functions. The value contract lawyers provide tomorrow will look very different from the value provided today.

1. The strategic advisor

The future of high-value contractual legal work lies in navigating the intricate web of complex, multi-party relationships that define modern business relationships. Consider a consortium building a new industry platform, a business outsourcing its central functions for the first time, or a large-scale digital transformation project involving a client, a systems integrator, and a cloud provider. These are not simple bilateral agreements; they are ecosystems of competing interests, shared risks, and interrelated obligations.

AI will certainly change the make-up of legal teams which deliver this strategic advice. The AI-enhanced lawyer will soon be able to run these complicated, business critical deals much faster and more efficiently, whilst maintaining both the detailed and big picture understanding of the deal and its constituent parts. But whilst AI can analyse clauses, it cannot build trust across a negotiating table. It can identify precedents, but it cannot read the room, understand the subtle political dynamics between partners, or devise a truly creative, "win-win" solution to a deadlock. 

Leading these negotiations requires skills which for the near future at least will remain uniquely human: emotional intelligence, long-term relationship building, and the ability to synthesise legal, commercial, and technical concerns into a coherent, workable structure. In these settings, the lawyer acts as a diplomat and a deal-maker, a role that will only grow in importance as businesses becomes more collaborative and interconnected.

2. The legal architect and systems designer

In the age of industrialised intelligence, some of the most critical legal work on an organisations’ agreements will be done before the first draft is even generated. The contract lawyer will increasingly become the architect of a firm’s "legal operating system." The role will be to design the sophisticated playbooks, define the risk thresholds, and engineer the "if-then" logic that AI tools will execute at scale. 

Experienced lawyers will be needed to set the guardrails, build the escalation pathways for exceptions, and determine the acceptable fallback positions. The value will be less in drafting a single limitation of liability clause, but more in designing a system that ensures every contract across the enterprise has a limitation of liability clause that aligns with the organisation’s risk appetite and is proportionate to the benefit received.

3. The "lawyer-in-the-loop" and system guardian

Automation is not infallible. As the ultimate quality control, the contract specialist will become the essential "lawyer-in-the-loop", managing the exceptions and ambiguous scenarios that AI cannot yet navigate effectively. When a truly novel legal or commercial issue arises, it will be the experienced lawyer's expertise that resolves it.

Contract lawyers will be the guardians against algorithmic bias in automated decision-making. Contract lawyers will be the ones ensuring that AI systems processing contract data comply with AI regulation and data protection law. And contract lawyers will be called upon to advise on the unique and complex questions that arise when AI makes a mistake. All of these capabilities will themselves be supported by AI, but ultimately human oversight and judgement will become one of the most valuable services a contract lawyer can offer.

Reskilling for the future: developing the new legal toolkit

This change in role demands a conscious effort to reskill. The contract lawyer in the age of industrialised intelligence needs to supplement their deep legal expertise with a new set of competencies.

• Legal tech proficiency: An open secret in the legal tech world is that many lawyers never use the technology tools they are provided with. Lawyers must embrace the new technologies and learn to maximise their own capabilities by developing the skills to evaluate, utilise and implement them fully.
• AI literacy: Contract lawyers do not all need to become AI specialists, but they must learn to speak the language of AI, to know the difference between prompt engineering and context engineering (and how to do both, and whatever comes next). Whilst the frontier of AI capabilities remains uneven, understanding how best to use these tools is as important as having them.
• Systemic thinking: Contract lawyers must adopt an engineering mindset, viewing the contracting process not just as a series of documents to be finalised but as an end-to-end system to be optimised for efficiency, risk management and commercial benefit.

A more strategic, more valuable part of the profession

The industrialisation of intelligence is not a threat to contract lawyers, but a catalyst for contract lawyers to evolve. It will automate the routine, elevate the strategic, and force a much-needed focus on the true value and importance of contracts. 

By largely offloading the work of the scribe, AI will allow contract lawyers to fully embrace the role of the architect - designing systems, providing strategic counsel, and upholding integrity. The increased access to and visibility of contracts is going to bring increased focus on ensuring those contracts are a true distillation of the client’s intentions. For those willing to adapt and reskill, the role of the contract lawyer will be more essential and more valuable than ever before.

About Deloitte Contracts

Deloitte Contracts offers a comprehensive suite of services to help clients navigate the changing landscape of contracting in the age of industrialised intelligence. 

Our specialist contract lawyers utilise AI to advise on complex strategic and business critical agreements, to develop the robust templates and playbooks which are essential to making the most of the latest AI contracting technologies and to carry out large scale document analysis and repapering exercises. Our technology specialists focus on the implementation and optimisation of AI-powered contract lifecycle management systems and our near-shore centre of excellence provides AI-enhanced large-scale outsourced contract negotiation and post-signature contract management.

Deloitte Contracts is empowering our client’s legal teams to operate at peak efficiency, mitigating risks proactively, unlocking the full potential of their contract data and driving significant commercial value through better contracting. If you would like to hear more, please do get in touch.