When it comes to artificial intelligence, I have heard more than one lawyer say, “I don’t need to know how it works, I just need to know if it is legal.” That is like a pilot saying, “I don’t need to know how the engines work, I just need to know if we can take off.” You might get airborne, but I would not book a ticket.
AI products do not exist in a vacuum. They are the product of countless technical decisions, each with potential legal consequences. For in-house counsel, understanding the mechanics of AI is no longer optional. It is the foundation for giving advice that actually works in the real world.
A New Skillset For A New Era
The old model, where engineers build and lawyers approve, is breaking down. AI systems are not static products. They learn, adapt, and make decisions in ways that blur the line between design and deployment. Reviewing them only at the end of development is too late to catch many of the most serious risks.
Today’s in-house product counsel needs a dual fluency. You must be able to grasp how an AI model operates while mapping those details onto rapidly evolving legal frameworks. This combination allows you to enter product discussions not only as a risk manager but as a partner in shaping design choices.
Understanding The Technical Side
You do not need to be an engineer, but you should be able to follow a conversation about training datasets, model architecture, and performance testing. This means engaging with your product teams early and asking for explanations that are clear and concise. Understanding whether a model is generative or predictive, how it was trained, and how it will be tested for fairness and accuracy will tell you far more about potential legal exposure than a product launch deck ever could.
Seeing The Legal Risks Early
We have already seen examples of what happens when legal and technical teams work in isolation. An AI hiring tool that learned to prefer one gender over another. An art generator trained on copyrighted images without permission. These were not inevitable outcomes. They were the result of missed opportunities to ask the right questions before the product was locked in.
When counsel understands the technical architecture, potential problems can be spotted while they are still inexpensive and feasible to fix. By the time the product is live, those same issues can be costly, public, and far more difficult to resolve.
The Cost Of Staying In One Lane
If you stay solely in the legal lane, you may miss the subtle ways an AI’s design can introduce bias, create explainability gaps, or run afoul of privacy laws. If you focus only on the technical side, you might underestimate how a single compliance failure can escalate into a regulatory investigation or a reputational crisis. Either approach leaves important risks unaddressed and potential value untapped.
Building Your AI Fluency
For in-house counsel, building fluency starts with curiosity. Attend engineering demos, sit in on technical reviews, and ask your product teams to walk you through how their systems make decisions. Keep track of developments in AI regulation, not only in your home jurisdiction but in every market where your product might operate. Create ways to translate legal requirements into technical design choices and vice versa, so both teams are speaking the same language.
This is not about becoming a programmer. It is about understanding enough to connect the dots between technical realities and legal outcomes.
The Payoff
When in-house counsel can speak both AI and law, they move from being the final checkpoint before launch to being a trusted partner in innovation. They help design products that are more compliant, more transparent, and more resilient to both market and regulatory pressure.
In an AI-driven world, translation between code and case law is not a peripheral skill. It is a core leadership capability that separates the teams who simply launch products from those who launch products built to last.
Olga V. Mack is the CEO of TermScout, an AI-powered contract certification platform that accelerates revenue and eliminates friction by certifying contracts as fair, balanced, and market-ready. A serial CEO and legal tech executive, she previously led a company through a successful acquisition by LexisNexis. Olga is also a Fellow at CodeX, The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, and the Generative AI Editor at law.MIT. She is a visionary executive reshaping how we law—how legal systems are built, experienced, and trusted. Olga teaches at Berkeley Law, lectures widely, and advises companies of all sizes, as well as boards and institutions. An award-winning general counsel turned builder, she also leads early-stage ventures including Virtual Gabby (Better Parenting Plan), Product Law Hub, ESI Flow, and Notes to My (Legal) Self, each rethinking the practice and business of law through technology, data, and human-centered design. She has authored The Rise of Product Lawyers, Legal Operations in the Age of AI and Data, Blockchain Value, and Get on Board, with Visual IQ for Lawyers (ABA) forthcoming. Olga is a 6x TEDx speaker and has been recognized as a Silicon Valley Woman of Influence and an ABA Woman in Legal Tech. Her work reimagines people’s relationship with law—making it more accessible, inclusive, data-driven, and aligned with how the world actually works. She is also the host of the Notes to My (Legal) Self podcast (streaming on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube), and her insights regularly appear in Forbes, Bloomberg Law, Newsweek, VentureBeat, ACC Docket, and Above the Law. She earned her B.A. and J.D. from UC Berkeley. Follow her on LinkedIn and X @olgavmack.