As legal departments across the Asia-Pacific region grapple with mounting pressures to deliver more with less, the conversation around generative AI has shifted from curiosity to implementation. At the recent NextGen GC Summit hosted by Law Ninjas, industry leaders gathered in Sydney to discuss the practical realities of AI adoption, measurement strategies, and the path from pilot programmes to proven outcomes.
The discussion was moderated by Ryan Doherty from Relativity and featured a distinguished panel of legal leaders with diverse perspectives on AI implementation. Katrina Gowans, Co-Chair Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC) Australia, brought her expertise in the business of law, focusing on operational efficiency and technology deployment. Evana Diep, former associate general counsel – APJ at Boomi, shared insights as a legal operations enthusiast with extensive experience at US tech companies. Marty Gardner, Group Counsel – Disputes at Woolworths, offered practical perspectives from running the disputes function whilst actively implementing AI solutions across a large legal team. Michael Guilday, general counsel and head of property at Sydney Fish Market, represented the viewpoint of smaller to medium-sized businesses navigating the complexities of AI adoption without the resources of larger enterprises.
The Current State: From Caution to Calculated Action
The session opened with sobering statistics from The General Counsel Report 2025, revealing that only 55 percent of APAC general counsel are comfortable using generative AI in e-discovery, significantly lower than their global counterparts. However, this cautious approach doesn’t reflect a lack of interest; rather, it represents a measured response to genuine implementation challenges.
Katrina Gowans outlined the strategic landscape facing Australian legal teams, categorising AI solutions into three distinct areas: enterprise-wide productivity tools, legal-specific applications, and risk management systems. While some organisations have embraced productivity solutions, many are still navigating internal approval processes and working through risk assessment frameworks with their compliance teams.
The panellists revealed varying stages of AI maturity within their organisations. Evana Diep described Boomi’s proactive approach: “Earlier this year, our CEO directed that every department needed to incorporate AI in their internal processes and made it a KPI for every single leader.”
In contrast, Marty Gardner highlighted how the Woolworths team has been adopting AI over the last few years: “The business was an early adopter with it, we could see it being used overseas.”
Low-Risk, High-Impact Use Cases
The conversation revealed several practical applications where AI has delivered immediate value:
- Contract Review and RFPs: Evana Diep shared a compelling success story about streamlining NDA reviews: “We trained our GPT to compare customer NDAs when they came in against red lines and then it would give us a ‘go’ or a ‘no-go’ based on our guardrails and that took like two minutes versus hours.”
- Meeting Documentation: Marty Gardner highlighted the value of AI-powered meeting transcription: “Rather than you having to take notes, you can just be hands free you’ve got your robot there to do it, and then you have an action plan right at the end, which you can run your eye over.”
- Invoice Processing: Katrina Gowans described an elegant automation solution for legal invoices: “You can train [AI] with about 10 different invoices from maybe your most frequently used firms and then it scrapes out the five pieces of information that we need to process a workflow.”
Measuring Value Beyond Cost Savings
The discussion emphasised that measuring AI’s value extends far beyond simple cost reduction. Marty Gardner articulated the broader strategic impact: “It’s freeing you up to do the really deep thinking and build the really good strategic advice. You can take the low-risk work, find one of these apps, and push it through the AI. And just get that done, so you can do the sexy work that we all want to do.”
Michael Guilday emphasised how AI enables better business alignment by freeing up time for higher-value work: “If I’m valued by the business and I know what they value, like gen AI, then it makes my job a hell of a lot easier and it means that I stop doing all the things that are not that.” This shift allows legal teams to focus on strategic counsel rather than administrative tasks.
Katrina Gowans provided a practical framework for quantifying AI benefits. Rather than relying on abstract metrics, she advocates for concrete measurement: start by identifying repetitive tasks, count how frequently lawyers perform them, and calculate the time investment. This baseline enables teams to demonstrate tangible improvements when AI solutions are implemented, moving beyond theoretical benefits to measurable business impact.
Building Roadmaps for Success
The panellists shared insights on moving from experimental pilots to sustainable implementation. Marty Gardner described Woolworths’ systematic approach: “About 12 months ago, we sat down with all the heads of the different types of legal function and we just discussed, ‘well, where are your pain points in your day-to-day, and where do you think you’re spending too much time on a particular piece of work?’”
This methodical approach has yielded impressive results, including AI tools that can “negotiate our leases with our landlords” and regulatory monitoring systems that provide automated summaries of government circulars and newsletters.
Michael Guilday, on the other hand, emphasised the importance of vendor partnerships: “I rely hugely on the vendors. I think the Australian legal tech community is wonderful. If you don’t already get engaged with all the vendors, they’re willing to spend a lot of time walking through products, doing demos.”
Looking Forward: Managing Expectations
The discussion concluded with thoughtful consideration of AI’s long-term impact on legal work. When asked whether AI would reduce workload or simply create capacity for more work, the panellists offered nuanced perspectives.
Michael Guilday expressed both optimism and caution about AI’s trajectory: “I think we’re in a wonderful space at the moment where we all think AI is going to make our life a lot easier. Actually, unfortunately, I don’t see that in the future; as always, our jobs will, in fact, get so much harder.” He explained that while AI handles routine tasks efficiently, it also raises client expectations and creates pressure for faster turnarounds and more sophisticated analysis, ultimately demanding higher levels of expertise from legal professionals.
Marty Gardner provided a pragmatic perspective on managing quality expectations in an AI-enhanced environment: ” We’ll all be fighting against the standards of perfection. Because a lot of the time, 90 percent right is fine. How right do you need it to be?” His point reflects the reality that AI enables greater accuracy and thoroughness, but legal teams must balance perfectionism with practical business needs, understanding when “good enough” truly serves their clients better than endless refinement and potential delay.
Overall, the panellists agree: successful AI adoption requires strategic implementation starting with low-risk projects while building organisational capability. General counsel must develop frameworks measuring both efficiency gains and strategic value creation, moving beyond cost-cutting to demonstrate business impact.
Success demands cross-departmental coalition-building and continuous learning as technology evolves. Most importantly, AI should augment rather than replace professional judgment, it’s a powerful tool for enhancing legal practice, but the fundamental human elements of excellent legal work remain irreplaceable.
Phoebe Cracknell is a member of Relativity’s marketing team in Australia.
