LawNext features a guest post by Ken Crutchfield of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory on the emergence of “agentic AI” and its potential to transform legal practice. Agentic AI goes beyond generative AI by autonomously performing multi-step tasks and making decisions to achieve a goal, such as researching a legal issue, drafting a memo and sending it to colleagues without human intervention. While this capability promises unprecedented efficiency, it also magnifies existing risks and raises new ethical concerns.

The author argues that rigorous human supervision is essential to prevent errors, data breaches and unauthorized practice of law. Issues like AI “hallucinations,” privacy violations and lack of accountability become more acute when AI systems act on their own. The post concludes that for agentic AI to be adopted safely and ethically, lawyers must maintain a “human in the loop” oversight, ensuring that legal professionals retain ultimate control and responsibility for all legal work products and decisions.