Overview

Microsoft offers first-party legal plugins that match legal professionals' real-life workflows. Armed with these capabilities, Copilot can help legal professionals understand, summarize, draft, redline, review legal documents and more. These plugins are available in Copilot in Word and Cowork for all Microsoft 365 Copilot commercial subscribers.

Prerequisites

Legal plugins are available for Copilot in Word desktop and Cowork. Before you begin, make sure you have an active Microsoft 365 Copilot commercial license.

Accessing the legal plugin for Copilot in Word

The legal plugin is enabled by default in Word desktop. When the plugin is enabled, Copilot can use legal skills to complete legal tasks in Word. Copilot automatically detects when you have a legal document open and uses legal skills to respond to your query.

1. Open a legal document in Word desktop.
2. Open Copilot.
3. Copilot can automatically detect whether the document you're working on requires legal skills.
4. Enter your prompt.
5. Press the send button.

Copilot will use its legal skills to respond to your query. Note: Copilot will tend to use legal skills for the rest of your chat.

Turn off the legal plugin for Copilot in Word

1. Open Copilot in Word desktop.
2. Open the three dots menu in the top right of the Copilot sidebar.
3. Select Manage plugins & skills.
4. Toggle Legal to off.

Accessing the legal plugin in Cowork

Accessing the legal plugin in Chat and Cowork To use legal skills in Cowork, first add the Legal plugin from Customize. Once added, you can invoke legal skills using the / command or + menu in Cowork. Skills will also be invoked implicitly based on your intent.

Add the Legal plugin

1. Open Cowork.
2. Select Customize.
3. Search for Legal or navigate to Roles & Industry.
4. Select Legal for Cowork.
5. Press Add.

Invoke the legal plugin

1. Open Cowork.
2. Type "/", then write the name of the skill you wish to invoke.
3. Enter your prompt.
4. Press the send button.

Understand and summarize your documents

Copilot can summarize and explain legal documents with Copilot in Word.

1. Type your prompt into the chat input.
2. Press the send button.
3. Copilot will reply in a few moments.
4. Check Copilot's work. Each response comes with numbered citations. The citations are clickable; clicking them highlights the areas of the document Copilot referenced when generating its answer.

Add outside context

You can add other documents in addition to the one you have open to your chat with Copilot.

1. Select the + button in the chat input.
2. Add documents:
   1. Click Upload images and files to add documents from your computer.
   2. Click Add content to search for and add documents from M365.
3. Type your prompt into the chat input.
4. Press the send button. Copilot will reason over your open document, as well as any other documents added to the chat when answering your query.

Edit your document

When legal skills are turned on, Copilot can edit your legal document using tracked changes in Word. Redlines are tuned to resemble those of a legal professional and generated as tracked changes you can insert into your document.

1. Type your prompt into the chat input.
2. Press the send button.
3. Review Copilot's suggested edit. Copilot will propose redlines to your document as tracked changes.
4. Accept or dismiss the changes. To insert Copilot's suggested edits into the document, click the "Accept" button. The changes will be inserted into the document as tracked changes.

Review your contract using a playbook

You can use the Review contract skill to have Copilot review your contract by using your playbook within Word. This skill uses a specialized contract review workflow, during which Copilot ingests your playbook, breaks it down into a series of rules, and then systematically reviews your contract by using those rules.

Start a contract review

To get started, tell Copilot that you want to carry out a contract review.

1. Tell Copilot to use the review skill by typing something like the following into the chat input: "Review this contract using a playbook."
2. Press the send button.
3. Copilot will then enter the contract review workflow.
4. Copilot will ask you to add your playbook. Your playbook must be a .docx file.
   1. Click Upload file to add a playbook from your computer.
   2. Click Attach from Cloud to search for and add your playbook from M365.
5. Copilot will analyze your playbook and break it down into topics. Each topic will contain rules and example clauses that will be used to carry out the contract review.
6. Review the rules in the playbook and make sure they look correct. Make any edits to them you think are necessary.
7. Click the Run Review button.
8. Copilot will start reviewing the document against the playbook, using each topic's rules and example clauses as a guide.
9. After a few minutes, Copilot's review will start to stream into view, one topic at a time.
10. Click into each topic to see Copilot's detailed analysis. You can see the list of playbook rules the agent used in its analysis.
11. Copilot will suggest an edit if the contract requires changes to be compliant with the playbook.
12. Review Copilot's suggested edit. Copilot will suggest redlines to your document as tracked changes.
13. Accept or dismiss the changes. To insert Copilot's suggested edits into the document, Click the Accept button. The changes are inserted into the document as tracked changes.
14. You can click the "Accept All" button to automatically insert all of Copilot's suggested edits.

Draft a new contract

You can have Copilot draft a new document based on past contracts or templates. Copilot will convert your source document into a template and generate a list of placeholders. You can then upload content to fill in the placeholders automatically or update them manually.

1. Attach a precedent or template: Attach the precedent or template you want to use as the basis for your new document into Copilot chat.
2. Invoke the draft skill: In the chat input, type "@Draft-new-contract draft a new agreement using this precedent."
3. Press the send button.
4. Generate the template: Copilot will convert the attached document into a template that's ready to be filled in.
5. Continue drafting: Open the newly generated document and continue drafting by sending Copilot the prompt: "Continue @Draft-new-contract, display the placeholders that I need to fill in."
6. Preview and edit your document: Review the draft agreement and make changes as needed. Ask Copilot to add or remove placeholders and its values via chat, or do it yourself manually in canvas or in the Copilot sidebar.
7. Attach agreement context: Share agreement context directly in a chat, or by attaching a document, to help populate the placeholders in your draft. If a value appears in multiple locations, updating it in one place applies the change everywhere.
8. Review auto-filled content: Based on the agreement context you shared, Copilot will fill in values for matching fields in your draft. Review these suggestions and edit as needed.
9. Select Finish Draft to generate the final, shareable version of the document.