Updates·October 16, 2026, 20:32

Microsoft gives Copilot a legal toolbox for Word

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Microsoft has launched more than 20 legal features in Copilot, including contract review in Word. Pricing has not been disclosed, and the features are aimed at customers with commercial Copilot licenses.

On October 15, 2026, Microsoft launched "Copilot for legal." It is a collection of more than 20 purpose-built legal features in Microsoft Copilot, the AI assistant in Microsoft's apps.

The features are bundled into two plugins, meaning add-ons to existing applications. One is for Word, the other for Cowork, which is Microsoft's agent-based AI tool. An agent is an AI that can carry out multiple steps of a task on its own across apps.

What can the tools do?

The Word plugin can analyze, draft and revise documents. It can review agreements against a company's playbooks, meaning set guidelines for what is acceptable in a contract. It can also create drafts based on approved templates and earlier documents, and insert suggestions as tracked changes.

The Cowork plugin handles multistep tasks across files and Microsoft 365 apps. For example, it can pull obligations and deadlines out of contracts, compare agreements and build timelines for a case.

According to Legal IT Insider, lawyers can use ready-made workflows without needing to know prompt engineering, meaning how to write the right instructions for the AI.

Rollout and partners

According to Microsoft, the features are generally available from launch day for Copilot customers worldwide. Artificial Lawyer reports that they are being rolled out to customers with commercial Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses. Pricing for the legal features has not been disclosed.

More than 20 legal technology partners are named, including Bloomberg Law, iManage, NetDocuments, Docusign, Harvey and Relativity. Westlaw, CoCounsel and LexisNexis are not on the list. Partner-built plugins began appearing in Microsoft's registry from launch, and more are expected over time. A webinar with a demonstration is scheduled for October 22.

Figures from the pilot

Copilot for legal builds on Legal Agent from April 2026. According to LawNext, a six-month pilot of Legal Agent produced nearly 100,000 edits from more than 1,800 users, who kept about seven in ten of the suggestions. The figures come from Microsoft itself, as reported by LawNext, and have not been independently verified.

The law firm Clyde & Co reached nearly 90% adoption, according to its CIO, Matt Simpkin, and decided to give all employees a premium Copilot license.

LawNext assesses that Microsoft is the fourth major AI player in five months with a dedicated legal offering, after Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, and that Microsoft's advantage is that lawyers already use Word. Aneesh Mehta, senior corporate counsel at Microsoft, says: "To me, the real advantage of Copilot is that I don't have to change the way I work."