Artificial intelligence has moved beyond hype and into the heart of legal operations. In just a few years, the profession has evolved from testing AI tools in isolated pilots to embedding them into core workflows. Across global markets, from Southeast Asia to Europe, and the United States, legal teams are adopting AI not as a curiosity, but as an indispensable part of daily practice. As the landscape matures, certain applications have emerged as particularly transformative. This article ranks the top 10 AI use cases that are reshaping how lawyers work, focusing on real utility, not just theoretical promise.

#1. Contract Review

Contract review is where legal AI has gained the most traction—and for good reason. In-house legal teams are often responsible for processing hundreds of agreements each month, under strict timelines and tight headcounts. Manual redlining can be slow, error-prone, and inconsistent. That’s why nearly every legal tech vendor now claims to offer AI-driven review functionality.

The most advanced systems do more than just flag issues. They can apply internal playbooks, align clauses with company policy, and suggest revisions based on prior deal language. Sonar Legal, for example, brings this power directly into Microsoft Word, so that you AI can highlight deviations, propose fallback clauses, and ensure compliance without switching tools.

#2. Legal Research

Legal research has traditionally been a time sink. Finding relevant precedents, interpreting regulatory obligations, and staying on top of jurisdictional updates can consume hours, if not days. AI is now changing this dynamic.

Modern legal research systems are evolving from simple keyword-based tools into intelligent agents capable of understanding legal relationships. Instead of returning a wall of citations, they map concepts, suggest logical next steps, and surface outlier precedents that human researchers might overlook. Agentic AI, in particular, can autonomously monitor changes in law, track regulatory obligations across multiple jurisdictions, and proactively bring new developments to your attention, freeing lawyers to spend more time applying insights, not collecting them.

#3. Formatting

Document formatting is often ignored in AI conversations, yet it's one of the most frustrating parts of legal drafting. Numbering breaks, inconsistent heading styles, and misaligned indentation waste time and affect professional polish. Most vendors skip this challenge because it’s tedious and requires high precision.

Sonar Legal takes a different approach, and is proud to be the first Legal Tech vendor introducing AI-powered formatting directly inside Microsoft Word. What used to take hours of manual work, it now allows lawyers to apply house styles, correct numbering, and clean up layout issues in seconds. For legal departments with strict brand guidelines or law firms preparing high-visibility filings, this automation is a quiet revolution.

#4. Error Check

We all proofread our documents before sending out the version to our boss, our client, the counterparty. However, no matter how intense, traditional proofreading misses the subtle errors that matter in law: undefined terms, inconsistent cross-references, or misnumbered sections. AI error checking addresses this by scanning documents contextually and flagging only what’s relevant.

Sonar Legal is the first solution to offer legal-aware error detection. It identifies six times more drafting mistakes than manual review, while reducing false positives by over 95%. That means no more wasting time on irrelevant suggestions, and higher trust on the results that our tool delivers. It’s the legal equivalent of a spellchecker that understands contracts.

#5. Due Diligence

AI-powered due diligence tools scan entire data rooms, extract key information, and flag issues that may warrant closer attention. But they are not magic boxes that replace the legal brain. Instead, they offer a high-quality first pass, cutting through repetitive work and helping teams prioritize their time.

For M&A lawyers and compliance teams, AI can identify change-of-control clauses, liability exposures, IP issues, and unusual terms across hundreds of agreements. While it may not replace the judgment needed for deal-specific decisions, it gives lawyers a fast overview, reduces initial costs, and defines a clear path for human review.

#6. Contract Drafting

Drafting is where lawyers begin to shape risk and structure relationships. AI drafting tools now assist by offering clause suggestions, proposing fallback language, and generating first drafts based on deal type. But the real value comes from connecting AI to an organization's internal knowledge.

That’s where tools like Sonar Legal come in. By tapping into your golden standard clause, Sonar can suggest language that aligns with both precedent and playbook, in real time, while you draft. This keeps negotiations aligned with your company’s risk appetite, and ensures consistency across teams, without needing to memorize hundreds of variations. After 2 years of AI hype, all lawyers now agree in one thing: The best drafting tools live inside your document editor, providing live assistance without breaking your workflow.

#7. Summaries

Summarization was one of the earliest legal AI applications, offering quick overviews of long documents. Today, the functionality has matured.

Sonar Legal offers tailored summary modes depending on your need. One standout is its redline summarization tool, which analyzes all tracked changes and produces a concise narrative for clients or supervisors. Instead of scrolling through markup, users can instantly understand what changed, why it matters, and who initiated the change. This is especially useful when sending revised drafts to a counterparty, or briefing internal stakeholders on negotiation outcomes.

#8. Translation

Legal professionals working in multilingual environments often face the challenge of maintaining accuracy across jurisdictions and languages. In countries like Thailand, bilingual contracts are common and legally necessary. AI translation tools tailored for legal documents now offer both speed and contextual accuracy.

General-purpose tools often miss legal nuance, but legal-specific AI can recognize clause structures, defined terms, and obligations, delivering translations that preserve both meaning and formatting. Sonar Legal supports bilingual drafting workflows by providing translation inside Word, enabling side-by-side comparisons and seamless collaboration with international clients or counterparties.

#9. Regulatory Compliance

Compliance is a moving target, especially for companies operating across multiple jurisdictions. New laws, shifting interpretations, and jurisdiction-specific enforcement practices make it difficult to ensure ongoing compliance without constant monitoring. This is where AI-powered compliance and RegTech tools step in.

Modern systems can track changes in laws and regulations across regions, flagging new requirements as they emerge and mapping them to relevant business processes. In sectors like finance, energy, and data protection, where cross-border compliance is essential, AI can identify risk exposure, generate audit trails, and ensure that internal policies align with evolving legal standards.

#10.Predictive Analytics

AI is increasingly being used not just to analyze documents but to forecast outcomes. For litigation teams, AI can estimate the likelihood of success based on similar cases, judge behavior, or jurisdictional precedent. In transactional matters, it can forecast the probability of deal completion, delays, or regulatory challenges based on past patterns. These insights are particularly valuable during the early stages of a matter, where they can shape negotiations, risk assessments, or even whether to proceed with litigation at all.

Predictive analytics does not remove uncertainty, but it narrows the range of potential outcomes and supports more strategic decision-making.