“Anthropic’s Claude Legal Plugin is reshaping traditional legal workflows by shifting the lawyer’s role from manual document processing to strategic legal oversight,” said Ankita Sabharwal, a managing associate and head of data privacy at Chadha and Chadha in Bengaluru. “Traditionally, a large portion of legal work involves reviewing contracts, summarising documents, and conducting preliminary compliance checks. Tools like Claude are now capable of performing these first-level analytical tasks at scale, rapidly scanning documents, identifying key clauses, flagging potential risks and generating structured summaries.”
She added that the real transformation lies not merely in automation, but in workflow restructuring. “Instead of lawyers spending hours on routine review, AI can act as the first layer of analysis, allowing legal professionals to focus on interpretation, negotiation strategy, and complex advisory work. This significantly reduces turnaround times and improves operational efficiency within legal teams,” she said.
However, according to her, intellectual property law requires a very high degree of precision. For instance, in patent law, protection is fundamentally based on novelty. Determining whether an invention is truly novel requires careful analysis of prior art, technical context, and jurisdiction-specific legal standards, something AI tools may not always assess accurately.
“There are also practical concerns when it comes to patent drafting,” she said. “Patent applications involve highly confidential technical disclosures, and sharing detailed invention information with external AI systems could potentially amount to premature disclosure or create confidentiality risks. Since novelty can be destroyed by public disclosure, relying on such tools without safeguards could inadvertently jeopardize the patentability of an invention.”
She continued: “So while AI tools like Claude can certainly support legal workflows and improve efficiency, they should be seen as assistive tools rather than substitutes for legal judgment. Ultimately, safeguarding intellectual property rights – especially in areas like patent drafting and strategy – still requires careful human expertise and verification.”
She said that when used thoughtfully, AI can be an incredibly powerful tool, helping lawyers review large volumes of documents, summarize information quickly, and identify potential issues far more efficiently than traditional methods.
“This allows lawyers to focus more on strategy, judgment, negotiation, and client advisory, the aspects of legal practice that truly require human expertise,” she said. “However, over-reliance on AI is where the real risk lies. If lawyers begin to depend entirely on AI-generated outputs without exercising their own judgment or verification, it can raise serious concerns around accuracy, accountability, and professional responsibility. Legal advice cannot be outsourced to an algorithm; it still requires careful review, contextual understanding, and ethical responsibility. In that sense, AI is most valuable when it is treated as a support system rather than a substitute. The lawyers who will benefit the most are those who use AI to enhance their work, but never surrender their professional judgement to it.”
