Generative AI (GenAI) adds opportunities and complexity to business operating environments. Despite the potential, GenAI comes with certain risks and strategic implications for the business and the legal department. Chief legal officers (CLOs) should be prepared to provide necessary legal guardrails that both protect and enable the business to lead the competition and enhance customer value. The following 10 questions frame the issues every CLO should address to support GenAI business adoption and simultaneously transform their legal function.

1. How well do I understand what the business wants to accomplish with GenAI?

The propagation of GenAI technology reinforces the need for CLOs to partner with the chief information officer (CIO) and executive leadership to align technology, business strategy and risk management. Close collaboration regarding data and process transformation enables the legal function to deeply understand business issues and to spot and manage risk early. CLOs can accelerate time-to-value by aligning with other functional leaders to establish GenAI sandboxes, thereby encouraging experimentation, accelerating paths to production and scaling learnings across business teams.

2. Am I a leader in a cross-functional GenAI governance committee?