Olga V. Mack

This is not necessarily bad news. Preparing playbooks for agents may finally force companies to improve playbooks for everyone. Vague standards, conflicting policies, missing approval paths, and undocumented exceptions already create inconsistent negotiations. Human lawyers compensate for those weaknesses through experience, memory, and internal relationships. New team members, outside counsel, and business partners may struggle with them too.

The legal profession has spent considerable energy teaching AI to answer. The next phase requires teaching it when an answer is not enough.

That is why I think the recent wave of AI indemnification announcements deserves less attention than it receives. Indemnities matter, but they represent only one clause in a much larger governance framework. Focusing exclusively on copyright protection is a little like evaluating a house based solely on the front door. You miss everything that makes the structure work.

A 30-day method for turning recurring legal requests into clearer ownership, usable decision rules and fewer preventable surprises.

'Market' cannot become a substitute for judgment. We have spent years trying to make contracts readable by machines.

Humans have been quietly compensating for this gap for years. AI will make it visible.

Agentic commerce will not eliminate internal governance. It will make vague governance harder to hide.

In-house lawyers should prepare for a world in which contracts are not merely documents that explain what happened.

It also means making contracting logic usable. A folder containing template agreements and a playbook full of phrases such as “commercially reasonable” will not provide enough direction. Agents will need structured positions, contextual rules, and clear escalation paths.

Legal leaders should pay close attention to that gap. The success of a technology purchase depends heavily on how the parties work together after the contract is signed.