Copilot now has legal plugins. Should our lawyers be using them?

It’s good that your General Counsel asked before the team found out by accident. Legal work is where confident-sounding errors cost the most, so this one needs a decision rather than a default.

Here’s what’s going on. Roadmap 571884 is Rolling out, with general availability targeted for October 2026 (Worldwide; Desktop). It describes legal plugins that “summarize, draft, review, and redline legal documents” in Word and Cowork, using Microsoft 365 work context and “supported third-party legal sources”. Learn’s Manage Copilot for legal page says there are two plugins, and they’re governed differently:

• Legal plugin for Copilot in Word: on by default for all Microsoft 365 Copilot commercial users on Word desktop. You control it in the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center through a Policy Management configuration called “Legal Skills in M365 Copilot in Word”.
• Legal for Cowork: users have to add it themselves. You control it in the Microsoft 365 admin center on the Agent Tools page, where it’s called “Legal for Cowork”. It’s available to users with a Copilot commercial licence.

Legal for Cowork comes with about twenty skills, including review-contract, edit-contract, summarize-redlines, extract-obligations-and-deadlines, check-execution-readiness and compare-across-jurisdictions. The Cowork plugin catalogue also lists partner legal plugins, such as case-law and legal research services, that users could add next to it. Microsoft’s own note is plain: Copilot “doesn’t provide legal advice”, isn’t a substitute for a qualified professional, and output “might be inaccurate”.

So yes: if your lawyers have Copilot licences and Word desktop, the Word plugin is probably reaching them now unless you’ve set the policy.

Schofield’s Second Law applies: if it isn’t in at least two places, it doesn’t exist. For legal drafting that means the human-reviewed version is the record, not Copilot’s redline. Keep the review trail.

Options that actually work:

1. Leave Word on, with a short pilot charter. Name a small group, a list of approved tasks (summaries, defined-terms checks, obligation extraction) and a rule that a qualified person signs off every external document. Best Steady path.
2. Turn the Word policy off until Legal signs off. It’s reversible and quick, but people will notice it’s gone if they’ve already started using it.
3. Keep Cowork legal behind an allow-list. Approve Legal for Cowork on Agent Tools for the pilot group only, and decide separately about partner legal plugins. Those connect to outside services and need their own data-handling review.
4. Do nothing. The default spreads by itself, and you won’t know which matters it touched.

12 Panes action / comms: Tell Legal: Word legal skills are on by default; here are the approved uses and the sign-off rule. Tell IT: Set the “Legal Skills in M365 Copilot in Word” policy deliberately (on for the pilot, off elsewhere if needed) and scope “Legal for Cowork” on Agent Tools. Tell Risk: Third-party legal plugins need a vendor review before anyone enables them. Leadership: We’re piloting legal skills with human sign-off, not replacing legal judgement.

Benefits / risks: Faster first-pass review, consistent checks on defined terms and cross-references, and obligation lists your team can verify. On the risk side: on-by-default rollout, plausible but wrong redlines, privileged material moving into partner plugins, and over-reliance by people outside the legal team.

I’d suggest this week: check the Word policy state in the Apps admin center, agree a one-page pilot charter with your General Counsel, and keep the Cowork plugin to that same small group.

DIGITAL SKILL WORKS LTD / 12 PANES · You ask, we answer