AI Governance Professional Profiles: Legal

Legal work is one of the most common areas of practice within AI governance teams, but it is also one of the broadest in scope. Depending on the organization, legal teams may support policy drafting; advise senior leaders on best approaches for accelerating the organizations AI adoption, and support compliance. They may also evaluate the impact AI has on legal operations and  advise on tools that can be used to support legal teams across the organization. One new function that supports AI governance efforts is legal engineering. Presently, it is not included as a discrete profile because it is a relatively new function, and, based on our research, it fits into the work currently performed by the development and engineering legal teams are performing. Common knowledge requirements across all legal roles include a strong understanding of global AI regulatory frameworks and the ability to translate legal risk into practical, engineering- or business-facing controls. 

AI legal

Alternative titles: Head of AI legal, Chief AI counsel, Director, AI legal, Senior AI counsel, AI counsel, AI and emerging technology counsel, AI regulatory counsel 

Summary statement: Provides oversight of the framework of policies, processes, and controls to govern the organization's use of AI.

Key purpose: Designs, implements and operates the organizational AI governance framework so that the legal function is efficient, visible and scalable by replacing ad hoc, person-dependent processes with systems, data and automation with the objective to free lawyers to spend their time on judgment-intensive work.